4th to 5th June 2015 Stockholm

While out in the streets large lorries pass at intervals each filled with a group of school leavers, shouting, blowing whistles,shouting, waving sprinkling pedestrians with beer, each with a loud rock music system. It is a rite of passage that has been developing since we first started going to Sweden.
Thursday
Early lunch at Stadtsmission then encountered festival director Peter Pontvik and a helper putting up signs for the 1200 event. Peter took Kristin aside to enquire anxiously about the ticketing problem. I said that the placement was an intelligence test that we had all failed.and helped to put up the posters.
The noon event was a record recital by Vassily Bolonassos who did the same thing on Swedish Radio for many years. We enjoyed the music. Kristin sayed for the 1400 talk; about music teaching methods in late 18th C Naples but as it was in Swedish I went off. Kristin reported that pupils were expected to be able to compose a two part fugue after three months.
he evening concert was an organ recital at the German Church designed to show off both the player and the instrument. We were warned by another festival friend that the organ was tuned to "mean temperament". As far as I can grasp this, notes with particular frequency ratios 1:2 ( octave) 2:3 etc. are agreeable. Regrettably when moving from octave to octave exact matches are impossible. 2:3 goes to 9:4 and so on. Thus compromises must be made. The mean tone compromises make for a hard sound on the organ so much of the playing was, I found, harsh. From where I sat the organ was to my right. However I was getting loud harsh tones from 45 degrees high left which was very disconcerting. Altogether a bit of a miss in concert terms. Even so the after concert gathering, a repeat of the previous night plus Helena was very nice.
Friday
Friday started as usual at Stadtsmission and then on to the Catheral hall for a harpsichord recital at midday. The player, Nicoleta Paraschivescu was pretty slightly tubby and when she sat down or moved on the stool it creaked a little and worried us. She played 18th C music by Marianna Martines  with works by Paisello for comparison. The Martines orks stood up well. Incidentally works with no known composer are now described as Anonyma to emphasise the skills of women in composing and the probability of ther names being suppressed.

Replica lithophone

At 1400 we had a lecture by Jean-Loup Ringt on Stone Age Music. Jean is a geologist and has made a study of Stone Age instruments; pointing out to begin with that one has great difficulty in recognising such instruments. HE showed a replica Paleolithic 4 hole flute from a swan bone and played it making a tune.
Even more impressive was a flint lithophone. See attached picture.
at 1800 in the Finnish church we heard Anglaskonket ( Angels Music) mainly Italian songs of hopeless love. Another excellent concert.
At 2030 We had Il Gardelino, a string and flute ensemble playing Handel, CPE Bach, Vivaldi etc. Another great concert.
There was another concert at 2300 but we were simple too tired to go so went home by the penultimate ferry to bed. A really great day.