Dénia Clàssics Festival hits the high note
From Beethoven to Big Band jazz, the Marina Alta music season swings you into spring and beats the winter blues. Time to chill out and let those endorphins flow
IT'S that time of year again: one of the Marina Alta's mostloved music festivals is back on the stage, set to warm up your chilly evenings until the spring sun bursts through the grey and sings away the long, gloomy butt-end of winter.
Dénia Clàssics is a musical purist's dream, blending the works of great master composers from the Middle Ages to the mid-20th century with bespoke pieces, an eclectic array of styles and instruments devoid of any piped backing tracks, brought to you by artists from all over the globe and from just down the road playing to a packed-out theatre. Beats post-Christmas TV trash and on-screen Brexit debates any day.
IT'S A BIGGIE, AND IT'S BRINGING YOU SUNSHINE...
Curtain-up is at 19.00 tonight (Friday, January 25) with the nattily-named Si-Fa-Sol Big Band – a word-play of three musical notes which, in valenciano, reads 'If-It's-Sunny' – booming out the best of giant jazz gigs from New Orleans of the Roarin' Twenties forward. And as we're nearly back in those Roarin' Twenties – just 11 months and six days to go – it's a great time to get into the spirit with a night of Swing, Ragtime, Blues, Dixieland and Boogie-Woogie...and to start a petition on Change.org to bring back the Charleston, flapperdresses, Sidecar cocktails and champagne with swizzle-sticks.
...AND THE REST
Tickets for all concerts can be bought an hour before the show on the door from €15 each, but you've plenty of time to plan, so why not grab a full festival pass for €45 now and just waltz into the venue every last Friday of the month without having to queue? Here's what else your season card buys you in 2019:
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22
Celebrate the timeless achievements of Austrian genius Mozart with a tour through his Wolferi Suite, Haffner Serenade and Papageno Suite at the hands of the Salzburg Duo, made up of pianist Alexander Preda and cellist Yvonne Timoianu. Grave, serious and dramatic, what came out of this troubled artist's fingers is, quite literally, music to our ears.
FRIDAY, MARCH 29
Light-and-lifting springtime notes, explosive dénouements and impossibly-fast virtuoso sees Brexit Night reach a crescendo as Claudio Carbó tries to take your mind off political wrangling, his piano prowess promising to be even more dramatic than Theresa May's giant scissors snipping their way through the Channel. Switch off the telly and tune into the best of Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, Granados, and one of Mallorca's most famous offpeak tourists Frédéric Chopin who, along with novelist George Sands, knew what it felt like shivering on the Med at this time of year without a winter heating allowance.
FRIDAY, APRIL 26
Stringing you along into spring 'with pleasure' and offering the best notes to come out of Vienna in the last 200 years, the A Piacere show by the Corda Quartet will make you wonder if there's anything a violin in the right hands can't do – right down to making tea and toast and washing up afterwards. A fiddly treat of Haydn, Strauss, Verdi and Mozart hits the stage at the expert hands of Ana Requena, Miguel Ángel López, Yolanda Bueso and Miguel Falomir to round off the 2019 classical festival – and, if you've experienced the explosive magic of a Viennese-style New Year concert either here or in the Austrian capital, you're sure to be gagging for more, but now you won't have to wait until the dawn of 2020 for your fix.
All concerts start at 19.00 at Dénia Social Centre and tickets can be purchsed by emailing or phoning Ilse Kübler of Konzertfreunde (96 578 88 40 or info@konzertfreunde.com), or from the Pro-Akustik shop on the C/ Diana from 09.00 to 14.00, Monday to Friday.