Lyra's World: Music for hot summer evenings

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Music for hot summer evenings

It is summer and I am in Novi Sad. Ideal situation to go and visit some of the concerts from the "Novosadian Musical Summer" event. Thanks to my friend Ana, who is on vacation (otherwise, fat chance that she'd go out on a work day) AND who reads newspapers regularly, we went to see something that she descirbed as: a string quartet playing a little bit of everything, even some modern pieces... I was wanting for good old live classical music, and so we went.

First surprise was the discovery of a beautiful concert place under the clear sky: the garden of a recently renovated high-school dorm which I have walked by so many times in my life but never had a chance to glimpse into and see the museum-like interior and its hidden treasure - the garden. It was a romantic, almost unreal, setting. Rows of chairs, a small stage, dimmed lights, greenery around and stars above. A gentle summer evening in which beautiful music lures the senses and makes you forget everything - that was the promise I felt in the air.
Perhaps, everyone in the garden had gotten that overly-romantic notion, so the Reality had to bring us all back to Earth - sending swarms of mosquitoes on us was naturally the first choice for the hot summer evening. It was unpleasant, no doubt, but also kind of funny - everyone was swaying and moving and protesting. And it got us in the right mood, and by this I mean less romantic mood in positive sense, for what we were about to listen.

It was a concert of a string quartet, Ana was right about that. But who said that string quartets have to play classical music? This particular quartet plays adaptations of modern rock and pop music! After first few sounds, I've hurried to look into program that I was using and a weapon against mosquito armies attacking me from everywhere. Reading that program was like reading my computer play list - verbatim. Song after song it was everything familiar and loved and I got more and more excited at the prospect of hearing them in this new interpretation. I was definitely caught by surprise and it was a really pleasant one. I love to listen to adaptations of modern music for classical instruments and orchestras: Apocalyptica and their interpretations of Metallica, Royal philharmonic orchestra playing Oasis, just to name a few.
When I read the program I knew I was in for a musical treat, and so it was. I loved "Seven nation army" with help of a percussionist, "Bring me to life" and Moloko's "The time is now" sung by Teodora Bojovic. This was the first time I think that I had a chance to hear her preform live and I must say that I wasn't disappointed at all. That's the kind of voice I could listen over and over again.
All in all, it was a night of surprises - pleasant surprises (if we disregard the fact that we were fed like a feast to starved mosquitoes), let me not forget the one when one of my favourite high school teachers sat in the empty seat next to me which gave us a chance to chat a bit and catch up on old (and recent) times.

I was only disappointed because I didn't bring my camera to record some of the concert, but obviously someone did that since I was able to find this video online: