Culture In Pienza-May 2016

Friends often ask us, what do you do for culture in a town of 2,000 people in rural Tuscany?

One could easily make the argument, with scenery like this, who needs culture?








But actually, there's quite a bit available.  Pienza has a Spring Chamber Music Festival...which ended just before we got there this April.  The town of Torrita di Siena, a half hour's drive away, hosts a European Blues Festival each summer.  And a little bar in the town of Montisi manages to attract rock bands for jam sessions several weekends a month.  None of these events was accessible to us, but it turns out what was accessible was pretty good.

The nearby town of Montepulciano has tucked away just off the main piazza Plazzo Ricci, which houses a music school for a German University...Hochschule für Musik Detmold.

Each week, students from the school perform..

This is not La Scala or the Met.  There is no set, no microphones, no orchestra, the performance shot with and iPad.  These are students...but all things taken into account...they acquit themselves quite nicely.

A few days later, with the sun setting over the Val di Chiana, we returned to Palazzo Ricci for another concert...this one a brass orchestra composed completely of French horns playing Mozart.

But it was not just Palazzo Ricci that provided music.  At Fonte Bertusi, a small agriturismo a short walk from Pienza, there was Spring Music Week.

The performers here were students as well, just graduated from a music school in Siena.

The group was Trio Swann.  They performed some Franz Schubert in the intimate setting of a living room...