Lunch Concert Review: Stabat Mater in Leuven

We went for a lunch concert in Leuven to listen to the Stabat Mater of Domenico Scarlatti this week. This concert is part of a yearly summer festival that is in its 25th edition this year. The concerts are short and super cheap at 8 euro per ticket. The downside is that there are no fixed seats and as we arrived relatively late we ended up on the second floor in what is called ‘de engelenbak’ in Dutch. The concert was sold out and it was hot so high up in the building. We were quite far away from the stage so visibility was compromised, also by the fact that the seats are packed together very close in 2 directions. If you don’t like being close to a strange neighbour then this is not a place to be sitting. I had to also move my head to look past the person sitting in front of me to get a glimpse of what was happening on stage. Luckily the concert was only 40′ so we only had to sit in this cramped space for a short while. The concert was very good however. Excellent singers and musicians and the piece itself was a discovery. I will look it up to get a CD of a good performance.