Spain, 2001

Palau de la Musica Catalana

By luck, this building happened to be just down the street from us on Sant Pere mes baix. Because of the beauty of the exterior, we took an architectural and historical tour of the building. The inside is even more stunning than the outside, and we enjoyed it so much that we purchased tickets to see a performance later that week.

Pictures were not allowed, so I need to sneak the ones that I got. I couldn't use a flash, so all of the images were taken with available light. In some cases, that lead to slightly blurry images, but even in those images, you can see how amazing this building is.

The performance we saw was a series of violin and piano duets. The violinist was a young Dutch man by the name of Nicolaj Znaider. The pianist was an older, more experienced Russian named Semion Balshem. They were amazing to watch, and to add to the excitement, Balshem's page turner kept making mistakes. Sometimes she should turn the pages too soon, other times too late. Still other times, she would turn more than one page at a time. In all cases, Balshem had to quickly take his hand off the piano keyboard, flip the pages to where they needed to be, and continue playing. Concerts are not usually spectator sports, but this little bit of drama made it feel like one. My heart was in my throat thinking the pianist was going to miss a cue or play the wrong note. Surprisingly, he was very calm about it, telling the woman that it was ok (she was very embarrassed, you could tell).

To learn more about the building, you can visit their website at http:/www.palaumusica.org/

Palau exterior.	Palau intermission room.	Main hall.	Column light detail.	Hallway to balcony.	Stained glass skylight
Skylight over the stage.	Detail of stage back wall.	View of balcony from stage.