A bit of culture!

Last night we went to a concert at the Teatro Afundación in the centre of Vigo. It used to be called the Fundación Caixa Galicia before the banks amalgamated or were taken over or for some other reason changed their name. I still find it odd that a concert venue is run by a bank. But then, if you buy tickets for other events - outdoor concerts in the Castrelos Park or even the Springsteen concert we went to outside Santiago some years ago - you often have to collect your tickets from the bank. 

So off we went to hear a little Ravel, a little Fauré, a little Poulenc and, in the second half, quite a lot of Beethoven. All very good. Now, they say that you can tell you are growing older when the policemen start to look young. Well, what about conductors? Our conductor last night, a Russian judging by his name, looked about twelve. Okay, I exaggerate! Presumably he must be in his twenties at least or he would bit have completed his studies but I swear he did not look a day over eighteen. 

There he was, bouncing about on his podium, all sweeping gestures and waving his overlong hair around. The orchestra, the Real Filharmonía de Galicia, usually has its own conductor, an Englishman, so I presume the Russian juvenile was a guest conductor. I have often wondered how one becomes a conductor. As with musicians, it must be quite a precarious existence until you have made a name for yourself or become part of an established orchestra. And even then, what an odd life: going out to work in the evening and then, presumably, needing to wind down after the performance before being able to go off to bed. A different kind of shift work, but at least doing something you feel a passion for. 

We booked our seats at the last minute. After all, we only arrived late on Monday afternoon and then more or less wrote off Tuesday as the whole place closed down. Consequently, we had to take the only seats available, in the main auditorium, the "patio de butacas". (Somehow the "patio of armchairs" sounds much more grand than the "stalls".) Our tickets warned that we had "visibilidad limitada". Indeed, right at the front and off to one side, where about a quarter of the stage is cut off from view. Still we got a good look at the musicians' shiny shoes. And the music was good. 

There were, in fact, plenty of empty seats around the concert hall. We worked out some time ago that this is because associations and companies block-book banks of seats and then only occupy them occasionally. Such a waste! There should be a way of indicating, maybe on the day of he concert itself, which seats will not be occupied so that people in "visibilidad limitada" seats and impoverished music students can go and make use of them. 

If only the world were so simple! And so organised!