Eight classical gems amid the festival revelry
From July 18 to 27, the Ghent Festivities took place once again. One of Europe's largest folk festivals and biggest multi-day cultural festival. Ten days of culture in the city, featuring both ticketed and plenty of free performances. Well-known acts in cultural venues and on public squares, alongside street musicians who often surprise passersby. Among the hundreds of events, there's also quite a bit of classical music. Over eight days, I attended eight performances. Concerts in the Miryzaal, Sint-Jacobskerk, Sint-Michielskerk, a house concert, and a concert in a piano shop.Mysterious musical surprisesI listened to some classical favorites, discovered some remarkable composers, and ended up at a minimal music festival. They are gems performed by soloists and a few chamber music ensembles. At Sint-Jacobskerk, Sint-Michielskerk, and the Miryzaal, there's a classical concert every day during the Ghent Festivities. They draw large crowds. In Sint-Michielskerk, this series is called "musical respites." Misleading, because the word respite downplays the richness and surprising programming. It would be better called musical surprises.
On July 21, the mixed choir Mysterioso sang in Sint-Michielskerk. Originally the alumni choir of Artevelde University of Applied Sciences, they took their name from the café where they rehearse. The title of this concert is equally mysterious: "I Grille e le Voci," the crickets and the voices. Only eight singers stand on stage out of the twelve listed in the program. Two conductors alternate. It sounds different from a large choir, where each voice is absorbed into the whole. In this vocal octet, you hear every individual voice.
A large choir is like a big cruise ship where you barely feel the waves. A chamber choir, on the other hand, is like a small boat at sea. Sometimes they have to row against the waves; the contrasts between loud and soft could be clearer. But nevertheless, it's a real gem of a concert. That's mainly because of the multilingualism! Besides English and French, there are songs in Norwegian, Farsi, and even in the language of the Incas, Quechua. During intermission, Iranian musician Ehsan Yadollahi plays an intermezzo on his Tar, further underscoring the multicultural character of the choir.
Elbow grease
Renaat de Keyser is the first of two pianists I hear at the Ghent Festivities. He's 24 years old, graduated from the Ghent Conservatory under Daan Vandewalle. Besides Maurice Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin, he also plays works by the lesser-known composers George Antheil and Frederic Rzewski. He has worked closely with the latter.
American George Antheil is rarely performed. An enfant terrible, Renaat tells us at the start that it will become clear after a few measures why this work is called "sonata sauvage." It sometimes sounds monstrous. Stravinsky squared. Antheil was also influenced by post-World War I Futurism, using the piano as a percussion instrument to mimic machines. Strange to think this music is a hundred years old. It's only a few years apart from Ravel's Tombeau, which contrasts Antheil's violence through subtle harmonies. In the Tombeau, Renaat takes small liberties with tempo. A bit too lively for this lifeless music.
Renaat de Keyser is the first of two pianists I'm listening to at the Ghent Festival. He's 24 years old, graduated from the Ghent Conservatory under Daan Vandewalle. Besides Maurice Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin, he also performs works by lesser-known composers George Antheil and Frederic Rzewski. His teacher worked closely with the latter.
American George Antheil is rarely performed. An enfant terrible, Renaat tells us at the start that it will be clear within a few bars why this work is called "sonata sauvage." It sounds positively monstrous at times. Stravinsky squared. Antheil was also influenced by the futurism of the post-First World War era, using the piano as a percussion instrument to mimic machines. Strange to think this music is a hundred years old. It's only a few years apart from Ravel's Tombeau, which contrasts with Antheil's raw power through its subtle harmonies. In the Tombeau, Renaat takes small liberties with the tempo. A bit too lively for this funeral music.
Jazz tones are the golden thread running through the recital. The same goes for Rzewski, also an American composer with Polish roots like Antheil. The Winsboro Cotton Mill Blues sounds like authentic blues. In the fast sections, he uses not only his hands but sometimes also presses his elbows on the keys. Renaat De Keyser is a promising pianist and co-founder of Shapovalov, a group of young musicians who organize classical concerts in Ghent.
Swaying, swinging, and pounding
I've heard pianist Thomas Eeckhout at previous editions of the Ghent Festival. Under the name "the sounding dock," the Eeckhout family organizes a series of concerts in their spacious living room in a new apartment in the docks, with seating for about forty listeners. After his studies with Levente Kende in Antwerp, Thomas went on to perfect his craft in London, where he specialized in art song accompaniment. The Mozart Adagio 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 what comes next in his recital. With sweeping arm gestures, he introduces Chopin's Barcarolle. It's clear he works often with singers, as he can't help but sing the swaying movement of the gondola that the piece is based on. In Chopin, he reveals his Romantic soul. Last year he already performed all of Chopin's preludes at the sounding dock.
After Mozart and Chopin, we're heading to the Balkans. First with a rhapsody by Liszt, in which he demonstrates his finger dexterity and virtuosity.
It's a very bold choice to end with Szabadban by Béla Bartók. Here too, he introduces the piece in a vocal manner beforehand. Bartók doesn't write as virtuosically and pianistically as Liszt. As a Bartók fan, I of course prefer it that way, but Bartók is certainly a different listening experience than the Romantic Chopin or Liszt. "I'd rather hear Chopin's melodies than Bartók's pounding," I heard a woman admit at the drinks on the terrace afterwards, with the old harbor cranes in the background, which like iron giraffes majestically and gracefully embody the rich past of Ghent's harbor.
Bach, Ysaÿe, 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 challenging works for solo violin, she also introduces the audience to Deep Listening. She teaches us to listen in a different, more intense way. The audience is also involved. At one point, we're invited to hum or sing along, or to listen to our own breathing with our hands over our ears.
She begins with some works by Pauline Oliveros. They are improvisations. There is a sort of score, but it doesn't consist of musical notes but of a few sentences that you must translate on the violin. Already at 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 Ysaÿe. By Eugène Ysaÿe she plays the fourth sonata, dedicated to Fritz Kreisler. Perhaps the most difficult, because least spectacular, of the six. Extremely challenging, but Ruth pulls it off flawlessly. Then the first solo sonata by Bach. These days they are often played on Baroque violin or in a Baroque manner. Ruth applies this in a sense, as she plays the sonata consistently without vibrato. She fills the church with polyphonic texture. Especially in the second part, the fugue, that is impressive.
St. James' Day
The next event is not a concert, but a Catholic mass in the Sint-Jacobskerk. Like all St. James churches, this church is the starting point for pilgrims traveling to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. July 25 is the feast day of Saint James. The occasion for the annual pilgrims' mass, which almost every year falls during the Ghent Festival. At the same time, future pilgrims and their belongings are blessed. With their shoes, backpack, and walking stick, they come forward to be blessed by the priest.
The mass is enlivened by a real pilgrim choir. In the pilgrim 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 rings out, accompanied by organist Natalia Tchebotareva. I hear the melody of Sibelius' Finlandia in it. The finale is the Ultreia by Jean-Claude Bénazet, the most famous song of the camino.
The church is filled with an older audience. Many of them made part or all of the pilgrimage during the last few decades. Only one of them made the journey, the camino, forty years ago. That pilgrim is myself. I set off in 1985 from the portal of this church, after receiving our first stamp in the rectory. I was nineteen, the beginning of an unforgettable adventure in a time without cell phones, without credit cards, and with a simple ten-speed bicycle.
The Last Rays of Sunlight
Back in the Miryzaal, for the young string quartet Lusco Fusco. This cheerful name is Galician for the last rays of sunlight 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've been playing together as a string quartet for barely a year, the most difficult form of ensemble playing for strings.
You have to give them some credit, as there were quite a few intonation inaccuracies. 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 harder than string trio. Those are three, a quartet must form a unity, must transcend the four individual string players. That's always dancing on a tightrope 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!
Wonder Boys
On Saturday, July 26, I walk again to the Sint-Jacobskerk. Via the Vlasmarkt, it's wading through scattered garbage left by the revelers from the night before. A lone drunk sits half-lying on a bench, dazed by beer and the techno beats of the previous night... Ghent Festival, that's high and low culture.
On the program was cellist Jacob Van Durme with pianist Taha Posman, featuring 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 Brahms' clarinet trio. So we hear the acclaimed Malatya trio, clarinet, cello, and piano. The Posman brothers begin with Schumann's Fantasiestücke. Yassine plays wonderfully slow and lyrical, 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's always autumn, I once read. Also in this ripe clarinet trio. In the slow section, the clarinet alternates between the clarion and chalumeau registers. Yassine can work magic with his clarinet. As they demonstrated at a concert in early May, the Posman brothers show once again here that they are the wonder boys of Ghent's classical music scene. Not blood but musical notes flow through their veins. Besides being musicians and conductors, they've also started their concert organization, the Shapovalov concerts.
Ottomani
In the afternoon I go to the Shapovalov festival in the halls of the piano house Quatre Mains. The festival is dedicated to minimal music. All afternoon there are nine performances in the rooms and in the courtyard. First, I listen to the most famous work by Simeon ten Holt, Canto Ostinato. The work is freely interpreted in different configurations. Here, in the showroom of the piano store, four pianists play it on four grand pianos. Eight hands, huit-mains, ottomani.
Minimal music is mostly mesmerizing, meditative, sometimes impressive, sometimes confusing, sometimes sleep-inducing. The same motifs are repeated for minutes on end, until there's a small change, when it continues for minutes again. It's a completely different listening experience than "ordinary" classical music. As if your brain during this forty-minute performance of Ten Holt is put on hold. As mesmerizing music, it even sounds Oriental in places, ottomani, Ottoman...
Buddhist monastery
I really need to recover from this and grab a beer on the terrace. There's no escaping it, because two accordionists are getting ready on the terrace for "Accordion Phase" by Steve Reich, the most famous composer of minimalist music. Insofar as you can even call him a composer, because usually there's not much written down. The score is more of a machine manual. It often sounds like a machine too—a humming loom endlessly reproducing musical notes. The two accordionists Thijs Amez and Jeroen Werbrouck sit a few meters across from each other, staring each other down as if they're ready for a duel.
In any case, it's music that makes you think. Empty music, almost devoid of meaning. Perhaps the point is that it barely has any meaning. What is music, what is musical content? Interesting questions, just as postmodernism has made me waver as a historian and made me think about history in a completely different way. That hypnotic, meditative quality evokes yet another association. It's as if we're sitting in a Buddhist monastery here, among meditating and chanting monks. Minimalist music was a pleasant detour among the other concerts at the Ghent Festival. After three hours of Reich, Arvo Pärt, and Simeon ten Holt, I've had enough and I'm heading home, back to Mozart, Beethoven, and Bartók!
