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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 March 1999 Issue No. 419 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 March 1999 Issue No. 419
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Don't tell Cairo
By David Blake
Georges KazazianRiyah El-Ganoub Concert; Georges Kazazian, with nine musicians, Beit Al-Harrawi, 25 February
This is not Manhattan, and the Harrawi House is not the Blue Room, but this is something like the Ellington soirées. Kazazian is not a giant of Ellington's weight, but there is a breath of something different, incomparable and incomplete about him which suggests comparisons.He goes way out on the music-lines with his own things, regardless of consequences. It is dangerous. What if he falls off? Sometimes he does -- almost. The trying's the thing. Music dies without it.
Tonight is a programme called Riyah El-Ganoub (Winds of the South), and Kazazian's usually small ensemble has been enlarged to nine -- almost a small orchestra. This presents problems for such an outfit as Kazazian's, whose work is built around off-the-cuff improvisation. Tonight with the bigger ensemble he is fully extended into new areas. It begins out of the detritus of broken sands. The music goes along in a bare line to start with, gradually building forms. First we notice a rababa (violin), then a kawala (flute), then others murmuring, the mizmar constantly, with something percussive going on behind it. The sounds are not exactly tunes, relating to neither Arabic nor Western key changes.
Yet the result is not abstract, owing nothing to Western descriptive sounds. One does like a good old crochet or quaver, but there are none about to hang on to. Previously his tones were colourful, inventive, but on this evening we were going through a sort of purgatory between the living and the dead. Remarkable ideas, but to so completely erase consciousness is tricky and perilous in music. Once in Kazazian's music there were landmarks -- Indian, Polynesian, almost something like an ocean or a desert. These spaces and encounters have been filled by endless minutiae of sounds, tickings, knockings, pianissimo or percussive wooden noises like rattling pill boxes. Time has broken down completely. We meet things, mites, chirpings and croonings of things like birds.
Once all these were night creatures used by him in curtains of sound, but they have now shrunk to individual minute voices. Things move, but nothing coalesces. Kazazian has done away even with insects. All this is done with art -- some echoes of the flute, woeful and lost, are despairingly beautiful, played by the famous instrumentalists of this ensemble. They are virtuosos of the incomprehensible who have swept the page clean. This is one of the stop-gaps. Kazazian's present music opens the question, where do we go from here?
His ploy is a partly human voice, acidatious, clear, vibrationless -- a sort of sexless choirboy who emits long vocalese. These do not stop the gap, they widen it. Kazazian is a master of open space, high visionary music-lines. But in this music, we are in no place in particular. Everything is dead. Even the voice is lost in its own incorporeality.
There are times when it seemed as if the show needed more space and would be better in the big hall at the Opera House. Some of it is not music at all.
The first performance was constantly bothered by the media gadgetry nipping about among the audience. The girl singer, Miriam, designated voice, was hidden behind the hedge of electronica. Nothing of this would have been of any consequence had Kazazian brought off a flight of musical fireworks. Maybe next time round.
A Concert of the Strings Family: Music for All, Cairo Opera Orchestra, conducted by Mahmoud Ossman; Cairo Opera House Small Hall, 26 February
On the last Friday of every month there's a concert organised by Sherif Mohieddin, creator of the series Music for All and of the Akhnaton Orchestra, which plays for many of these occasions. These concerts are for free -- just walk in as you are, shop-soiled or bag-ridden, children or not. It's relaxed, but given by the best professionals in Cairo. As this concert series has developed, it has become unmissable, one of the best in the city. Its standards are bettered month by month. Now it is equal to, if not surpassing, anything from abroad.Last month it offered a Bach concert of great beauty. This month Music for All went far beyond anything it has so far offered. The members of the Cairo Opera Orchestra were unbeatable, assisted by Mahmoud Ossman, the violinist, who conducted with strength and speed, taking the ensemble and soloists through a collection of original pieces that had probably not been given in Cairo before.
First thing offered was the Beethoven Romance in F major with Mahmoud Ossman as conductor and soloist. No warmer-up, it began vibrant, forceful, nothing silky or satin-bed-covered. The strings were grainy with vibrato and the tempo was strong. It was real Beethoven tone, all of it very sinewy in a happy mood. The second offering was a Sinfonia concertante for double bass, viola and orchestra by Dittersdorf. Mahmoud Ossman was the viola, and Eglal Abdel-Shaker was on the double bass.
As she entered, she and the huge instrument looked as if they were on a mountain top: her tone promised to be thunderous. It was not, it was warm and crooned beautifully, in full accord with Ossman's viola. As the piece moved along, everything was clear, lively and high humoured. In the second movement, bass and viola were actually whispering tones together.
Vivaldi came next with a Concerto for two cellos and orchestra, soloists Mahmoud Salah and Hassan Mo'taz.
Vivaldi showed what you could do with two cellos playing at the same time. They gossiped, they giggled, chattering and contradictory. Everything was moved along at high speed, with sudden gasps for breath. What made this performance so moving was that it was not only dazzle, but something softer and vulnerable, the worldly rattle of the passing scene.
Then Manal Mohieddin played Debussy's Danse sacrée et profane. When this artist bustles on to the platform, elegant and businesslike, takes her seat at the splendid heraldic instrument and begins to play, you can leave all critical judgments aside. Seated at the harp, she becomes another creature, some being from the tapestry of La Dame à la licorne, a white satyr or unicorn. She mythologises herself into one of the authentic sights and sounds of Cairo. Her fingers of steely delicacy weave colours and visions beyond time and place. How do such fingers work on cold nights like this one? There is a Dittersdorf which might suit her.
For now we had the two Debussy pieces which she transformed into things which made the listeners believe that from the harp issued all music. This beautiful valuable concert which will live in the mind ended with Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No 3 BMV 1408. If you think you know all about Bach and the Brandenburgs, it was a very joyful revelation to realise you do not.
The flowing continuo section was played by Mustafa Carna, with an echo in which the harpsichord added the only new sound heard at the concert. The piece was brief. Ossman and the players sailed high into the sky like a Chinese kite with a dazzling pair of tails. And there it went, off into the air, and ended. Music for All had enlivened another Friday.
