Over the weekend we rode out the rest of the Budapest heat wave in an idyllic town (village? jury’s out.) in Slovenia, where my old friend, conductor Steven Loy has lived for the past ten years. It’s a heavenly place, particularly after two 100-degree weeks in one of Budapest’s more polluted and noisy districts.
Not only that, but Steven and Slovene composer Urška Pompe have a delightful daughter just about Philo’s age, and it was great to see them become friends.
This town we were in is about forty minutes north of the capital city Ljubljana at the edge of the mountains and near much natural splendor, such as Lake Bled.
Ljubljana itself is a very charming city I would like to see more of. I had an unexpected opportunity to walk around for about two hours…
…because we stayed an extra day so that I could go see Steven conduct a concert of new music presented by the new music ensemble MD7. This is an interesting ensemble indeed, founded by Slovene composer Pavel Mihelčič. They only play music written expressly for them, and the instrumentation is as follows: flute, clarinet, trombone, percussion, piano, viola, cello. It’s actually a pretty good combination. A little weird, but not bad. I wonder about the trombone, but it worked well in the pieces on this concert. Highlights were “Pas de Sept - Hommage à Stravinsky” by Belarus composer Dmitri Lybin and particularly for me, “The Team from the Flower Shop” by Slovene composer David Beovič.
