Eight classical gems amidst the festive commotion
From 18 to 27 July, the Ghent Festival took place again. One of the largest popular festivals, the largest multi-day cultural festival in all of Europe. Ten days of culture in the city, with both paid and many free performances. Well-known names in cultural venues and on the squares, alongside street musicians who often surprise passersby. Among the hundreds of events, there is also quite a bit of classical music. In eight days I attended eight performances. Concerts in the Miryzaal, the Sint-Jacobskerk, the Sint-Michielskerk, a house concert, a concert in a piano shop.
Mysterious musical surprises
I listened to some classics, also discovered some special composers and ended in a festival of minimal music. They are gems performed by soloists and some chamber music ensembles. In the Sint-Jacobskerk, the Sint-Michielskerk as well as in the Miryzaal, there is a classical concert every day during the Ghent Festival. They attract a large audience. In the Sint-Michielskerk, this series is called "musical reposes". Misleading, because the word repose belies the wealth and surprising programming. It would be better called musical surprises.
On 21 July, the mixed choir Koor Mysterioso sang in the Sint-Michielskerk. Originally the alumni choir of the Artevelde University of Applied Sciences, they took their name from the café where they rehearse. The title of this concert is also mysterious: "I Grille e le Voci", the crickets and the voices. Only eight singers stand on the podium of the twelve listed in the brochure. Two conductors alternate with each other. It sounds different from a large choir, where each voice is absorbed into the larger whole. In this vocal octet you hear every individual voice.
A large choir is like a large cruise ship where you barely feel the waves. A chamber choir, on the other hand, is like a rowboat at sea. Sometimes they have to row against the waves, the contrasts forte and piano could be somewhat clearer. But nevertheless it is a gem of a concert. This is primarily due to the multilingualism! Besides English and French, there are songs in Norwegian, Farsi and even in the language of the Incas, Quechua. During the intermission, Iranian Ehsan Yadollahi plays an intermezzo on his Tar, which further underscores the multicultural character of the choir.
Elbow work
Renaat de Keyser is the first of two pianists I hear at the Ghent Festival. He is 24 years old, graduated from the Ghent Conservatory with Daan Vandewalle. Besides the Tombeau de Couperin by Maurice Ravel, he also plays works by lesser-known composers George Antheil and Frederic Rzewski. He has worked closely with the latter with his teacher.
American George Antheil is rarely performed. An enfant terrible, Renaat tells us at the beginning that after a few bars it will become clear why this work is called "sonata sauvage". It sometimes sounds monstrous. Stravinsky squared. Antheil was also influenced by the futurism after World War I, with the piano as a percussion instrument to imitate machines. Strange to think that this music is a hundred years old. It's only a few years apart from Ravel's Tombeau, which contrasts with Antheil's violence through subtle harmonies. In the Tombeau, Renaat takes small liberties with the tempo. Somewhat too lively for this deathly music.
Jazz sounds are a thread through the recital. Also with Rzewski, another American composer with Polish roots like Antheil. The Winsboro Cotton Mill Blues then sounds like a true blues. In the fast sections, not only the hands are used, but sometimes he also presses his elbows on the keys. Renaat De Keyser is a promising pianist, co-founder of Shapovalov, a group of young musicians who organize classical concerts in Ghent.
Rocking, swaying and hammering
Pianist Thomas Eeckhout I have heard during previous editions of the Ghent Festival. Under the name "het klinkende dok", the Eeckhout family organizes a series of concerts in their spacious living room in a new apartment in the docks, which can accommodate approximately forty listeners. After his studies with Levente Kende in Antwerp, Thomas went on to perfect himself in London, where he specialized in art song accompaniment. The adagio by Mozart, with which he opens, sounds extremely controlled and refined. Not technically difficult, but as always with Mozart, the pianist cannot hide behind virtuosity and bravura.
After Mozart, Thomas stands up and explains the rest of his recital. With sweeping arm movements, he introduces Chopin's Barcarolle. It is evident that he works often with singers, as he cannot help but sing the rocking movement of the gondola, on which the piece is based. In Chopin he unfolds his romantic soul. Last year he already played all the Chopin preludes during het klinkende dok.
After Mozart and Chopin, it goes to the Balkans. First with a rhapsody by Liszt, in which he demonstrates how nimble-fingered and virtuoso he is.
It is a very bold choice to then end with Szabadban by Béla Bartók. Here too, he beforehand explains the piece in a singing manner. Bartók does not write as virtuously and pianistically as Liszt. As a Bartók fan, I certainly wish for nothing more, but Bartók is of course a different listening experience than the romantic Chopin or Liszt. "I prefer to hear the melodies of Chopin than the hammering in Bartók," I heard a woman admit at the drink on the terrace afterwards, with the old harbor cranes in the background, which like iron giraffes stately and gracefully embody the rich past of the Ghent harbor.
Bach, Ysaӱe and Deep Listening
Ruth Mareen gave a remarkable solo recital on July 24 at 11 a.m. in the Sint-Jacobskerk. Remarkable is no exaggeration here. She not only performs some extremely difficult works for solo violin, but also introduces the audience to what Deep Listening is. She teaches us to listen in a different, more intense way. The audience is also involved. At one point we are invited to hum or sing along, or to listen to our own breathing with our hands over our ears.
She begins with several works by Pauline Oliveros. These are improvisations. There is a kind of score, but it does not consist of musical notes, but of a few sentences that you must render on the violin. Already in the first notes we hear the crystal-clear sound of her violin, a Jacquot from 1876.
Then comes the main course, two solo sonatas from the two bibles of the solo violin repertoire, the solo sonatas of Bach and Ysaӱe. By Eugène Ysaӱe she plays the fourth sonata, dedicated to Fritz Kreisler. Perhaps the most difficult, because least spectacular of the six. Extremely demanding, but Ruth pulls it off unscathed. Then the first solo sonata by Bach. These are nowadays often played on baroque violin or in a baroque manner. Ruth applies that in a sense, as she plays the sonata consistently without vibrato. She fills the church with the polyphonic texture. Especially in the second part, the fugue, that is impressive.
St. James's Day
The next event is not a concert, but a Catholic mass in the Sint-Jacobskerk. Like all St. James churches, this church is also the starting point for pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela in Northwest Spain. July 25 is the feast day of Saint James. The occasion for the annual pilgrimage mass, which almost every year falls during the Ghent Festivities. Pilgrims and their belongings are blessed at this time. With their shoes, backpack, walking stick, they come forward to be blessed by the priest.
The mass is enlivened by a genuine pilgrims' choir. In the pilgrims' choir "Adalard van Aubrac" under the direction of Johan De Ridder, only pilgrims sing! They sing religious songs, including the well-known Donna Nobis Pacem by Mozart. At the end of the mass, a peace song sounds, accompanied by organist Natalia Tchebotareva. I hear the melody of Sibelius' Finlandia in it. The finale is the Ultreia by Jean-Claude Bénazet, the best-known song of the camino.
The church is filled with an older audience. Many of them made part or all of the pilgrimage journey during the last few decades. Only one of them made the journey, the camino, 40 years ago. That pilgrim is myself. I departed in 1985 from the portal of this church, after we received our first stamp in the rectory. I was nineteen, the beginning of an unforgettable adventure in a time without a mobile phone, without a bank card and with a simple bicycle with ten gears.
Last Rays of Sunshine
Back in the Miryzaal, for the young string quartet Lusco Fusco. This cheerful name is Galician for the last rays of sunshine of the day. Apart from the Flemish Rune, first violin, the other members of the quartet come from Galicia, Northern Spain, where Santiago de Compostela is also located. Cristina plays second violin, Jorge viola and Ignacio cello.
They study chamber music at the Ghent conservatory, they have been playing together as a string quartet for barely a year, the most difficult form of ensemble playing for string players.
You have to give them some credit, because there were quite a few intonation impurities. The second violin sounds too much in the background, while it often also has an expressive melody. But after the first movement of Beethoven op. 18 no. 4 they land on their feet and sometimes it sounds wonderfully beautiful. String quartet is more difficult than string trio. Those are three, a quartet must form a unit, must transcend the four individual string players. That is always dancing on a rope without a net. After Beethoven they play Mendelssohn's masterful second quartet op. 13, which he wrote at eighteen. What a genius, this Mozart of the nineteenth century!
Wonderboys
On Saturday, July 26, I walk to the Sint-Jacobskerk again. Via the Vlasmarkt it is wading through scattered garbage left by the revelers of the previous night. A solitary drunk is half lying on a bench, numbed by beer and the technobeats of the night before… Ghent Festivities, that is high and low culture.
On the program were cellist Jacob Van Durme with pianist Taha Posman, with the cello sonata by Rachmaninov and Pohádka by Janáček. But Taha's brother, clarinetist Yassine, comes forward with an announcement. No Rachmaninov, but instead they play the clarinet trio by Brahms. So we hear the acclaimed Malatya trio, clarinet, cello and piano. The Posman brothers begin with the Phantasiestücke by Robert Schumann. Yassine plays wonderfully slowly and lyrically, perfectly spun out musical phrases. At one point a chair shifts, its legs making a tritone with the clarinet. Schumann has gone mad.
With Brahms it is always autumn, I once read. Also in this mature clarinet trio. In the slow section, the clarinet alternates between the clarion and chalumeau register. Yassine can work wonders with his clarinet. As at a concert in early May, the brothers Posman also show here that they are the wonder boys of the Ghent classical music scene. In their veins flows not blood but musical notes. Besides being musicians and conductor, they have also started their concert organization, the Shapovalov concerts.
Ottomani
In the afternoon I go to the Shapovalov festival in the halls of piano house Quatre Mains. The festival focuses on minimal music. Throughout the afternoon there are nine performances in the rooms and in the courtyard. First I go to listen to the best-known work by Simeon ten Holt, Canto Ostinato. The work is free to interpret in different ensembles. Here, in the showroom of the piano shop, four pianists play it on four grand pianos. Eight hands, huit-mains, ottomani.
Minimal music, that is above all enchanting, meditative, sometimes impressive, sometimes confusing, sometimes sleep-inducing. The same motifs are repeated for minutes on end, until there is a small change, when it continues for minutes again. It is a totally different listening experience than "ordinary" classical music. As if your brain in this performance of Ten Holt is put on hold for forty minutes. As enchanting music it sounds here and there almost oriental, ottomani, Ottoman…
Buddhist monastery
I must really recover from it and go to the courtyard for a beer. I cannot escape it, because two accordionists are preparing themselves in the courtyard for "Accordion Phase" by Steve Reich, the best-known composer of minimal music. Insofar as you can speak of a composer here, since usually there is not much written down. The score is more of a machine's manual. It often sounds like a machine too, a humming loom that endlessly reproduces musical notes. The two accordionists Thijs Amez and Jeroen Werbrouck sit a few meters opposite each other, staring at each other as if they are ready for a duel.
In any case, it is music that makes you think. Empty music, almost without meaning. The meaning is perhaps that it hardly has meaning. What is music, what is musical content? Interesting questions, just as postmodernism as a historian has made me waver and think about history in a completely different way. That enchanting, meditative quality evokes another association. It is as if we are sitting here in a Buddhist monastery, among meditating and reciting monks. Minimal music was a nice excursion between the other concerts at the Ghent Festivities. After three hours of Reich, Arvo Pärt and Simeon ten Holt it has been enough and I go home, back to Mozart, Beethoven and Bartók!