Well, not exactly, of course.
The New York Times just published a travel article, “The Castles of Moravia”, by Evan Rail. It is about wine-tasting through Moravia, in the Czech Republic, and it did include a stop in Kromeriz, the site and source of the wonderful music from the late 1600s that we performed in our concert last week, La Battalia! 17th-century Battle Music. The article, however, is about wine, architecture and paintings, not music.
Here is a link to the article, although you may require a log-in account at the New York Times to read it. Here are a couple of excerpts:
…most impressive was the building itself, which dominated the landscape. The park outside — effectively the former bishop’s backyard — contained rivers and bridges, aviaries and sculptured hedges. I thought about how lonely it would feel to live alone in such a vast space, and how deafeningly silent it would be for just a single resident.
…From the distance, we admired the prince-bishop’s castle… Fading sunlight glimmered in gold bursts on the windows of the castle facade; above, a copper-green cupola soared high above the town.
Such a magnificent sight, I realized, would be lost on someone inside the castle itself, while his own panorama would be that of the much smaller houses of much poorer people. And while we would probably never own a castle, and might never know what it means to sleep in a palace, or to possess a collection of priceless artworks, that seemed like a fair trade for those of us with simpler lives.
What we at the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra know, and you do to if you were at our concert last week, is that the bishop filled his palace and court with musicians and vibrant, innovative music. We hope you enjoyed hearing some of it.
