Does not take me long....

...to find a concert anywhere I go! Bought ´Time Out´Barcelona last night (which is not in Spanish, but Catalan; I hope you are impressed) and found a little concert in La Pedrera. Seems to be a building designed by Gaudi, so its all swirls and no corners, I would hate to have had to plaster the ceiling in the concert room!

It was 6 Euros for 30 minutes; except that my student card, worth its weight in gold in Spain, made it cost 4 Euros and the concert only lasted about 25 minutes. The conert is part of a series of 30 minute concerts in this location, described as ´social work´(obra social) by the Caixa Catalunya, a local bank.

It was quite a young trio, consisting of Ariadna Padro (violin), Laia Besalduch (viola!), and Anna Costa, Cello. Like anyone who wants to get anywhere in the string world in Spain, they had studied abroad.

They played a programme of Boccherini, Haydn and Josep Padro (Ariadna´s relative?). The pieces were ok....The Boccherini sounded a bit messy, but things got together much better in the Haydn. The Padro was fairly conventional, though it had a nice viola solo.

Generally I thought the viola was a bit sad and tired; it did not come out as much as it should have done - lacked in energy. The cellist was good and solid, and the first violin was quite good most of the time (they have actually won a prize). There was much interaction - maybe because they are not so used to each other yet. But occasionally the interaction was more in they eyes than in the hands, where it should have been. Starts were a bit messy at times, and junctions were interrupted. So it was ok, not startling.

We now come to two pieces of fashion advice. Sitting, at the start, immediately behind the cellist, I began to realise how much cellists resemble the form of their instruments, especially if they wear clothes that get wider and wider from the breast down. The cello flows, and so do the clothes.

The ladies might also wish to consider the fabrics used in their beautiful (silk) skirts. When they bowed the daylight was behind them, the skirts became translucent, and to me it looked, at least with the person wearing the yellow skirt, as if she was naked from the waist down (a mistake the young Diana Spencer has also made). Thank goodness I realised this only at the final bow, or the whole concert might have been spent contemplating this.....