International Ramblings: Ecuador, England

It's been since late summer that I blogged, mainly because of lots of travel.  Let's catch up a bit. 

While on a summer hiking trip to the Canadian Rockies and the Galapagos, I had a chance to spend a few days in Quito, the high-elevation (9000 foot) capital of Ecuador. It's well worth a visit for its fascinating mixed cultures of Spain and indigina peoples, as well as the steeply sloped and well-preserved colonial heart of the city.

Quito is replete with fantastically baroque gilded churches put up by the Jesuits and others, unfortunately at the expense of the locals that they conquered. 

In early November I ventured to northern England to play in concerts of the European Doctors' Orchestra, an engaging and talented group of amateurs. We played music of Ravel, Gershwin, and Copland in the uber-modern Newcastle Glasshouse International Centre for Music, perched like spaceship above the River Tyne. 

Newcastle is a nice example of how declining industrial cities can revive themselves with new architecture, diverse tech industries, and infrastructure improvements (subway, markets) that fuse the old and new. On the same trip I visited Durham (a quaint university town with a great Romanesque/Gothic cathedral built not long after the Norman conquest) and the big country estate at Chatsworth House, home of the Cavendish family. Several Cavendish sons were tutored by Tomas Hobbes and several became noted scholars, particularly Henry, who was among those who discovered hydrogen and carbon dioxide in the early 1800s. The estate is monstrously big, and the house rather rambling. I was there during the annal Christmas display where sadly mediocre Christmas decorations  obscured the excellent artwork that hung on the walls, and the halls were clogged by selfie-seeking local tourists. 

Nearby, the rusting-but-reviving city of Leeds is surrounded by atmospheric, abandoned monasteries and churches, like Kirkstall Abbey. 

As I wandered around, I thought "this would have been a great subject for romantic or impressionist painters". Well, here you go, courtesy of JMW Turner in 1799:

In Leeds I saw a good chamber recital in the "Leeds Conservatoire". This teaching  institution is a good example of how a midsized, reviving industrial city can host excellent musical events (eg pianist Benjamin Grosvenor later this year). I saw the young Trio Gaspard perform works that explored the musical connection between Budapest and Vienna, including the Brahms trio in C major op. 87, Liszt's own arrangement of his Hungarian Rhapsody no. 9, and the Trio Concertante, a striking 1928 work by Hungarian composer László Lajtha  (1892-1963), a composer unknown to me. He deserves to be better known alongside his contemporary (and academic collaborator) Bartók. This piano trio featured extended virtuosic solo riffs for each of the three players within each movement, so was structured like a baroque concerto grosso. All of the performed works had elements of Hungarian dance rhythms or tunes, and made for fascinating comparison. Some non-musical observations included the violinist Jonian Kadesha playing without shoes (at least there were black socks)--this was a first for me in concerts. Also, he broke his E string late in the Lajtha trio and somehow playing the rest of the piece with only 3 of the 4 strings, a virtuosic and poised effort!

Next time: an update on theater and music in New York City.