Published in Ultima Hora, 14 Sep 2017

PATRICK

by Emili Gené Vila

(English translation by Nicole.)

I remember him playing the double bass or an organ, conducting a chamber orchestra he himself had created, conducting a choir, or directing the Music Festival, a miracle that remains very much alive, eager to recall the enthusiasm with which Patrick turned Deià into a musical world reference. There were moving speeches to remember Patrick Meadows (Susanne Bradbury, an old friend of those heroic and wonderful times, was unable to finish her reading). There were his son, his friends, the owners of Son Marroig, the conductor Misha Rachelevsky — and Stephanie Shepard, present as always. It was an extraordinary concert, outside the original program of the Festival, that served to bid farewell to Patrick with the sadness of the loss (Schnauber’s piece and the elegy in the encore), but also with the elusive joy of music. The Kremlin Chamber Orchestra interpreted some of Patrick’s favourite pieces. In the first half we heard a transfigured Night that lifted the spirit of everyone present. Memorable, as was Tchaikovsky’s Serenade: two pieces that lead the orchestra to its full expression — a young orchestra that sounded as though it was composed only of masters. The concert was excellent in every way: precision, style, pure rhythm and vitality, as well as dynamic, subtle and conclusive in Piazzola’s Libertango — the conductor’s last present to us in the second encore. Vigour and enthusiasm: I can’t think of a better setting to pay tribute to that restless pioneer we all owe so much to.