June Begins in the Phantom Recital Hall

The opening of June is unseasonably cool, rainy, and generally dreary and depressing, but we're cheering ourselves up with some music. A baroque ensemble is performing at the music school, doing some interesting stuff....



This is Biagio Marini's "Sonata in Ecco con Tre Violini," and is one of the most innovative and strange works from the early 17th century. It calls for one violinist to be on stage, visible to the audience, and two others to be offstage in different positions in the concert hall, out of the audience's view. Audiences then get the effect of the violinist onstage doing a riff, and then having it seemingly echoed from different parts of the room. The effect is certainly surreal, if not downright ghostly. An imaginative person could have fun imagining who was offstage with a violin. The Phantom of the Opera? Dr. Mirakle? Satan?

(I was lucky enough to be at a live performance of this once, years ago; it's best when experienced live. Youtube is an OK substitute, but something is definitely lost in a simple recording.)

Shall we go somewhere for a glass of wine afterward?