Where heaven is found in the Shia mountains

Daddy MonkeyPie and I set out to replenish our culture metre which has been sinking a little low lately. Cyprus hardly ever has live music let alone classical music of any reasonable repute. It does, however, have very good bouzouki and classical guitar which I personally love as it reminds me of being little and listening to my grandfather play spanish pieces in the cypriot sunsets over long honey coloured summers.

Schubert and Neilson open air concert in ancient Olive grove! Promised the ad in the paper. Picturing a cellist up a gnarled old tree with a violinist squawking away in a neighbouring branch, i had to go. If anything, to dispell the image but also to prove that perhaps Cyprus does have a little musical culture. Even though the only famed musicians currently include George Michael and Peter Andre so all a little suspect really. The directions we were given by the woman in charge of distributing the tickets (a sort of New Age type, looking distractedly at your aura while you try to hand over the money). "It's very simple, it's the 11th exit off the motorway and you turn right until you see lots of cars."
We duly headed out for the 11th exit with my Greek teacher and her children in tow looking for lots of cars.
No olive trees in sight..

10 minutes later. Still no olive trees.

We stop at a house in the foothills to ask for directions to Caro's house (this is how addresses are done- there's no street names or house numbers, it's just Caro's house, in the olive grove, right after the motorway junction). The inhabitants turn out to be German but they still know exactly where his house is which surprises me as German's tend to require precise timekeeping and accurate, consistent labels. Maybe they've lived in Cyprus too long.

5 minutes later, lots of cars.

Hurrah! And, sure enough, olive trees (shia is pine country, it's surprising to see olive trees).. lots of well heeled cypriots milling about and the setting couldn't have been more misleading.
Yes, olive trees but this garden is a landscape architect's wetdream. Echoes of Mies van de Rohe in the rectangular and very linear small house and in the shallow quadrilateral pools of water and channels running throughout the plot. Delineating garden 'zones' with a beautiful candle lit island in the middle of the largest pool piled high with squishy cushions and accessed by smooth flat stepping stones. The olive grove after the house falls away sharply and the architect made the most of the drop to build an eternity pool at the edge so you feel like your bathing in the view of the mountains commanding the sight of the valleys below.

The octet were placed on a podium before the pool, with the uplighting creating a soft and dreamlike glow. The setting was beautiful but completely wrong for nielson and then the schubert over long and not as exquisite as it can be. A response to beethoven's 7th, the piece had 6 movents and where the 2nd movement let the violins be melancholy and in part, achingly beautiful, the other movements weren't successful. Fortunately they ended on a rondo, waking up the dozy audience and preparing them for their cheese and wine reward.

The best bit of the night was definitely seeing the house and gleaning ideas for what I'd do if I were to move to Cyprus later on. The music was disappointing but then being brought up on concerts and chamber orchestras in london, vienna and paris, moving in musical circles where you listen to the musician's musician inevitably makes you a snob as it conditions you to appreciate the very best and be devastatingly critical of the so-so.

Perhaps Cyprus isn't the place to go for musical education but the olive groves are beautiful.