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Al-Ahram Weekly 2 - 8 March 2000 Issue No. 471 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 2 - 8 March 2000 Issue No. 471
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Interview Features Focus Heritage Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Where are the giants?
By David Blake
Piano Recital, Yung Wook Yo (Solo Piano), Cairo Opera House, Small Hall, February 22
They say there are no more young giants around, not the ones who play the piano. There are a few, however, and this one turned up unheralded at the Small Hall. And small it was for young Wook Yo's presence. He made the small place very small indeed. In fact it seemed, by the end of the concert, to have split apart. They say Liszt did similar things with concert halls when he was in the right mood.
The right mood would do for this player and his piano. He made it sound like a Steinway, one in a very good mood, out to enjoy itself and knock the spots off all opponents. And the young man resembled Leopold Godowsky. He's no giant to look at. Neat, small, he is absolutely possessed by his mission once he begins to play, at which point you cease to be conscious of him. No hands, no gestures, no nods or dramatic flingings of arms or head. He is ramrod straight, not colourful at all except when the music begins. It is then colour and tone that start to flood the place. And it is Godowsky he resembles because of his tone. Tone, tone and tone again.
From a spiritual, non-human whisper to enormous plunges and thunders, from bass to treble, the piano is his shell of fire. Every note and phrase is clear, he flashes out rubies, sapphires and emeralds, night blooming flowers of sound making bouquets of mixed colour far out of the reach of most players. The finest thing about him is his approach to the music itself. He has forgotten virtuoso -- it is too easy for him -- and goes instead for mood, nuance and structure. Musical notes make his sound and sound makes his story. He is neither abstract-cruel nor hard driven. He is no machine or techno god. He is a player and his instrument, the piano, is charmed by all he does.
The storms, when they come, are never shallow or pure show. They are warm and generous. He began with Schubert's impromptus. Right from the beginning, the tones almost flattered Schubert, song like with a mystery of darkness and passion. Well-known sections in the four pieces showed original thought. He took them far out of the music room or concert hall and put them in caverns of reflected light.
Classic was a far off word, not to be mentioned during this concert. Yung Wook Yo comes from the Pacific, the source of so many shocks to the West's carefully erected lines of defence.
His next showing was astounding, Brahms's Piano Concerto no.2 in F sharp minor (1853). No amount of preparation could have predicted the shocks this music made. Brahms at the beginning, wild, tumultuous, alluring and irresistible. Such emotions were finally to be stabilised by the fourth symphony. This performance let loose the power and shine of a true immortal and the Small Hall was awash.
His final triumph was an exposition of Liszt's Après une lecture de Dante. It was Virgilian -- we were tossed to heaven and hell and the spirits fought it out on a voyage so dramatic one wondered if the piano was a Steinway and would hold up to the poundings it received. Everything held because the tone always sang, even in the Stygian depths of the piano.
There is no use asking questions about such a player or making what amounts to resentful noises about noise and Liszt's failings as a composer. Liszt had everything and so did this pianist. One's liking for thunder is a superfluous flaw of our own characters.
Danse qu'on Croise, Hassan and Naima, Osiris, Cairo Opera Ballet Company, Cairo Opera Orchestra, 25 and 27 February
photo: Sherif Sonbol
When Thierry Malandin first worked here he made a great impression. He is one of the truly authentic choreographers, not a gimmick man full of tricks to shock or galvanise.
Yet his work is truly contemporary. It is often laconic and deadly. Cynical or ironic, with sudden flashes of yearning, elegiac poetry. It is choreography that speaks. It talks, it belongs with the music and music seems to come first to him in these days of total freedom. He erects a no nonsense barrier. This is words and music, a kind of total theatre, not just dance or an off-shoot of circus haute couture.
A girl in a grey dress with a pink handkerchief at her throat begins to dance, determined, humourous and jauntily aggressive. Every step she dances is newly arranged. It is almost classic, and street conscious. The steps make it clear she is doing something, that she is about to quarrel with a boy, or get bored and dance alone or just become fed up and flop. She becomes a person, not just a few limbs waving in the air. So Danse qu'on Croise flew airily onto the stage of the Cairo Opera House.
The ballet has, in spite of Abdel-Moneim Kamel's meditations on the great classics, a need for something new and Malandin is the one to do it. He can be like the great Massine, popular and exalted.
The ballet is set to Brahms's Hungarian dances, wittily arranged rather than sent up. But everything is slightly off beat as the dashing music flashes forward. The ballet makes gentle fun of itself. The speed is rapid. The eight dancers of four girls and four boys are dressed in light, luminous grey street outfits. They are casual rather than hairy modern. It fits a picture of laconic irony, lazy but completely aware and ready for chance encounters.
The young can be choosy and flippant but these kids keep their class. Much of the dancing is a take off of other people's lives and movements, and it tells a tale. Four boys are looking for girls, finding them, making a big pass at them and getting little response. The girls shrug off the big romantic deal and go their way.
Then the ballet with Brahms as conniver make the big swing change. Both parties of four regret the shrug and leave the scene, but it is too late. The generous Hungarian schmaltzy swoops into action. It is too late. A shrug is only as might have been. Maybe next time, and Danse qu'on Croise ends.
Sad young life again, lonely but doomed to search for the right ones. Really it is an elegy in grey and pink and it is brief. What will they do when winter comes? Horace.
The Cairo Opera made a happy choice. This loaded and sophisticated work needed something not too far from the present to support it.
But why, of all things, were two quite ordinary, uneventful and placidly choreographed Pharaonic ballets related to nothing but an academic classroom chosen to compete with the audience's reaction to Danse qu'on Croise.
Hassan and Naima, the first of the two, was so brief it could be classed only as a charade. The Osiris ballet, seen here before, is still chained to Gamal Abdel-Rahim's clever mixture of late Viennese and percussion style; chilly but related to nothing, doing little to suggest anything except a rather embarrassing end of term student show. Aida is about as far as the theatre here can go facing Ptolemaic problems. To attempt anything else seems to lead straight to the tombs.
