Saturday, April 13th, was one of our longest days in Switzerland. Our wake-up call today was quite jostling, especially after such a long day of rehearsal and touring yesterday. Despite this, we left the warmth of the hotel already dressed in our choir attire (for the most part) a little before 8:00 after a light breakfast of more croissants and extra strong coffee.
The ride to Lucerne, as told by our tour guide, takes about an hour, but we made good time and arrived around around 8:45. Lucerne is located in the heart of Switzerland and is situated on a lake with an extremely long German name: “Vierwaldstätter See.” When we began our tour, temperatures were near freezing, but it was nice to get a taste of the city before the tourism that this particular city is so well known for began to pick up. Some of the tour highlights include a huge cliff façade with a large lion carved into it that symbolized the Swiss soldiers that died during the French Revolution, as well as a large farmer’s market that was going on. Not only was this particularly neat to see what how the average people who lived around the area went about their days, but also because it made for some cool photos.
After a two-hour guided tour that took us around the city, over several beautiful bridges, and a gorgeous Baroque-style, Jesuit Cathedral, we were given a little bit of free time to grab a bite to eat before our next plan on the itinerary: the Rosengart Museum. Containing work from some of the most influential artists of the impressionist and pre-modern era, this collection allowed us to see beautiful paintings and sketches from Paul Klee, Claude Monet, Marc Chagall, and even Pablo Picasso. The stunning, blurry abstractions of landscapes from Monet were hung in the direct vicinity of the chaotic, cubist portraits that Picasso was so well-known for. The museum was beautifully curated.
The collection is owned by Angela Rosengart, a prolific art collector who knew many artists of the contemporary age personally. Not only did she meet and talk with artists like the aforementioned few, but she also served as one of Picasso’s muses whom he often enjoyed painting. Picasso’s portraits of Rosengart are in her museum; she was wearing the same necklace as she did in the portrait. Fortunately for us, Frau Rosengart was present at the museum today and we were able to sing a hymn for her. A few of us even talked with her briefly about how she came about these many fine works which she displays today. When speaking of Picasso’s persona, she said that “Picasso was not just a person, he was more like ten of them.” I personally was really inspired by her life and mission, and I’m so grateful that we were able to show her our gratitude with a song.
After seeing the collection, we were given about an hour of free time before our rehearsal for Palm Sunday mass at St. Leodegar Cathedral. We muscled through some last minute to our changes to our repertoire as we prepared to share our talents with a new group of people. The mass was entirely in German, but a couple of other kids and I had fun trying to guess which part of the mass we were listening to purely from the extremely little German we know and the inflection of the priests voice. We got lost somewhere during the Passion of Christ. After a successful service and a long day, we boarded the bus to head home from Lucerne at around 6:30. Today was certainly a long day, and a long night’s rest will certainly be needed to compensate this. However, we hope for another successful performance tomorrow. –Luc Grenier, Class of 2019
BC High Concert Choir 