Vivaldi re-imagined

I thought my night's sleep was rather disturbed, but I slept for seven and a half hours out of the nine that I was in bed. It was half past eight when I surfaced, thankful I didn't have to rush to get to an early service. A leisurely drive across town to St German's for the eleven o'clock Mass with a congregation of three dozen and a full team of servers young and old, working beautifully together and four singers too. 

There was a young man in the congregation who's been attending as part of his wedding preparation. We chatted over coffee, and he told me he was a maxilio-facial surgeon. He lives in St Mellon's but had already driven to the hospital in Merthyr Tydfil earlier this morning, to oversee an operation under anaesthetic on a small child, before coming to church. It's his weekend to be consultant on call apparently. He told me that he was a cricketer and was often out playing on Llandaff Fields in an evening match. I wonder if we'll see each other when I'm out walking one of these days?

Traffic was slow on the home run so it took twenty minutes rather than fifteen. With the Tafwyl Welsh pop and folk festival on this weekend, there would be more cars coming into town. Lunch was ready to eat when I arrived, salmon and veg as usual on a Sunday followed by seasonal ripe black cherries and grapes. 

Afterwards Clare went off to town to catch the last hour of Tafwyl performances, while I slept deeply in the chair for more than an hour. Before I went for a walk I inspected the kidney bean plants in the garden and picked a five more which had grown long and big enough to eat since yesterday With all the rain this week the plants have yielded a fresh crop of this amount day after day, so we have lots more in the fridge to eat, and Clare has already frozen three quarters of a pound of them for later. Our very own five a day!  

I walked in the park for a couple of hours enjoying the sun, then returned in time for supper with Clare. We watched this evening's BBC Promenade concert, featuring a new interpretation of Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons' devised by Finnish violinist/conductor Pekka Kuusisto. He led the orchestra playing the violin  and duetted with a Swedish virtuoso cittern player Ale Carr, improvising using folk melodies in interludes between movements. In some sections they were joined by the lead 'cellist and violinist. It was amazing how well integrated these improvisations were, and how they added to the interpretation of the whole concerto in terms of folk dance energies and rhythms. The Bremen Chamber Philharmonic orchestra that played with such vital energy and cohesion worked perfectly with the soloists in what was effectively an experimental interpretation of Vivaldi's score. A wonderful innovation. Amazing music.