Kukerski karnival: Healthy Weekend Craziness in Pernik

 Hot Wine and Kebapche served here

Above: More or less authentic Bulgarian 'kukeri' get ready for action

Above: Some "alternative" masquerading 

 

Group from Palestine heads to the Mask Workshop

Group from the Basque Country almost makes it back to the hotel

Until today, I hadn’t been to the center of the western Bulgarian city of Pernik. I’ve always thought of it as a place you drive around on your way to Blagoevgrad from Sofia. After arriving in Bulgaria, the first thing I was told about the citizens of Pernik was that they are Bulgaria’s most obnoxious drivers (“beware of cars with “PK” license plates,” I was told). That was long before I learned that ‘pretsakvane’ – getting cut off or cheated out of what you think is rightfully yours, even if it’s a piece of the road) – is a national pastime here, so commonplace that if you take things (and yourself) too seriously, ‘shte poludeesh.’ Going crazy – another national pastime.

A positive example of 'poludyavane' is the carnival craziness in Pernik this weekend, as the city hosts the 20th edition of its justly-renowned Surva International Festival of Masquerade Games. According to Bulgarian traditions dating back to pagan times and still practiced today, ‘Survakari’ are those who on January 1 perform a special blessing to bring luck and health into each home, while “Kukeri” are unmarried men who masquerade through their towns on specific celebration days early in the year in order to ward off evil spirits. This description from the festival website captures some of the flavor of the ‘kuker’ rituals:

The dance of the masked men [‘kukeri’] is a mystic unity of rhythm, sound, and color. They move in a special step. Wearing impressive masks and unique costumes they fill the air of the villages with the sounds of hundreds of bells and whispered blessings wishes for prosperity. The mask, according to folklore beliefs, protects from the harmful influence of impure powers.

So this afternoon I braved the cold and joined the crowd in the Pernik city square, where masquerading groups of from all over Bulgaria and abroad (I personally witnessed groups from Slovenia, Palestine, and Basque) offered an amazing array of inspired interpretations – from authentic regional folkiness to contemporary creative craziness – of the ‘kuker’ and related folk traditions. In their broad inclusiveness, the membership of most groups reflected the festival’s laudably liberal policy on this point: “the minimum requirement for participation is having the willingness to take part.” As the groups paraded – jumping, dancing, resting a bit, jumping some more – toward the competition stage, they created a chaotic carnival in sound: a sustained clanging cacophony of not hundreds, but thousands of metal bells. This was duende-infused craziness to be sure.

Marketing Mozart: Wolfy at 255

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – or “Wolfy,” as his facebook friends call him, no doubt taking their cue from the Peter Shaffer play and subsequent Milos Forman film Amadeus – was born in Salzburg, Austria, on this day 255 years ago. Mozart is the immortal master of melody who brought what we now call “the Classical Style” to what many of those who believe in absolutes would consider to be “absolute perfection.” But it’s also a well-worn paradox that, the more celebrated the person, the more unreliable are the commonly-repeated “facts” about him.

The circumstances surrounding Mozart’s early death form a prime example. Was he a victim of chronic kidney disease or of poisoning at the hand of a jealous colleague? Given the scant available evidence, both are possibilities, but the “Salieri poisoned Mozart” thesis is the one that captures the imagination. While ultimately unprovable, the idea that Mozart was murdered simply makes for better drama. The prolific Russian writer Alexander Pushkin and composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who based his opera Mozart and Salieri on Pushkin’s play, recognized the dramatic potential of the story. So did Shaffer and Forman, who re-packaged it for modern consumption in Amadeus [watch trailer here]. 

Horsing Around: Tom Hulce as Mozart in Amadeus

J. Peter Brown, one of my esteemed music history professors at IU Bloomington, points out in an online essay that "the film translated what could be accepted as compelling drama into what for many viewers became the time, place, and characters of history. The caveats published with the stage play were never imprinted on celluloid; [in the film,] fiction was never segregated from truth…" But he also cautions that Mozart’s letters and other primary sources “cannot be taken as "just the facts," for nearly every writer of letters and memoirs, as well as the purveyors of rumors, had his own agendas and beliefs. It is from the documents themselves and their interpretation that the Mozartean mythologies flourished.” Brown concludes that the Shaffer/Forman character of Salieri, though drawn with a generous supply of “fictional ornament,” was correct in his summation that “the phenomenon of Mozart transcends explanation.”

F. Murray Abraham as Salieri

Nowhere is the Mozart Phenomenon more ubiquitously present – and exploited – than in his native Salzburg. Plaques and statues in his honor can be seen throughout the city, and the priciest concerts at the prestigious Salzburg Festival (held each August) are the Mozart opera performances at the Haus fur Mozart. Competing firms use his image and mystique to sell their amaretto confections. In Salzburg everyone can get a piece of Mozart – or hear a piece by Mozart, live or recorded, practically 24/7.

One of the Mozart works you are likely to hear in Salzburg – or anywhere that Mozart is performed – is his enigmatic Symphony No. 40 in g minor. [Listen to the first movement here.] About it Brown writes, “Although Mozart's music is often recognized as universal, [this symphony] has received varying interpretations of its essential meaning.” Mozart’s 40^th was the reason that Nicholas Harnoncourt, now recognized as one of the world’s great conductors, picked up the baton in the first place. As a young cellist in the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, he was dissatisfied with light-hearted interpretations of the G minor symphony. “I was sure that we were doing everything wrong.” After one such performance he decided that “I don’t want to ever play it again in that way, and the next morning I went to the director of the orchestra and said I quit the orchestra…Mozart changed my life.”

"Mozart is the greatest composer of all. Beethoven created his music, but the music of Mozart is of such purity and beauty that one feels he merely found it — that it has always existed as part of the inner beauty of the universe waiting to be revealed." - Albert Einstein

"If Mozart were around now he would write a killer rock song." - Vanessa Carlton

More quotations on Mozart here.

 

Music to Die For, Soviet Style

In her web profile, an accomplished American string player has described her major field of study at the Juilliard School as “Soviet Style Butt Kickings.”  The humor of this is somewhat displaced by the probability that her teacher at the Yard is an émigré from the former USSR who uses an aggressive pedagogical approach, the kind that uses fear as a twisted inspirational tool. The kind of approach that supposedly hones your survival skills in a “safe environment,” allowing you to successfully “take on the world” – but only if you’ve survived the classroom skirmishes without mortal wounds to your self-confidence. 

The above has nothing to do with my own experience in Bloomington as a chamber music student of the wonderful Rostislav Dubinsky, who immigrated to the US in the mid-1970s, and who was always kind and encouraging, even when we were in need of a figurative butt-kicking! He had then (1989) just published his book Stormy Applause: Making Music in a Worker's State. Recalling his post-war tours with the Moscow-based Borodin Quartet, Dubinsky told us once that “Bulgaria was like America for us.”  Of course he was referring to a sense of ‘Western’ freedom, not to the oppression offered by ‘Stalinskiya tip rukovoditeli,’ political or professional leaders of the “Stalin type,” who to this day – whether it’s in America, Bulgaria, or somewhere else – think that intimidation gets the best results. Among musicians it’s conductors who seem to favor this MO.

During a break at yesterday’s quartet rehearsal, we were looking at a little pamphlet on the enjoyment of classical music published in Bulgaria ‘po vreme na Komunism.’  In it was the famous story of Lenin listening to a Beethoven piano sonata, complete with a portrait of the leader in rapt concentration on the music and the following quotation:

"I know nothing more beautiful than the "Appassionata" and I could listen to it every day. Wonderful, immortal music. I always think, with perhaps a naive, childish pride, how can man create such wonders?" [Listen to Beethoven's "Appassionata" Sonata here.]

 Even in Bulgaria, so long under the Soviet shadow, it is well known that Lenin's thoughts on the "Appassionata" did not stop here. Our first violinist easily recalled the rest from memory:

 ". . . but I cannot listen to music too often. It affects my nerves and makes me want to say sweet nothings and stroke the heads of men who live in a dirty hell and can still create such beauty. But these days you can't go around stroking people's heads lest your hand be bitten off. You have to smash them over the head—smash them without mercy—even though in theory we are against every form of oppression of mankind . . . ours is a hellish task." 

There it is: a classic model for Soviet-Style Butt-Kicking Musicians. This English translation of Lenin's words in taken from a January 1949 Time magazine article on the celebrations of the 25^th anniversary of Lenin’s death (January 21, 1924).

 

Stalin also had a favorite piano piece, and a favorite pianist. When he died on March 5, 1953, he is said to have been listening to the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major as performed by Maria Yudina. Her recording of this work had been made ten years earlier at Stalin’s request, with a single copy pressed for his personal use. When he later sent her a generous fee, she wrote him a thank-you letter that could have been her death-sentence. Read the astonishing story in the youtube description when you listen to Yudina play Mozart for Stalin, here. 

In an excerpt from Stormy Applause, Dubinsky offers another musical perspective on Stalin’s death: the Borodin Quartet was required to perform music by Tchaikovsky at the Great Leader’s funeral before playing at the funeral of composer Sergei Prokofiev, who had died on the same day. (Prokofiev had become “Stalin’s final victim.”) 

 Over and over again, we played Tchaikovsky's Second Quartet. Everything began to appear unreal, repeating itself as if in a strange dream. And again, people walked in, heads bare, looking at the coffin with the same expression of grief and humility.Toward evening, I fell asleep with my violin in my hands. Alexandrov nudged me. I fell asleep once more and he nudged me again.''Don't fall off the chair,'' he whispered. ''We have to play now.''

…The third and final day came. We still had had nothing to eat. Contact with the outside world was maintained only by those who could make their way back after going out into the streets. They said that people kept coming and coming. …Late in the evening, we put mutes on our instruments and began Tchaikovsky's ''Andante Cantabile.'' [Listen here.] We played quietly, without vibrato, the way Russian folk songs are sung. The delicate sound of the quartet drowned in the incessant noise of the slowly moving crowd.

A Pink Flamingo for Placido Domingo

Around 10PM yesterday evening I happened on a live concert broadcast in progress on Bulgarian National TV. At first I wasn’t sure what I was watching – an unidentified orchestra and chorus in an unfamiliar hall. The first striking visual landmark was what looked like a pink flamingo nesting in the principal flutist’s hair. It turned out that this special ‘izvunreden’ broadcast was a seventieth birthday tribute to one of the world’s musical wonders, the Spanish tenor Placido Domingo. I caught approximately the second half of the celebration at the Teatro Real (Re-AL) in Madrid, Domingo’s hometown. And there he was, taking it in from his box seat next to the royal hostess, Queen Sofia. As the master of ceremonies explained, with simultaneous Bulgarian translation (‘prevod na efir’), seven of the 20 vocal soloists who were singing in Domingo’s honor were laureates of his “world opera competition” Operalia, an important forum for young operatic talent.  Among the Operalia laureates singing for Domingo at the Teatro Real were two from the Balkans.

The Albanian soprano Inva Mula, a prize winner in the first edition of the competition (Paris, 1993), performed a dramatic selection from the verismo opera composer Ruggero Leoncavallo. (Someone just posted it on youtube, here.) Aside from singing leading roles on record and on the stages of the world’s great opera houses, Mula is also the voice behind Diva Plavalaguna in The Fifth Element.

Inva Mula in operatic action with Placido Domingo 

Then came Sonya Yoncheva, the 29-year-old soprano from Plovdiv, Bulgaria who won the most recent Operalia (Milan, 2010) together with the Romanian tenor Stefan Pop. (Operalia 2010 was a veritable Balkanalia!)  This was the first time I had heard her sing, and she looked and sounded fantastically free in a selection from Lehar’s operetta The Merry Widow. (Just posted on youtube, here.) It turns out that before being discovered in Geneva, she studied in her hometown Music Academy with none other than Nelli Koycheva, a mezzo that I’ve worked with several times in recent years!

Sonya Yoncheva at Operalia 2010

Other notable performances on the concert included German bass Rene Pape singing Prince Philip’s lament from Verdi’s opera Don Carlos (great cello solo there) and Uruguyan baritone (perhaps better known as Russian diva Anna Netrekbo’s husband) Erwin Shrott doing a charmingly overacted – but still vocally impressive – interpretation of Leporello’s ‘Catalogue’ aria from Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Another highlight was the world premiere of Pla-ci-do, a specially-composed orchestral “birthday song” by Oscar-winning composer Tan Dun from Shanghai, who was also in attendance.

Toward the end of the celebration, the flutist’s pink flamingo decided to migrate, and this splash of loud color in a sea of formal black began to shadow the master of ceremonies. When it came out of hiding, it had morphed into a long, high-collared cape worn by another Madrid native, (now-retired) soprano Teresa Berganza, who skillfully avoided tangling herself up in it as she painted a heartfelt portrait of Domingo the man and artist. She ended with a subtle suggestion that everyone would feel much closer to Domingo at this moment if he would appear on stage. The birthday boy took the hint, addressing the audience following a videoclip of him singing with his mother. (Both of his parents had been performers of traditional Spanish zarzuelas - hear Domingo sing one here.) Most singers, he admitted, think about retiring once they hit 50. With an incredible 130+ roles (most available in multiple recorded versions) and 50 years of singing on the world’s stages, he’s still going strong and in magnificent voice. His astonishing versatility (he’s also an accomplished conductor and director of opera companies in LA and Washington, D. C., not to mention his activities – such as Operalia – on behalf of young singers) and genuine artistry have made him one of today’s most loved and respected musicians.

I first became aware of him through his roles in the Franco Zeffirelli film versions of Verdi operas (like this one - Domingo's character is the first to offer a "toast"), at about the same time – circa 1990 – that The Three Tenors (Domingo, Carreras, and Pavarotti) were presiding over soccer stadiums with concerts that, like the Domingo 70^th Birthday Gala, made the cut for international TV broadcast. Experience the Three Tenors in action here. 

The flutist's flamingo was "louder" than this and nested higher up

Today around Rila

This week is the start of the spring semester at the American University in Bulgaria. One of the many joys of teaching at AUBG is the campus’s proximity to one of Bulgaria’s most beautiful regions, the western slopes of the Rila mountain. Until a few years ago, I equated this area with the famous Rila Monastery – and nothing else. Having finally discovered some of its “secrets,” such as the excellent winery at Smochevo and the rock formations at Stob, I am now a permanent convert.  I’m sure this would happen to anyone who, driving south toward Blagoevgrad, turns off E-79 after Usoika and follows a little-used local road through the wooded hills leading to the Smochevo plateau. I remember the first time I took this route, a kind of “back entrance” into the town of Rila and the Rila Monastery beyond. The incredible panoramic view when I reached the Smochevo plateau was enhanced by the amazing late afternoon light, which – I later realized – gives this region its break-taking coloring in all of the seasons.

Here’s what I saw today in the late afternoon (4-5:30PM) light, driving into Rila from Smochevo (having left the panoramic views behind) and walking in the hills at the east end of town.

A Trio of Cellists on Film

Last week, when I mentioned the 1946 film Deception with Bette Davis and music by Korngold, I started to recall other movies in which the cello has a major role. Cello-playing characters abound, most conforming to a view of those who “do music”--especially classical music-- as social outsiders. Then over the weekend a local cable channel broadcast one I didn't know about: Swimfan, a terribly twisted quasi-thriller in which the psychotic and murderously vindictive would-be girlfriend of a high school swim star happens to also play the cello. In a later scene, she does a badly cello-synched rendition of "The Swan" from Saint-Saens’s Carnival of the Animals. This is not what I had in mind.  

 

The classic on-screen social misfit with a significant dose of cello-playing in his background is Woody Allen’s Virgil Starkwell character in the 1969 “mockumentary” Take the Money and Run, also written and directed by Allen. While Virgil can't quite capitalize on the potential of music to help him rise above his enrivonment, his cello-playing is a humorous symbol of his being "different." Remember cellists, as much as seeing a cello get smashed pains us, this is just make-believe.Watch here.

In The Soloist, Jamie Foxx plays Nathaniel Ayers, a disturbed Juilliard dropout living on the streets of Los Angeles until he is befriended by journalist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) If the damaged string instruments in this 2009 film seem more realistic than in the Woody Allen flick, consider this: The Soloist is based on the true story of Nathaniel Anthony Ayers (born 1951), who was a scholarship student at the Juilliard School in New York City when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Watch the trailer here.

Another moving true story is that of the brilliant British cellist Jacqueline du Pre (1945-1987), who quickly rose to the top of her profession in the 1960s before multiple sclerosis ended her playing career when she was just 28. It is dramatized in the 1998 film Hilary and Jackie, based on a controversial book by du Pre’s older sister. One of the recurring musical themes in the film is taken from the magnificent Cello Concerto by Edward Elgar, a piece that continues to be more strongly identified with Jacqueline du Pre than with any other cellist. Her intense personal relationship with the work is palpable in this version, conducted by her then-husband, Daniel Barenboim. Watch here.

Some felt that Jacqueline du Pre’s brand of musicmaking was overly-emotional. Conductor Sir John Barbirolli (1899-1970), with whom du Pre made her first recording of the Elgar in 1965, disagreed. He countered that “when you’re young you should have an excess of everything; if you haven’t an excess, what are you going to pare off as the years go by?” For another conductor colleague, du Pre was like "the lightning passage of a comet which, with remarkable intensity– but all too briefly – illuminates our lives." This is how Zubin Mehta recalled her. For a serious documentary on her life and musical personality, try the Christopher Nupen film: see trailer here.

Meetings with Morty: An American Composer's 85th Anniversary

A Bulgarian National Radio journalist recently asked me: Do you know the American composer Morton Feldman personally? Me:  No, he died over 20 year ago. BNR: And you never met him before he died? Me: You mean ‘v mladezhkite si godini'? (as a youngster?) No, I never came into contact with him.

And so this line of questioning ended.  I guess I could have spun a little yarn about the last time me and Morty met up in New York City, at that café he and Cage and the gang used to hang out at, how when he left Morty said, “Give my regards to Eighth Street” and later that became the title of a book of Feldman’s selected (or was it collected?) writings – at my suggestion. Morty and me – good times!

But let's return to history as it may have actually happened.  In his phenomenal book The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, Pulitzer Prize finalist Alex Ross begins an insightful profile of Morton Feldman – who would have been 85 today – with the first meeting of two of the great musical minds of the last century, based on their own accounts:

It was after a New York Philharmonic performance of Anton Webern’s Symphony, on January 26, 1950, that John Cage met a six-foot-tall, nearly 300-hundred-pound Jewish guy named Morton Feldman… When their paths crossed by the door [of Carnegie Hall], Feldman turned to Cage and asked, “Wasn’t that beautiful?” A lifelong friendship began.

Morton Feldman (1926-1989) and John Cage (1912-1992)

Taking his cue from Webern, Feldman’s music finds “a world of meaning in a rigorously limited smattering of notes,” and “slow[s] the pace of events in the Viennese universe” to reveal “the expressive power of the space around the notes. The sounds animate the surrounding silence.” (Ross 2007, p. 527-9)  Another major influence on Feldman were the New York Abstract Expressionist painters such as Rauschenberg, Newman and Rothko, whose work led Feldman toward composing music that, in his words, was “more direct, more immediate, physical than anything that had existed before.” (Quoted in Ross 2007, p. 529)

Listen here to the first part of Feldman’s Rothko Chapel of 1971. The title of this work refers to the nondenominational place of worship in Houston that opened the same year. Now celebrating its fortieth anniversary, the Chapel is described by its website as a “tranquil meditative environment inspired by the mural canvases of Russian born American painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970), [welcoming] thousands of visitors each year, people of every faith and from all parts of the world." 

 Interior of Rothko Chapel

In Bulgaria, as composer Lazar Nikolov once told me, Feldman is famous as “that American composer who uses 'mnogo tihi dinamiki' (very soft dynamics).” The sustained transparency of Feldman's delicate textures and the absence of agitation or "action" in his large-scale musical canvasses sets his music apart from that of any other composer of his time. The "imperturbable separateness" of Feldman finds a distant analogy in the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, whose later symphonies Feldman deeply admired. (Ross p 531) Hear the opening of Sibelius's Symphony No. 5, one of Morty's personal favs, here.

 

On the March: Keep Weapons Holstered

The afternoon hours of 2 to 4pm are the Bulgarian siesta time, when it’s not a good idea to phone someone at home because they might be sleeping. Residential “quiet hours” are also in effect during this time. For those who don’t work 9 to 5, this is a great time for a walk or other afternoon excursion before darkness falls on these short winter days. Today was chillier than expected, the thermometer seemingly stuck on 0 celcius, and the morning fog never entirely cleared. After a morning rehearsal, I decided to “stretch my legs” (for non-Harry Potter followers, that’s J. K. Rowling-speak) at the park of the Military Academy. In the past I used to walk by the entrance on Evlogi Georgiev Blvd, wondering if and when the rumors that it would be opened to the public would come true, before it finally was opened last May. The recently-restored fence along Evlogi Georgiev features recycled rifle barrels:

There’s a long list at the gate of things you can’t do in the park, also graphically illustrated:

 

Luckily, picture-taking is not on the list. Here are some views from inside the park, all looking south-west toward the descending sun:

On the way back I noticed this poster - or what remained of it - on a utility post at the intersection of Evlogi Georgiev and Madrid Boulevards:

 

In it cellist Vesislava Todorova wields another weapon, apparently threatening to "play" actor Georgi Daverov with it. She performs all of the music – from Bach to rock and original improvisations – and appears alongside Daverov in a Bulgarian-language version of Eric Bogosian’s off-Broadway solo (also a 1991 film starring Bogosian) Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll.  The poster was for the December performances at Sfumato, and Vesislava informs me that various alternative Sofia theater spaces will be hosting upcoming performances.

Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll – not to be confused with the 2010 Ian Dury bio-pic Sex & Drugs, & Rock & Roll, named after Dury’s 1977 single. Although it dates from the apex of punk rock, the song (listen here) does not preach the virtues of excess. Dury himself denied that it was a “punk anthem,” explaining that he was only “trying to suggest that there was more to life than a 9-to-5 existence.”

So they say…

I’ve posted this video in honor of my father, who is celebrating his birthday today. Once upon a time, by way of a collection of open reel tapes and LP records, he introduced mini-me to a pair of really huge headphones, then to the three B’s: Beethoven, Brahms… and the Beatles! 

And Bach too for that matter. And even a little Tchaikovsky… Musical humorist Victor Borge could imitate them all, even as a child - but only to a single tune.

The fourth B - Bulgarian - I discovered on my own. Because it's one of those "guy gifts," here's a coffee mug for you, Dad: 4PD cup. It says (in Bulgarian) "Happy Birthday" and wishes you "much health, love, and luck!" Oh, and 'ti cherpish...'

All-out Art: Invoking the duende

For me the ultimate incarnation of La Gitana – and example of the interface of the Spanish and Romani cultures – is the flamenco dancer (watch one here), also a symbol of achieving a state of ecstatic inspiration, of being carried away by the moment, of transcending the here and now. But how is this state achieved? An inspired exploration of this question is found in Edward Hirsch’s book The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration. The opening chapters focus on Spain and the poet Frederico Garcia Lorca, who wrote, “[t]he great artists of the south of Spain, whether Gypsy or flamenco, whether they sing, dance, or play, know that no emotion is possible unless the duende comes.”

John Singer Sargent, El Jaleo, 1882, oil on canvas. More info here

For Lorca, invoking the duende (a kind of mischievous, devilish muse) opened doors for creative inspiration for both performer and audience, allowing us to experience the arts with the utmost immediacy, unfettered by intellectual restraints. An essentially mysterious power beyond rational explanation, duende, as viewed from Lorca’s Andalusian perspective,

was associated with the spirit of the earth, with visible anguish, irrational desire, demonic enthusiasm, and a fascination with death. It is an erotic form of dark inspiration. Lorca liked to repeat the legendary Gypsy singer Manuel Torre’s statement, “All that has black sounds has duende.” (Hirsch p. 10)

Torre, famous as a singer of cante jondo (deep song), was also the dedicatee of Lorca’s “Flamenco Vignettes.” Listen to a sample of deep song here. According to Hadia’s concise online Flamenco Dance History, the primary element of flamenco music has always been and remains cante (singing), with a percussive accompaniment of handclapping or knuckle-rapping. The guitar was not added until the 19th century. The influences in the development of flamenco music are diverse, and include Punjabi singing of India, Jewish Synagogue Chants, Arabic song forms, Andalusian regional folk forms, and elements introduced via Western African slaves. Listen to Dolores Agujeta, known as the "Daughter of Duende," singing Cante Gitano here.

Hirsch finds similarities between duende and the Portuguese word saudade, hearing this persistent “dark nostalgia” in Portugal fado (fate) music. (Listen to Manuel de Almeida sing “Fado da Despedida” here.) Even without an exact English equivalent for these Hispanic words, we recognize and respond to “art that touches and transfigures death.” In Deep Song Lorca asserts that “[t]he duende does not come at all unless he sees that death is possible.” Hirsch concludes that duende can be defined as “something like artistic inspiration in the presence of death,” and can be seen as central and what Pedro Salinas called the Spanish “culture of death.”  Here the even darker vision of the Czech-French writer Milan Kundera returns to me. Writing about the twisted self-portraits of artist Francis Bacon, Kundera characterizes ecstasy as a state of fulfillment that is in fact a state of forgetting. All…and nothing. For me duende is what makes this ecstasy of leave-taking, of both fulfillment and forgetting, possible for both artist and audience.

While Lorca found duende most fully expressed – and perhaps most vitally necessary – in performing arts (music, dance, poetry reading, even bull-fighting) requiring “a living body to express them,” he believed that it could be achieved in all of the arts. The constant interweaving of the arts is one of the delights of The Demon and the Angel, a book that “brings together Lorca’s black sounds and Emerson’s white fire” and incorporates ideas from other “creative spirits” such as Rilke, Yeats, and Klee.  Musically, Hirsch’s search of metaphors for artistic inspiration eventually take him to the underworld of blues and jazz. This beautifully-written book both reveals and instills the duende that reaches out from the strikingly eloquent prose, and is densely populated by works of art that beckon to be experienced on their own terms. The extensive topic-based lists for further reading, viewing, and listening further expand the potential of The Demon and the Angel as an all-embracing aesthetic experience.

But what does this to do with Bulgaria? In revealing “the hidden spirit of disconsolate Spain,” Lorca, in Hirsch’s words, acts as a “Saint John the Baptist, its trumpeting messenger.” Today is Ivanov den, the day of Ivan (e-VAHN), the Slavic equivalent of John. In a kind of reenactment of John’s baptism of Jesus, the traditional Bulgarian ritual on Jan. 6 (the day of Jordan) involves a priest-led procession to the nearest river, where a cross is thrown into the icy water and the men in attendance jump in after it in a race to get to the cross first. (The low water temperature isn’t the only motivational to do this quickly – a cash prize is often offered.) Following the ‘vadene na krusta’ everyone kisses the cross and receives a blessing with holy water in the manner of a baptism. Lorca also sensed the duende in Christian rituals – another kind of performance requiring “a living body” – and their connections to the pagan past.

At the Dunav (Danube) River near Silistra, Svetlin Ivanov got to the cross first, again.

(As reported by Darik Radio)

La Gitana: Galina's birthday epiphany

The orchestral pieces by Helmesberger, Bizet and Falla mentioned in my previous post have more in common than their presence on this year’s internationally televised New Year’s concerts. All are examples of what could crudely be termed “fake Gypsy music,” in which non-Roma composers of yesteryear attempted to enter into the spirit of the Roma culture or give an impression of the "Roma sound." Here’s another example, in which the Viennese violin virtuoso Fritz Kriesler (1875-1962) performs his La Gitana. He may have based the piece on “an 18th century Arabo-Spanish Gypsy song.” At least that’s what he claimed to have done. But Kriesler also claimed to have “discovered” existing pieces by 18^th century composers, only to later reveal that he himself had composed them. Listen to La Gitana here. 

Among the many outstanding musicians who have emerged from the Roma of Hungary – where this ethnic group continues to make up as much as 20% of the population (according to unofficial estimates) – are the violinist Janos Bihari (1764-1827) and his descendents.  One of these is Roby Lakatos, born a mere 200 years later. Lakatos has earned his place as the new “King of the Gypsy Violinists," a title bestowed on Bihari by admiring composer friends Beethoven and Liszt, who also borrowed Bihari's tunes. Sarasate did too - think Zigeunerweisen. Hear what happens here when Lakatos and his ensemble interpret a Hungarian Dance by non-Hungarian composer Johannes Brahms. As his website biography states (in the third-person),

[w]hen Roby Lakatos mixes the so-called "classical music" with the magic of the Hungarian-gypsy vitality, it does not turn into a disrespectful attitude toward the higher cultural heritage, but it more reflects the deep tradition rooted in the cultural heritage of the Gypsy people and offers new, refreshing pleasures to the listener and music lover.

Bahiri/Lakatos: Any family resemblance is purely (non-)coincidental

In Bulgaria, the Roma make up as much as 10% of the population. Among non-Roma Bulgarian musicians who wish they were Roma is another Bulgarian concertmaster, Galina Koycheva, who has led the Symphony Orchestra of the Bulgarian National Radio since 2005. The combination of a dark complexion and impassioned violinistic virtuosity has led many to assume she is. And her rendition of the opening cadenza from the Tango Tzigane Jalousie by Danish composer Jacob Gade (more “fake Gypsy” music here) almost had us fooled. Galina is also the violinist of the Ardenza Trio and the ethno-rock group Lot Lorien. In "Dream" you'll hear how Lot Lorien brings Bulgarian folk music into the 21^st century. Listen/watch here.

'Veche e pechena': Galina Koycheva in action with the SO of BNR

As of today, Galina Koycheva is no longer shy of 30. She shares her birthdate with the German romantic composer Max Bruch (1838-1920), whose unavoidable Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor she has been able to avoid until just recently, when she had an epiphany an realized it's one of her favorite pieces! Here’s the third movement with one of Galina's favorite violinists, David Oistrakh, as soloist.  

Za mnogo godini Galya!

 

K-pop and EU-classical

If you opened the last link in my previous blog entry, then you have most likely explored the new South Korean “bagel girl” concept, with its oxymoronic innocent/voluptuous dichotomy, for all that it’s worth – which may not be much, unless you’re a plastic surgeon. But in case you didn’t click, and because this blog is – as much as anything else – about how we (I) experience unexpected, time- and space-transcending connections through music(s), here’s a crash course to the tune of “How Dare You,” a late 2010 K-pop hit by the 4-girl group Sistar. First, the version sung in her audition for the group by Soyu, who on December 21, 2010 achieved bagel girl status by popular internet acclamation. Listen/watch here. Now hear/see Sistar’s version, with their official music video, here. You’ll notice that the Bulgarian fan who posted it has added Bulgarian subtitles to the entire song, attesting to significant local interest in the current Korean pop culture scene.

Classical music is also alive and well in Korea, as 10 Magazine reports:

Classical music may not be the first thing that comes to mind about Korea, but connoisseurs of the genre will find more than enough concerts to keep them entertained while in the country. And while Korea has plenty of home-grown talent, there are also regular visits from well-known composers, artists, and even entire orchestras [...]

Of course you can find plenty of “home-grown” Korean talent on concert stages around the world. For example, one of the many orchestras active in the Austrian capital is the Vienna Korean Philharmonic. The concertmaster of this ensemble is Yoo Hui Seung, a Ph.D student at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, where she studies with Professor Rainer Küchl. And if you watched this year’s New Year’s Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic, then you’ve seen Prof. Küchl: he’s the VPO’s senior concertmaster.

Watching this concert at noon each January 1 is not just a tradition in Bulgaria, at least among classical music fans: it’s a source of national pride. How so, you ask? Just look at who was sitting next to Küchl this year:

She’s Albena Danailova, the newest addition to the VPO/Vienna State Opera’s team of concertmasters, and she’s ‘ot nashata mahala’ ("from our neighborhood"). The Bulgarian TV commentator wasted no time before pointing this out, adding that Danailova is now a tenured member of the organization (though not yet of the Philharmonic society – it’s complicated). If you’re aware of the VPO’s reputation as the world’s most staunchly chauvinistic orchestra , even after ending its “males-only” membership policy in 1997, then you realize what a huge deal it is for the orchestra to choose a woman for this top position in the first place, let alone confirm her in that position. Interestingly, the VPO has also had several other Bulgarian string players in the violin and viola sections in recent years – and they’ve also been women. So watching this concert in Sofia has taken on new significance – it’s also about the progress toward equality in the global (or at least EU) workplace, with ‘nashite momicheta’ (local ladies) leading the march (or waltz, as the case may be).

Here’s one of my favorite selections from the VPO’s January 2, 2011 program, conducted by Vienna State Opera music director and Vienna native (also a big deal, at least for the Viennese!) Franz Welser-Möst (the 50-year-old maestro is also the Cleveland Orchestra’s music director, but that’s another story). Gypsy Dance from The Pearl of Iberia by Joseph Hellmesberger the younger – another Viennese musician – sounded a little lightweight next to the works of the Johann Strausses, Lanner, and Franz Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1, but it was a refreshing novelty on the program and the orchestra obviously had great fun with it! Enjoy the video here. 

The Berlin Philharmonic’s New Year’s concert, internationally broadcast from Berlin on the evening of Dec. 31, also sparkled with good cheer. The freedom and energy of the playing, as well as the angular modernism of the interior of the Philharmonie concert hall, contrasted with the more straitlaced style of the VPO and the gold-and-roses decoration of the Muzikverein. The phenomenal just-shy-of-30 Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel (the new LA Philharmonic music director and upcoming guest on the Jay Leno Show) led the orchestra in a program in the Spanish style featuring excerpts from Bizet’s Carmen and works by Manuel de Falla, including this Spanish Dance from his 1913 opera La viva breve. 

In a Mystic Mood: Golden Cello and Hot Bagels

An image of an album cover posted on the London Cello Society’s facebook page recently caught my attention. Who was Hyman Gold, the caption’s author asked? I decided to find out. This is what I’ve got so far:

Gold was active as a film and recording industry studio musician in southern California during the 1960s, as evidenced by the personnel lists for Nat King Cole’s 1961 sessions at the Capitol Recording Studio in Hollywood. Participating in a back-up orchestra for several of the late 1961 sessions with Cole, Gold played alongside Eleanor Aller Slatkin (conductor Leonard Statkin’s mother). Aller was the soloist in Erich Korngold’s soundtrack for the 1946 film Deception, a must-see for all fans of the cello. (In Deception the composer Alexander Hollenius says to cellist Karel Novak, for whom he has composed a new concerto, “She [Bette Davis’s character Christine Radcliffe]  tells me you’re some sort of a genius, if such a term can be applied to a mere performer.” Ouch. And that’s by far not the best part.)

In 1965, Gold played several important musical roles with the Mystic Moods Orchestra in One Stormy Night, among the earliest “mood” recordings.  An Amazon editorial review reports that it was the first recording to incorporate recorded nature sounds (rain, thunderstorm). According to a history of the Mystic Moods Orchestra, “the album consist[s] of Mantovani-esque orchestral instrumentals and [audiophile Brad] Miller's recordings of rain, thunder, and trains.” A review of the 2004 CD reissue states that the “congenial music combined with the rain and thunder proved to be a revelation to the general public, leading to several more successful mood recordings." The album credits mention Gold four times, as conductor, arranger, cellist, and soloist.   

Some of the One Stormy Night tracks have the same titles as selections on the Hot Bagel! album. One of these is “Autumn Leaves," where the sounds of steady rainfall and the occasional distant thunderclap accompany a duet between the cello and violins, at least in the One Stormy Night version (listen here). To hear all 12 tracks of Hot Bagel! Featuring Hyman Gold 'N' Cello, register online at the Dartmouth Jewish Music Archive. Perhaps not surprisingly, the artwork for this album has been honored on the Amazingly Awful Album Art list.

According to several web sources, the Mystic Moods orchestra, which probably used the same nucleus of musicians that Gold employed for the self-produced Hot Bagel! album, was active through the 1970’s. How long did Gold’s involvement in this pioneering project last after the release of the One Stormy Night album? This question remains unanswered as of this writing, but a sentence in the biography of Seattle-based bass guitarist Michael Todd Kovell suggests that by 1978, Gold had settled a little further east. It was in this year that Kovell began cello studies with the “renowned Las Vegas show biz cellist.”

Bagels were clearly a hot item on the inspired-by lists of musicians a half-century ago, as this album from 1960 attests (listen to a track here):

In the same year the Thompson Bagel Machine was patented, making mass production easy and leading to the so-called "Bagel Boom." The bagels and bongos combination, as Tom Teicholz explains

in an article on the work of Josh Kun at the Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation, symbolizes the meeting of Jewish and Latin music:

How did Latin and Jewish music cross-pollinate? There are several theories. One has to do with Sephardic heritage, Latin by definition. Another has to do with what musician Steve Bernstein has called "the Gulf Coast theory," concerning the Jewish retirement disapora and the similarities of the rhythmic signatures between the horah and Latin music.

An alternative interpretation, in the context of contemporary Korean popular culture, is suggested by the text found here.