<<  -- 4 --  Keith Bramich    AN AFTER-SUN EXPERIENCE

Most importantly though, she, again like the Slovene Octet, was able to conjure some of that essential yet undefinable extra ingredient -- something mesmeric, transcendental and persuasive -- that enabled the audience to leave behind the imperfections of the present, both inside and outside of the Rector's Palace Atrium (dating from the Renaissance, a grand staircase leads up behind the performing area to a balcony, and to the open sky above), and to concentrate only on the depths of the music.

Hence we were able to ignore those three or four small fingering slips in the Tchaikovsky, the cries of swallows (they seem to swoop progressively lower and lower over Dubrovnik's medieval walled city during each summer evening), the sounds of tourists, restaurants, nocturnal shopping and a nearby jazz concert, and the inexplicable setting up of an HRT (Croatian Radio and Television) TV camera and its tripod amongst the audience during Ayako Uehara's Mozart.

So against all odds, and in a world full of imperfections, the incredible power of music and its interpreters scores another success. Dubrovnik knows all about disturbances on a far greater and tragic scale -- the festival was able, somehow, and quite amazingly, to continue even when under siege by the Serbs during the summer of 1992. Now that Croatia is safe again, the tourists and festivalgoers have returned in their thousands, and from what I experienced at the 2003 Festival, the future looks very bright.