You can follow many wonderful courses in Flanders, but if there isn't enough interest, they get cancelled. This happened with the Davidsfonds course on "4 perspectives on American art music & Leonard Bernstein" for which I had registered. But fortunately, the extras, the associated concerts programmed around it, remained on the schedule. And I was fortunate enough to experience them all.
The first was actually more of a Lecture Performance, performed at the piano at the Lemmensinstituut in Leuven by Mark Erkens, the house man. And as we know Erkens, it was a very erudite and broad introduction to that art music from the 'new world', with the marching music from New Orleans that was partly at the basis of jazz and with the piano pieces that the early American composer Gottschalck (1829-1869!) wrote. He was known as the "Creole Chopin". That happened long before Jelly Roll Morton and Scott Joplin were even mentioned. He also let us hear them. And Erkens played all sorts of other gems from the jazz repertoire, from Gershwin of course and from other more 'classical' greats such as Copland, Ives, Bernstein. With that delightful spontaneous and educational ability of his, Mark Erkens played those pieces on his piano while improvising and commenting. Impressive indeed.
It's impossible to list all the pieces that Erkens played to illustrate that American music. From the very nice and rousing musical theme from Mission Impossible (by Lalo Schifrin), to the music of film composer Bernard Hermann from Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. All to show how original, how far removed from the harmonies, rhythms and rules of the classical European canon those American tones are. Take Charles Ives, who never went to Europe and was no 'professional composer' as it usually went on the Old Continent, but an insurance broker! And then Gershwin who did travel to Paris and received advice from Ravel to quickly return and not want to become a second Ravel but to be the first Gershwin. Perhaps Ravel should have also told him, I think: "And especially write songs, you and your brother Ira are real masters at that and leave that pretentious art music to others". Yet "Rhapsody in Blue" and "An American in Paris" became the showpieces on our concert stages. I certainly remember the thought-provoking remark that Erkens made: "When did our Western European music actually become 'beautiful' to our ears?"
A second and equally exceptional evening came a few days later at the Lemmensinstituut with the rarely performed Bernstein opera "Trouble in Tahiti" from 1952. In everything I heard a finger exercise for his West Side Story five years later. Only not in the subject matter: that was exactly opposite. Here the story is about a middle-class family, Sam and Dinah with an only child, in an affluent neighborhood in the New York "Suburbia Scarsdale"; the street gangs from West Side Story lived in a completely different neighborhood! But the love-songs sound like a foretaste of the love-songs from that later musical and the duets also evoke similar memories. A splendid performance was that of Erwin Muller in the role of father Sam and his scene partner Dinah, sung by Lotte Verstaen.
Beforehand we also heard, performed by the chamber music ensemble LUCA Lemmens, the orchestral suite "The Tender Land". They brought it in an arrangement by Murry Sidlin, distilled from Aaron Copland's opera of the same name from 1954. It couldn't sound more Copland: sounds even more open than the grain fields of the Midwest where the story takes place. The love duet from the opera brought us almost into a Bernstein mood.
That mood was certainly also present at the final evening of that Americana series, this time at the Leuven Stadsschouwburg under the title: "Broadway meets Bernstein". The cherry on the cake. Served by Jeroen D'hoe, dashing at the piano and Hanne Roos who with her clear soprano could effortlessly fill the hall. With a selection of Broadway Songs. Also "American art music"? Actually yes, because if there's anything typical of that music, it's "The Great American Songbook", a collective name for that wonderful mix of more than just evergreens, culled from the repertoire of those many "Broadway" composers such as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George Gershwin...
Of course the duo also performed a couple of the blockbusters from Bernstein's West Side Story. And how! In the famous "America" song, where the pleasures (according to the girls) and the displeasure (according to the boys) between life in the US and Puerto Rico are weighed, the pianist even got to sing along as a spokesperson for the "boys". A sublime, satirical text by the way, from Stephan Sondheim, who later became a composer himself. Hanne Roos gave her best in that splendid and fun aria from Bernstein's Candide. She was gaily dressed, with a flower in her hair à la Billie Holiday (not white but red though…), including a costume change halfway through the show. With all those songs, Jeroen D'hoe always chose a sober version that got to the essence. And yes, perhaps you sometimes long for a jazzy "basso continuo" with drummer and bassist, because that's how you know that repertoire best and in grander versions with big band and even strings. But it's also good to return to the core and you could do that perfectly here. Jeroen D'hoe also brought and sang such a hushed and poignant interpretation of Irving Berlin's "What will I do?".
No wonder the duo has been asked to tour with this "Broadway production". That's entertainment and Art!
- WHAT : "Concert with a story : Mark Erkens on Bernstein and American Music"
- WHO : Mark Erkens, piano
- WHEN : 27 February 2019µ
- WHERE : Lemmensinstituut, Leuven
- WHAT : "Trouble in Tahiti", opera by Leonard Bernstein
- WHO : Chamber music ensemble Lemmensinstituut conducted by Ivan Meylemans with among others Erwin Muller and Lotte Verstaen, vocals WHEN : 7 March 2019
- WHERE : Chamber music hall, Lemmensinstituut, Leuven
- WHAT : "Broadway meets Bernstein"
- WHO : Jeroen D'hoe, piano and Hanne Roos, soprano
- WHEN : 13 March 2019
- WHERE : 30CC Stadsschouwburg, Leuven
