 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 30 Sep. - 6 Oct. 1999 Issue No. 449 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 30 Sep. - 6 Oct. 1999 Issue No. 449
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Shades in paradise
By David Blake
The Cairo Symphony Orchestra, Mario Galeani (piano), Ahmed El-Saedi (conductor), Brahms' Haydn Variations op.56A, Chopin's Concerto No. 1 in E minor for Piano and Orchestra op.11 and Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony op.58. Cairo Opera House. Main Hall, 25 September
Tchaikovsky
After a chaotic married life which included ten years of leaping the chasms of social outrage or conformity on Tchaikovsky's part his creative motors had run down. A friend suggested he compose a sort of fantastic symphonic poem in the manner Berlioz had adopted in his symphonic fantasy.
So Tchaikovsky began a symphony set to a play, a romantic farrago of Byron's, a heavy load of love and lust, religiosity -- Christian and pagan -- orgies and general damnation at the end. Fortunately for posterity, in the resulting work Tchaikovsky's natural genius ran away with him and by 1885, a few years before his death, Manfred was performed.
The music is difficult and stony, bulky loads of rock-like musical formulas alternating with rainbow arcs of Debussy and Impressionism. The result was one of the most enthralling edifices this wondering compulsive genius ever achieved. Many of the climaxes get sent up into the air: big machines, he tires of them and makes them drop to earth to let them find their own fate. But nothing fails: the notes and tones seem to fit in an impossible pattern which keeps moving before our astonished ears.
How dare such folly hang together. Yet it does, with the help of organ music to swell it to majestic proportions and bells to sound the warning of mortality. Milton, Blake and even Bach are made to serve Tchaikovsky's purposes -- to make something new and dangerous. He does this. Manfred roles like a hurricane into the twentieth century. The sheer courage and indifference to all academic mooings are breathtaking.
The performance matched the music. One of the greatest things about El-Saedi's music making, one which his detractors do not apparently notice, is that he is never behind the movement or sidestepping it because of indifference. He is right there in the forefront. He puts the music clearly in relation to the times in which he lives. And these times are not made by individual political, religious or economic events. Rather they are corporate, the zeitgeist. He brings out of music something contemporary related to the excitement of now and is the only one in Cairo able to achieve this.
If the classical music revolution runs on at its present rate, Saedi can face any of the far out polemicists and walk away with his head on his shoulders because he works as much into the future as this music of Manfred.
It is vulgar and interesting enough to make classical symphonic music sound a load of crap. Tchaikovsky and his orphic vision induces him out into the furthest depths of acoustic space. He actually plays around with the new acoustics that are emerging today.
When Tchaikovsky's sexual propensities were discovered by Mother Russia's band of Romanov's she whisked him away into legend. And now, with Russia having slipped away also, Tchaikovsky glides on, majestically nonconformist, like a stately unsinkable iceberg glittering in a midnight sun. The music itself is keeping him afloat forever.
The first part of the concert was Brahms' Haydn St. Anthony Variations op. 56. Brahms is supposed to be the rock solid impenetrable wall of classical music. When you are fed up with polemics, porno or conbelto it is nice to have Brahms because he is the great standby in the ruins of the twentieth century. He doesn't talk much, he feels. Love is corny they croon but an awfully good pastime in winter or times of economic upset.
In this music the conductor was brisk and practical until variations six and seven -- and then he allowed Brahms to reveal his feelings and they are more than enough, a double-hand grasp to show that he is there when needed.
Last came Chopin's Concerto No. 1 in E minor for Piano and Orchestra op. 11 with a Sicilian player, Mario Galeani. There are so many ways to play this music: Godowsky, Richter, Lipatti -- the filigree can be stretched like rubber bands to accommodate any form of pianism. Is there a correct way? Chopin never made it into the sunny studios and so there is no proof. Galeani chose song so being Sicilian we had song but not slush or sugar. He was lovable. To see the care and attention he lavished on the endless bel canto was intriguing. No clever me, but when it came to the slow movement we had genuine Sicilian bravura. O how soon the beautiful things slide away.
Romeo and Juliet, Cairo Opera Orchestra, Ivan Filev (conductor), Dr Abdel-Moneim Kamel (artistic supervisor and director), 23 September
Remembering Romeo and Juliet? There have been three visiting Romeos, all unforgettably real but differing in the handling of the often tedious tale of family mafia in Renaissance Verona.
First came the Royal Ballet of Monte Carlo, twisting the story so that all the drama and dissembling came from the mother of Juliet, a powerful basaltic dragon, and Friar Laurence, a strange mystical priest endlessly spinning and weaving devious manoeuvres to separate the lovers. The decor was plainly austere but suggested a salacious extravagance.
The next Romeo came via the Lithuanian Ballet Company with Rostropovich to conduct the best ever heard performance of the complete Prokofiev score. The costumes were barbaric rags, no decor: merely the orchestral seatings of the players. Everything was up and down suggestive of primeval energies of which sex was merely one aspect.
The third Romeo, Royal Ballet of Flanders, gave out the childish, destructive, teenage virulence and in-fighting of clever but idle people. Love had no chance in this vulture's nest. So how went the chances for the Cairo Ballet to withstand such competitions.
Abdel-Moneim Kamel is an artist at whatever he undertakes, ballet to opera, but his methods and outlook are tightly bound to the great Russian works which he does in Cairo. Such an imperial layout of grandeur applied to the works of today, and particularly Romeo -- which has cashed in on being a teenage show -- bears the signs of being behind the movement.
In any Shakespearean play the brutes are seldom off the scene. For sure they will make an appearance and there will be some eye gouging. The playwright's world should really be the ballet's world, but with Kamel all rough stuff is banished. Everything is staid, respectable, dignified and positively sanitised. Everything is ritualistic in every movement, action is reduced to a few grandes jettés, and the story has gone out of the window.
This production with Prokofiev's heart-rending music, conducted by Ivan Filev, is so well played one's attention strays beyond the stage to plain audio enjoyment. The music was so powerfully penetrating that the carefully arranged mime show on stage was unnecessary.
Romeo, danced by Dmitri Shabalov, is a fine, classic, pure dancer but no actor. Sergei Belonsky as Tybalt had much energy and innovation, and Alexander Varonine as Mercutio is sympathetic and volatile. Paris is Nour Saad, one of the Cairo Ballet's hopes for the future and a company treasure if ever it is to branch out into new ventures.
Friar Laurence, Adel Afifi, does no more than become part of his own chapel walls as Juliet's saviour. As for the rest, as always with Abdel-Moneim Kamel, it was perfection; lighting and especially the clothes. These Veronese are immaculate. Their dress is toned down to subtle, lovely shades of red for one and green for the other. The killer families looked very elegant murderers, almost too fine for action.
And where is Juliet? She is there in this performance, Erminia Kamel. Since in this production both her parents have been phased out of the show, except for a few stately movements, she is very much on her own. Of late, she has looked a bit overpowered by the stately steel of the high classic formulas. But in this production, though still on point, her movements are more relaxed and humanised.
The number of choreographers involved in this particular production, including Cranko and MacMillan, are formidable. But Erminia knows her way. If only Romeo and a few of the toughs around him had been a bit dirtier, hairier and more macho, her portrait of a frail, unearthly child bride would have carried more weight.
As it is, she carries the victim of a family feud with a strange, exalted passion. Her beautiful arms move like plants and the easy charm and fresh, unspoiled dealings with those around her are always patrician. Juliet has married very badly into this gang of forever swooping creatures forever at their endless pavane of death.
As they say, in any production of Romeo, there is always Prokofiev. Perhaps it is best to offer a prayer for Abdel-Moneim Kamel who will never be a truly fulfilled being until they can find for him a Midas or a King Cresus to mount his own special, imperial version of Sleeping Beauty for the Cairo Opera.
