On Thursday, I attended a wonderful duo piano concert performed by the husband/wife team Liuben Dimitrov and Aglika Genova at the Schwetzingen Festspiele. They performed a beautiful program of Ravel (Daphnis et Chloé), Liszt (Variations on Mozart's Don Giovanni), Bernstein (excerpts from West Side Story), and Gershwin (excerpts from Porgy and Bess) with ease, unbelievable precision, and convincing interpretation. The audience (myself included) loved them and enthusiastically rewarded them with what I call the European Uni-Clap (the whole audience magically morphs from chaotic individual clapping to a unified rhythmic clapping... this seems to only happen in Europe), thereby squeezing 3 encores out of this pair.
The concert took place at the Schwetzingen Castle, a famous palace which "was the summer residence of the Electors Palatine Karl III Philip and Charles Theodore, and is most notable for its spacious and ornate gardens. Prior to the concert, I walked through the castle gardens. WOW. Gorgeous. And huge. Flowers and plants and trees and birds from around the world... Winding rivers and beautiful ponds and small lakes... Decorative buildings erected in the style of buildings from around the world.
Evening at Schwetzingen Festspiele
