At the Concert

Antigua, 14 February 2005

There is an Arts Festival taking place in Antigua these days: concerts, ballet, theatre, opera (they’re giving Tosca).  Today, at twelve, there was a piano recital in the ruins of San Jose el Viejo.  A young Serb pianist, Misha Dacic, playing Scarlatti, Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninoff.  I didn’t get a very good seat.  Actually, all I could see for the very first part of the recital were two disembodied, white hands on the keyboard and the flash of a black, pageboy-cut mane.  Then when the two seats ahead of me filled up, nothing at all.  But was he shaking that keyboard, and the whole piano as well !  A little too much for my taste.  Or perhaps was it the echo under San Jose’s baroque vaults.  He seemed embarrassed by the applauds, waving them off with his hands instead of bowing, disappearing backstage, apparently impatient for them to be over.  Was he arrogant, cocky, shy or all of the above ?  Then he charmingly addressed the audience in impeccable, unaccented Spanish.  Where had he picked that up?  It said in the program that he had lived and studied in Miami for the last two years, in Miami perhaps.  Things perked up when he attacked the Rachmaninoff, he was in his element at last.  Even the doves seemed to appreciate.  One in particular flew in, perched on a cornice, started to coo totally off key, then proceeded to fly, flapping and cooing even louder, into one of the square niches from which the retable might once have been bolted.  I suspected that the rest of the dove family was nestled in there, since they joined their voices to hers.

I can’t say it was a great concert but it certainly had ambiance…