Wu Wei

Musical life in the Soviet Union

Just been watching a strange programme on Mezzo, the French music channel. It was a retrospective on musicians' lives in the Soviet Union, with lots of old film:

a clip of young Stalin in colour, looking so like a robot it is hard to believe he is not a prop in an Eisenstein film; more clips showing cheering or adoring workers shouting "Stalin"

a clip of a whole orchestra of eight year old girls playing violins, as an example of the excellent musical education;

an explanation of why Shostakovich agreed to work with the Soviet regime (to help other artists)

At first it was hard to follow and I wasn't concentrating either on the Russian or the French subtitles, which seemed to be showing the standard Soviet propaganda. Today it just seems laughable or pathetic. Then I began to listen more carefully.

The Russian narrator produced the following anecdote about a rehearsal in America of a Shostakovich symphony (the 4th, 2nd movement?) where a tune on the percussion resembled to westerners the clip clop of a horse and the violinists began to laugh. The narrator gave another explanation from the composer, himself: it was a tune from the prison, a prisoner tapping on the pipes to communicate with someone else, to transmit a message. Different interpretations, from different cultures. Certainly no laughing matter.

Also the narrator showed the frequent Kafkaesque situations musicians found themselves in. Asked to authorise a concert of the first symphony of Schnittke, Khrennikov, the Secretary of the Composers Union refused to answer Schnittke except "how can I authorise what I have not forbidden", knowing perfectly well what he was doing, and that was the end of the beginning of Schnittke's career. Perhaps now, Schnittke is better known than Khrennikov.


Technorati Tags: Soviet Union, Mezzo, music

Settling in

After the last two years camping successfully in Pristina, Belgrade, and Sarajevo, with even some short periods spend in Oxford, it's strange to be "settling down" in Tbilisi.  It's a feeling of "not at home" that comes with when you don't have the familiarity of arriving in a place where you know how to cope with all the everyday requirements of life. 

The unusual cold weather and lack of external meetings has had us holed-up (looks wrong but no other ideas on how to spell it) in the office all day. In the evenings it's colder, icier and easier just to go home and watch the telly.  Pretty much like I did in Lithuania when we first moved there, when working out what I was supposed to be doing all day, was enough to cope with, without unfamiliarity as well.

On my way home, in the supermarket, I found myself feeling a sort of homesickness when I found a pair of rubber gloves labelled in Lithuanian. At least I could read the labels and instructions.  The words maisto prekes on the rubbish bags brought back memories of the old Soviet style ordinary food shops selling not much, but just enough, for everyday things.  They were long gone in Vilnius by the time I left.  In my street are three or four shops like the old maisto prekes, with similar but all slightly different stocks.  As in Soviet days you need to visit them all to see what they have at the moment.  I was befriended by the lady in one, who explains everything to me in simple Russian, making me feel a bit like an imbecile. At least she doesn't feel the need to shout, like the British do at foreigners, believing that if you say something loudly, foreigners will understand.  She has a fish sign outside, which made me curious, but I didn't fancy any of the smoked mackerel or sprats she had at the moment. I wonder if she will ever have fresh fish, since Tbilisi is quite a way from the sea.

Life is full of small wins. In our block, even in freezing weather, washing is dried on a rack extending out from the balcony over the street below.  The rack has several wires on which you peg the clothes, and then push each wire away from the building.  Unfortunately it is easier to push the wire away than to get it back.  I was contemplating whether it was necessary to drag myself over the balcony to reach the wire.  Assessing the variety of implements on the balcony, I came across what passes in ex-Soviet countries for a floor mop.  It consists of something like a big long-handled window wiper, which is used with a large filthy cloth, which spreads water and dirt evenly over the floor, in a travesty of cleaning the floor.  Usually the cloth is the same one used for mopping up muddy footprints inside the building in wet or snowy weather.  You can tell whether an employer is really as modern as he thinks he is, by whether this floor mop is in use in his building.  You may be sure that this will never be used in my home, at least not for this purpose.  It does have a perfectly good use however to drag the washing back within reach of the balcony. 

In homes that are adequately heated, why do people not dry their clothes on the radiators in cold weather?  I know, I know, where does all that water go?  Same place as all the hot air: out the leaking windows, just like in the UK.

At lunchtime I walked up and down the street looking for one of the small family bakeries that make fresh lavash, but didn't find one. I'm rather handicapped without a sense of smell, as otherwise I'm sure I could follow my nose at the right time of day.  I was also looking for the signs of someone repairing the telephone cable, since it seems nobody in the street has internet at the moment due to a cable fault.  I don't quite understand this since the telephone works fine. Anyway, as it is a state-run telephone company owning the local loop there is not much hope of anyone fixing it quickly. This is one reason why I have not blogging much.

Incidentally does anyone understand how three separate internet cables in the Mediterranean could be damaged at the same time and how India could be so dependent on cables in that direction and not on some ring to the US?

My reading has been rather British (book reviews following).  And I've been watching/listening to Mezzo.  There are a lot of recordings from the past.  For a whole evening we had what must have been Karajan rehearsing (in black and white) an orchestra consisting entirely of men, looking like they were at a funeral, no enjoyment at all on their faces, in informal dress of scruffy baggy suits.  No wonder orchestras normally adopted formal dress for performances in those days. All the players were sitting extremely still, with the minimum of movements necessary to play their instruments. 

This set me wondering when it became acceptable for players to move about playing their instruments.  Watching Mezzo today, it's clearly acceptable to jump around, sway from side to side, and generally "go with the flow" of the music.  Perhaps it also has something to do with the number of women in music.

Two Concerts (update)

My concert reviews are going to be a bit of a joke, I'm afraid, to anyone seriously musical.  I have that level of knowledge that says, I don't know much about music but I know what I like.  I have a very good memory for the tunes but am useless at the names of pieces of music.  I like most classical music but not much really modern stuff, though I go back a long way liking early music.  The only exception on the modern front the minimalist, repetitive stuff, which I find strangely soothing, though I haven't really listened to much of it.

Tonight I went to a concert in the Philharmonia Hall, a special occasion as it was two Lithuanians playing: David Geringas (cello) and his wife Tatiana (strange to see the surname as Geringas not Geringiene, but it seems she is Russian anyway), on piano.  I found Geringas looked a little like Donald Rumsfeld, though much less sinister.  It was rather distracting, and no doubt very unfair to him, as when he smiled he looked like a normal person.

The hall was smaller that the Philharmonia in Vilnius, but similar design, with the balcony just at the back, not all the way round.  The programme started with a modern piece from each of the Baltic countries. First, Arvo Part's Spiegel in Spiegel (rather slow and gloomy). Then Vytautas  Barkauskas's Suite de Concert, op 38, which had lots of sawing, banging and scraping up and down the scale.  By then I was wishing for the interval.  Then came Peteris Vasks' Gramata Cellam (The Book of Cello).  The first movement "fortissimo" seemed like a corrupted mp3 file of Shostokovich's Cello Concerto without the orchestra, bits seemed familiar and then weren't, and it was hard to concentrate.  But then the second movement "pianissimo" woke me up.  Suddenly it seemed there was a contralto voice coming from somewhere. It sounded like one of those modern pieces where they have a tape recorder playing something along  with the live performance.  I was very puzzled by this.  The programme notes were only in Slovene so no clues there.  However, then there was a soprano voice, which clearly was coming from the cello, so I thought I had imagined the contralto voice as a recording.  But right at the end it came back (again sounding like a recording).  So maybe the movement should be called "cello and two voices".  I enjoyed that part, anyway.

The second half was Brahms' Sonata for cello and piano no 1, op 38.  That was an old friend which I hadn't heard for a long time. I must have had a recording of it at sometime, as I remember listening to it a lot, but it's long lost now, as it's not on my iPod.  All this changing of media from vinyl to cassettes to cds and now mp3s, means you never replace exactly what you had before, and stuff you like is always disappearing. The music seemed to have gone down well, as there were three encores (no more modern stuff) all enjoyable. 

The other concert (a couple of weeks ago) was in the big Cankarjev dom (Gallusova dvorana), very modern and boring.  The tickets were quite expensive, I paid 20 Euros to sit up in the gods with the students.   No translation of the programme and no lady announcer to tell you what you were going to hear or who was substituting.  Slovenians also don't do the slow coordinated clapping for encores, that audiences in the former Soviet Union do.

The programme started with a piece by a Slovene composer Blaz Arnic, titled Memento Mori.  It was slow and gloomy (as you might expect from the title) and I was glad when it finished, so I could cough.  The conductor of the Slovene Philharmonic Orchestra was George Pehlivanian, presumably an Armenian.  He wasn't so much fun to watch as Gintaras Rinkevicius. I should explain that most of my concert going in the last 10 years had been in Lithuania, and as I had just been there, that's where my comparisons are coming from.  And the guy on the kettle drums also wasn't much of a show performer like we are used to with Pasha, (I forget his real name*, but no doubt someone who reads this will give him a proper credit) who plays percussion like a jazz drummer, with feeling and facial expressions and no doubt humming as well, if you were close enough.  He's great. 

Then there was Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 4.  The soloist was Dubravka Tomsic Srebotnjak.  Clearly I should have heard of her, but I hadn't. She appeared in a red and gold tent, with big hair, you know the style.  She played well, but nothing stunning.  The audience loved her (she is their local star made good internationally) and cheered and clapped until she finally did an encore.  It was Chopin  (I think) but it was amazing. Suddenly I could see the brilliance, and understood why the audience was so keen. 

The second half was Richard Strauss's Symphonic Poem Ein Heldenleben Op.40 which called for a huge orchestra.  To fit it all in, the 8 double basses and cellos were on the "wrong side", as the harps and other extra strings had taken their place.  3 of the brass got up early and went out for a smoke before coming back again for the finale.  At least that's what it looked like.  Perhaps that's all normal for this work.  Anyway, the audience were not nearly so impressed with this half, and the flowers were not so lavish as for Dubravka.

So that's the end of my first foray into concert reviews.  I don't know how many more there will be.

*Update: his name is Pavelas Giunteris.

Technorati tags: concert, review, ljubljana

Fado discovered

In my voyage of discovery on Pandora, my Astor Piazzola radio station played a song by Cristina Bianco which stopped me in my tracks to listen so I started  a new radio station for her, realising I had found a fado singer. 

I don't think I had ever heard any fado and only knew about it from reading the Rough Guide when we went to Portugal 14 years ago.

"These plaintive chants, usually sung by a woman accompanied by one or two 12-string guitars, apparently have their origins in the obscene songs of the slave trade -- though others trace them back to mediaeval troubadours -- and have only become respectable this (20th) century.  The main centre is Lisbon.  The Coimbro fado has a distinctively different sound --- slower and more mournful -- while its lyrics are supposed to reflect the town's romantic and intellectual traditions".

"Imagine an Afghani humming along to a Billy Holiday record and you're halfway to grasping the spirit of fado, the weirdest, most melancholic music in Europe. It's thought to have originated, via  the Congo, in Alfama, as a sort of working class blues.

Not sure about the Afghani, but melancholic it certainly is. And haunting... I've been playing it all weekend. 

I'm not sure Cristina Bianco sings pure traditional fado, but it will do for me.  Here is what Pandora provides for a bio:

By rights, Cristina Branco shouldn't sing the urban Portuguese song form called fado. The genre, whose name translates as 'fate,' has its history in Lisbon, a enigmatic, poetic, working-class style about accepting the lot life and love has dealt. But Branco, who grew up in rural Almeirim, Portugal, has established herself as one of the country's foremost fadistas, with a growing international reputation. Born in 1972, she grew up listening to blues, jazz, and music from around the globe. Although she sang for her friends and family, she had no aspirations to make a living from her voice. At 18, she began college, studying social communications, and it was there she experienced her moment of epiphany. One night a friend played her a record by the late Amália Rodrigues, Portugal's greatest fado singer, and she was hooked on the music, with a burning desire to perform it herself. Still, she didn't dive headlong into a musical career. While continuing her studies, she began singing semi-professionally. It wasn't until 1996, at the age of 24, that she recorded her first album, the live Cristina Branco in Holland. It was an unusual move for an artist who was unknown, even in her own country, but it helped establish her, and lay the groundwork for her first studio album. Released internationally in 1999, Murmúrios found her collaborating with acclaimed fado guitarist Custódio Castelo, a partnership that has continued. 2000 saw her issue a special cultural project, Cristina Branca Canta Slauerhoff, with the words of Dutch poet J. Slauerhoff set to music by Castelo, although the record was only released in Europe. It was followed in 2001 by her "real" second album, Post-Scriptum, which saw her further refining the fadista's art of sorrow, pain, and joy. ~ Chris Nickson

I tried to buy her album Ulisses on Amazon UK but they didn't have it.  But then I found it on Amazon France, so I have an extra Christmas present coming.

The Cristina Bianco radio station is also teaching me about other fado singers, including Amalia Rodrigues (see above). It's hard to keep it exactly on track, but that's what makes it fun, when it wanders off track. One time I found Sally Dworsky singing the Picture from Start it all Over.  Still have to explore that.

Another time I found myself singing along to something I knew from somewhere already, and I found it was a hymn to Che Guevara, on Cantos Revolutiones (of Latin America) by Soledad Bravo. Words of the hymn Hasta siempre Commandante here.  Did I ever sing along to it, was I ever such a revolutionary?  A rewritten history already, perhaps. O tempora, o mores

But I really recommend Pandora.

Technorati tags: Pandora, fado, Cristina Bianco, Hasta siempre