Something's got to give

By David Blake

It has had a number of famous commanders on the bridge, sometimes pulling in opposite directions. Some stay, most go. And then came Ramzi Yassa. Well, he does not fit the picture at all. He is young, famous, clever, elegant, humorous and wise and he has absolutely no side. His manners are immaculately laid back and relaxing. There is not a trace of "I am in a position of authority" about him. When the coffee arrives, he is out of his chair to give it to you himself before you can respond.

I was early for an appointment to see him -- very. Door people knew in advance. "He's there," they whispered, "in his new office," the one formerly used by Samir Zaki, at the end of a long passage.

The door opens. He darts out rather like a young child who feels he should not be there and, nodding his head quickly, beckons and smiles me in.

The new director of the Cairo Opera House. He laughs rather conspiratorially. His election to his new position as "director" has been running in the rumour mills for weeks. Only one thing is up for question -- why? Why choose to enter the opera house circus? He already knows the international piano circus and has made a good job at it. But why the Cairo Opera?

We sit. We digress as must be. He is a respected artist who has played in the best places. For years he has lived in Paris, is married to a French wife, and has two children. But recently a lot has been happening to music outside of Egypt than merely the coming of a new century.

The world of music to which Yassa has been accustomed received a major blow from Norbert Wiener and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For giving humanity cybernetics, which already changed, and will further change, civilisations, they have a lot to answer for. Cybernetics helped pave the way for the electronic brain of the computer and it is already in rebellion against mainstream culture everywhere. Music has been toppled, turned turtle. We really can never hear Bach as Bach was before the turtle turned. Classic music, as it is called, is going down head first. The future is more exciting than what is left of the past. In this post-cybernetics universe there is no word for new; everything is in flux. Yassa feels out of place in it.

And so, more or less, this is why Ramzi Yassa is here. Change, and the desire slowly to come to terms with newness. He is not homesick; he has no nostalgia for the Old Nile. He is very happy and was doing fine in Paris. He is not here because he has nowhere else to go. His picture did not fade; he is here because the picture altered and he feels it acutely and wants space out and off to re-see himself.

This is obvious when you take a long look at him as man and artist. He comes from a long line of pianists, specially made in Moscow, indulged and assisted there, with complete success, to become a certain type of player.

Russian players roamed the world. Their technique was watertight, indestructible and seamless, almost too much so. The German and French, with extraordinary special beauties of their own, were less adaptable to every kind of music than were the Russians. They never taught pianists to be machines in Russia, and still do not. Their technical power was given to free them.

Yassa has all this and something else. At times the very lid of the piano opens and out comes unexpected music, which is a challenge. This is the special type of player he is, a virtuoso who kicks and then moves into deeper water than others. He is an artist. He has coordination skills, from brain to finger, too quick for sight but not for the audio apparatus of the skilled listener. He can attain in an instant great speeds in which the hands in action become invisible. They are playing faster than sight can follow them.

These gifts are polished by practice. Yassa says if he does not practice he cannot sleep. If he cannot sleep, he says, he worries. "I've got two octopuses in my life now, Paris and my life there and the Cairo Opera, with me in the middle." It sounds forbidding, maybe the end of him as a pianist.

He jumps up: "Never. Something new will come up; other lights will blink. Pianos are capricious instruments that seem to go away from you, but it is always you who goes away from them. I could never leave the piano even if I did begin to go batty. It needs me to be dependent on." This is quite straight, and it pays to see him as straight as he sees himself.

The image of Dear Old Ramzi, the Mr Right of Egyptian classical music, needs a dusting up. He has been stuck too tightly to Beethoven; it's time to try other people's piano concertos. He might start with Elliott Carter, and the good old image for sure would still fill the house. He says: "Maybe. When they, the committees, first time round offered me the job of director, I refused. My friends were happy. I refused because there were no options of freedom of movement given to me. I would have been stuck inside the palace walls. This time, all the options are open; I can do more or less what I like, and since they know I hate sitting down, they know I'll do something."

Can you refuse anything?

"The lot. If the plan now works, I have free time to practice, to travel around for concert dates, and see what's going on in the music world abroad, and I would come back."

To do what?

"We'll see. So far, angel's wings."

But why a director, and for what?

"Everyone is a director in official Egypt. If you aren't, you get about 100 pounds a month. Committees sign papers, deliberate for weeks about tiny things, disagree, make small scandals, cancel, re-meet and then sign. And so it goes on and on. I am a director of angel's wings."

Ramzi Yassa is making a temporary call in Cairo. Pianists today, any way, are like old Hollywood film stars. They shine and then go into the shadows, but they never die. However difficult it is to see Yassa as a worker, even a director in an opera house, that's where he'll be for quite a bit.

Yassa has joined the mysterious Bal Masqué of the directors -- the Dancing Committees. Being a good Sa'idi, and young, he enjoys a fight. He might help to liven up the palace in the gardens of Zamalek with his own special war manoeuvres.