A beautiful day in Siena

With 5 course dinner and wines last night, this morning was a sleep in morning. But there was plenty of time to go exploring the city.

First stop was the basilica of San Francesco, which I was not able to enter yesterday. Everything closed mid day and siesta and all that.

I arrived at about 11:00am and walked around the church. There was a Mass at 11:30 so I decided to stay to offer up the Mass for Joe Martino's mother.

The inside of the San Francesco basilica is simple, even austere. With a mix of rennaisance, baroque and even some contemporary works of art, it is a very serene space which speaks only of spirituality and prayer.

After Mass, I went back to the center of the town to the Piazza di Campo. With the sun shining, people were lounging around the huge piazza and taking in the warmth of the late spring sun.

View of the piazza with its medieval tower and Palazzo Publico.

After a nice lunch of Caprese salad and a glass of wine, I headed over to the Duomo.

The combination of clouds and sun today really lit up the duomo to reveal all its beautiful colors.

Detail of the facade using a feature of my camera I didn't know I had. I thought I only had  3x zoom. Apparently it has a 12x zoom. There should be some more amazing pictures as time goes on.

The mosaic os the crowning of Mary, Queen of Heaven, on the highest peak of the duomo.

There are about 40 pictures of the interior of the duomo. I won't be able to post them all. Here are a few highlights.

View towards the altar.

A detail of the floor.

Another detail of the floor: The slaughter of the Innocents in Bethlehem.

Another image of the floor. This Basilica has one of the most unique floors in all the cathedrals of Europe. The marble of various colors was scored and a black epoxy type material filled in the grooves to make the images.

Statue of St. Jerome by Bernini.

Statue of Mary Magdelene by Bernini.

The "Picolomini" Chapel, built by Cardinal Picolomini to house the library of his uncle, Pope Pius II. Cardinal Picolomini would become Pope Pius III.

Frecoes in the "Picolomini" Chapel showing scenes of the life of Pope Pius II.

Statue of John the Baptist in the baptistry.

View of the nave.



One of 5 pipe organ cases in the Duomo.

Leaving the Duomo, I headed back to my hote. I took a route I had not taken before and crossed over a bridge which passes over some other city street. I saw a wonderful view of my hotel with the Church of San Domenico rising above it.

The Hotel Alma Domus where I am staying is the building just above the trees. My room is the second rounded arch from the left.

The setting sun offered some amazing light against the city tonight. I took this photo a short while before I headed out for dinner.

Another restful morning tomorrow, back out to visit a couple of museums and another evening of cooking classes.

Ciao everyone.

First Cooking class tonight

I had a wonderful time at the cooking class tonight. Seven people in the class. Mike and Ellen from Toronto, Canada; Pam and Denise, from Michigan, Patricia from Texas, Paritosh, (call me PK), a 14 year old boy from India, and myself.

The menu:

Bruschetta con Pomodoro
Pappa con pomodoro
Pici al sugo di carne
Arista di cinta senese con patatine arrosto
Ricciarelli con Vino Santo

Here are some of the photos.

On the left, Lella Cesari Ciampoli, the owner and instructor of the cooking school, and to the right, Jackie, English translator and sometimes sous-chef.

Preparing the Pappa con Pomodoro, a tomoato soup with garlic, olive oil, two or three day old bread, and tomatoes.

Lella poking a hole through a pork loin which she will then stuff with herbs - rosemary, sage, parsley, and garlic.

Preparing the dough for fresh Pici, a traditional Sienese pasta, a thick speghetti, but made with only a combination of Yellow semolina, white flour, water and salt. Making the "well" on the counter to form a ball of dough. Knead it for 15 minutes.

Kneading the dough ball.

Hand rolling the dough.

First course: Bruschetta con pomodoro e basilico. Tomatos and basil on grilled bread.

Hand rolled pasta laid out before boiling.

Pici al sugo de carne. (Pici pasta with meat sauce)

Pam and Denise peeling potatos: the start of most good meals.

Mike and Ellen rom Toronto rolling pasta dough.

Ricciarelli: almond cookies eaten with vin santo.

Our group dining of the feast we prepared. Husbands who dropped of their wives joined us for dinner.

I had the morning and afternoon to myself to go into Siena to explore again. Here are a few pictures from around town.

A view of the duomo. There will be pictures of the interior soon.

Piazza di Campo. This is the square where the famous horse races are held every year.

Tomorrow is a total day to myself. I hope to visit a few museums and poke through some the many art shops. One my favorite souvenirs to purchase are watercolors by local artists from the places I visit.

For now its good night.
Buona notte at tutti.

In Siena

The boat ride from Ischia to Naples, then the train ride from Naples to Siena went without any difficulties at all.

I arrived at the Hotel AlmaDomus, a former convent at the site of the birthplace of St. Catherine of Siena. Again I have limited internet connection, hence the delay of a couple of days. Also, I won't go into any lengthy instruction about St. Catherine. You can google that on your own. She is one of the women Doctors of the Church, and her role in returning the papacy to Rome in the 14th Century after nearly a century exile in France, is not insignificant.

Siena is absolutley charming. It is a typical medieval hillside town crowned with the Cathedral.

This is the view from my little balcony at the Hotel AlmaDomus. The cathedral, or duomo, as they are called in Italian, is in the upper right. The tower over the rooftops is in the main square of the town.

This is the main piazza in the city.

The view of the apse of the Church of St. Domenic just above my hotel. I attended Mass there yesterday. The brick construction shows how many of the churches looke before they are covered with the marble tiles that are so distinctive with the churches of Tuscany. I have not made it up to the duomo yet. Sunday it rained most of the day, so it was a really relaxing day.

A typical Siena side street. The litttle door and sign to the right is the entrance to a tiny restaurant. From that doorway, you descend a flight of stairs to a tiny courtyard with 3 tables. Inside there 20 place settings. Here are the dishes I had last night for dinner.

A little appetizer: Misto di Salume

Pici al Ragu Senese. Pici is a Sienese pasta, thick square shaped pasta, made in house. The sauce is a beef and pork tomatos sauce. A good introduction to my three days of cooking school.

Sunday morning in the rain. The cloister of the Domincan monastery next to the Basilica of St.Dominic provided a quiet time for some prayer before Mass.

The loggia of the church built on the site of St. Catherine's birthplace and home. The former convent building which is my hotel stands behind the loggia to the right.

The convent chapel at the Sanctuario of St. Catherine.

Another morning view of the duomo from my hotel room.

Tonight I take my first cooking class. I have to be at the class at 4:00pm.

I decided to post the blog this morning because many people are moving in and out of the hotel. I thought that there would be fewer people on line at this hour. The computer is in fact working faster right now. Today I want to visit the duomo, and the attached museums.

I hope I can cook and take pictures at the same time.

Ciao

Our Concert tonight

Its my last night on Ischia. Our concert which we prepared for all week was this afternoon. I wish I had a video camera to show you all the music that we made today. As it is, I have video of the Mozart piece that we played. But because of the very slow internet connection here at the Hotel Grazia Terme, I will only be able to download the video in the future. But to be sure, its coming.

It is 11:15 PM. I still have to pack and then catch a taxi to the port tomorrow morning to catch the ferry in time to get a taxi to get to the train station to catch the train to Siena. I arrive on Saturday afternoon. I have all day Sunday for myself. The cooking classes begin on Monday. Hopefully I will have the time and the bandwidth to up load the movement that I was part of.

Stay tuned.

In the meantime, I have made some wonderful friends, some of whom live close enough to Massachusetts to get together once in a while to make some great music. Here are a few pictures from the concert.

The string quartet from University of Pensylvania who performed in the the church of San Giuseppe in Frango last night.

Aldo de Vero, Director of the Ischia Muwsic Festival; Shane, Kathleeen, Olivia, and Chris, Students of University of Pensylvania; David Yang, Director of the Chamber Music Program at U of Penn.

Group playing a Haydn String Quartet



Our whole group posing after the concert today.



University of Pennsylvania Quartet. Chris, Kathleen, Olivia, Shane

Short posting tonight. Stay tuned in the next couple of days. Anticipating a better internet connection to relate a more complete picture of the week's events.

Ciao

Into some serious music-making

I woke up to the first rainy day in a long time here in Italy. But that's ok because I knew it was going to be an inside day, rain or shine. I was almost glad for the rain.

It was a very busy day today for music. All three of my performance groups met. Luckily the easiest and the least challenging one met first. It gave me time to get the fingers limbered up, stretched and ready to play the tough stuff.

The next two sessions were a tremendous amount of work but I believe I made some real progress in my chamber music playing. We are getting to the point where we are turning notes into real music. There was a lot of extremely technical criticism that was offered by the coaches. I was worried that my lack of experience was holding back some of the very experienced players, including one of the ivy-league student musicians. But he was receiving almost as much advice as I was.

One of bit of advice that was offered was a change in some of the fingerings of a particularly tough passage that I just could not get to sound properly. Correct fingerings means literally choosing which fingers will play which notes and marking the musical score to insure it is played properly. It is important in the "ergonomics" of playing to enable a pianist to play musical phrases, bring out a melody, accent one note over another, or to position the hand to be in the right place on the keyboard at the right time in order to play very fast passages with the least amount of wrist or forearm motion. Changing the fingerings that I had practiced for a month meant relearning portions of the music. After our coaching session, there was little time for the pool today. It meant practicing to prepare the music for tomorrow's session. I may need to live with these changes another day or so before they set in.

During a free hour, I was invited by one of the Israeli participants, a clarinetist, to play an arrangement of Georg Fredrich Handel pieces for clarinet and piano. It was a good time. I video recorded a portion of the session and will post it here if I have any success downloading it onto YouTube.

From the nearly thirty works being prepared here, some will be chosen to be included in the public concert this Friday night. I was told by one participant today that every person who wants to perform will be included in the concert.

I am going to try to download the video I took. I have posted my blog tonight and I will return to it with the video when I manage to download it.

Good night for now.

P.S.  Here is the link to the hotel and center I am staying in.

http://www.hotelgrazia.it/

Another Great Day of Music

Today is Sunday and I awoke wondering how I would get to Mass if at all. The bottom line is - I celebrated Mass in Italian for the first time. Here's what happened. I made the walk from my hotel to the performance center which requires that I go past the small church in this village. At 8:30 as I was going by, the doors were already open for the 9:00am Mass. I was scheduled for a music rehearsal and coaching session at 9:00am. For me to change that would have required the directors to change the schedules of 25 other people as well. So I entered the church and was directed by a little old lady in the back pew to the "sagrestia". There was the pastor in his chinos and t-shirt and sandals. (Part of me is really glad to be outside of Rome.) He spoke only Italian. So we did the best to communicate. He invited me to concelebrate the 9:00am Mass with him. I explained that was not possible. He asked if I wanted to return later to celebrate Mass myself. I asked him about noon time. He stepped out of the sacristy and called an elderly gentleman, Vincenzo, to come in. He asked Vincenzo to return later to open the church, and set up the altar for me. I returned at noon and found everything ready, including the Italian sacramentary and lectionary. So I began the Mass in Italian. Knowing the words in two other languages was how I got through it. Signor Vincenzo stayed with me, did the readings, and served Mass. Just the two of us in church. Asked him aftewards, "Mio Italiano? Bene?" He just shrugged his shoulders, gestured with his hands and just said "Eh". So that was my first experience with Mass in Italian.

Now the music program.

I played chamber music with any kind of proficiency today for the first time. I have done a great deal of accompanying in the past, but that is about supporting a soloist. Chamber music means that you are part of an ensemble and you are not neccesarily subordinate to the other instruments. It requires a great deal of listening, non-verbal communicating, and understanding what everyone else is doing.

I am meeting some very interesting people. There are participants from USA, Netherlands, Great Britain, Italy, Germany, Israel. I also learned the the director, Mr. Aldo DeVero and his American wife have just purchased a home in Falmouth, Mass. He will be back in the USA to play some recitals in August. Aldo did the coaching today in my groups for the Mozart Trio, the Haydn Trio, and the Mozart 4 hands Sonata. Also mentioned to the Haydn Trio group that this was my first time playing chamber music. They said they would never have guessed that because they were very comfortable playing with me. But I know I still have a lot to learn.

I also have met a professor, David Yang, from the University of Pennsylvania who is coaching the strings. There is a string quartet made up of some his students who are here with us. The student violist is performing with me in the Mozart Trio. David Yang also directs a chamber music festival in Rockport, Mass every summer. I'm sure I will be back to hear him perform. He also told me he wants to expand the Rockport concerts by touring other areas in eastern Mass. There is a chance that St. John Neumann could be hosting a chamber music concert at some point in the future.

These chamber music festivals happen all over the world. I think I have discovered a new reason for traveling. As I am getting to know more of the participants, I am getting invitations to travel to play music. There are three paticipants from Israel. I had dinner with them this evening. We talked about my recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land. They want to come to visit and we will play chamber music and to see other places in Israel.

I've hesitated to get too many pictures of the groups playing. They are working hard and I don't want to disrupt their rehearsals by entering the room to photograph them. But I will see what I can come up with. I'd also like to video some my own sessions.

I complained about the internet to the owner of this facility today. He asked me how everything was going. "All is going well, but your internet system is very inconvenient", I said. We chatted a bit about the issue and all seems well tonight.

I have three coaching sessions tomorrow, and its midnight.

Buona notte a tutti.

Series of Mini-Postings

Hi everyone. The unreliability of the internet connection is maddening. So be prepared for a series of what I will call mini-postings. There may be 3 - 4 each day. Look in the column to the right under the images of the followers and you will more than one posting on the same date. Be sure to check them all.

By the way, if you have not registered as a follower, please do so.

We began our music sessions today. It is 3:00pm right now. I just returned from lunch with Anne, a lovely lady, retired physician from NYC, and a cellist. We sightread a number of easy pieces together this morning. She has been playing the cello for only 5 years since her retirement. For lunch we walked up the hill across the street from the performance center. The tomatoes are already being harvested here. It's the tomato flavor of New England in August. Delicious! Here is  photo of the view from the place.

From the terrace of "La Beccaccia" Restaurant. We crashed a wedding reception that was taking place, but they seated us anyway. 

This morning, I was not scheduled for a group, so I had the chance to practice for a while. I had access to three of the fours pianos here. After two hours of practice, Noe, a violinst approached me with some Beethoven Sonatas for Violin/Piano and invited me to play. So we picked out an easier one that neither of us had seen before and had a great time. We had to give up the space after 45 minutes. It was scheduled for a session for a string quartet.

Playing a Dvorak Quartet. This group invited me to play a Robert Schumann Quintet but the piano part was missing.

Now I'm going poolside for an hour. Then its back to the performance center for my session with another NYer, Robert Berman in the Mozart Sonata in Bflat for 4 hands. If you go to YouTube and search for this piece, you will find several performances of it.
Actually, here is a performance of it on harpsichord.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ79dUvhrXs

Have fun listening. I am having fun playing.

Be back sooner than later.
Ciao.