Tao

I like Poland and was looking forward to the concert in Warsaw, which I’ve not visited before. So was a bit disconcerted to find that it had been voted the ugliest city in Europe by TripAdviser. It is indeed a rather unlovely city but after a short readup on the history of the place one can understand why. Completely razed to the ground in 1944 by order of Hitler and then finished off by the Russians. Who then helped to rebuild some of it under the communist regime using the best of Soviet architecture. Remarkably, the old town center, which was completely ignored by the Soviet era reconstruction, was rebuilt to the original photographs and drawings by private donations and nowadays looks like “the real thing”.
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Tonights concert is in the prestigious Berlin Philarmonie, in the Kammermusiksaal, which is normally used for chamber orchestras and is in the round, meaning the audience is sitting all around. It’s not particularly designed for a stage performance, more for an ensemble to be listened to and as such the acoustics of the hall are excellent, which, paradoxically, poses a problem. Deva and Miten require a neutral acoustic in a hall, so that they can create their sound without the hall effecting it, but in this case the very layout has an effect. We haul up their own Syrincs PA that we use for the voice workshops, but that just makes things worse. It creates a rather tense sound check and, as oftens happens, an inspired concert!
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