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Al-Ahram Weekly 22 - 28 June 2000 Issue No. 487 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 22 - 28 June 2000 Issue No. 487
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Focus Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters I married an eagle
By David Blake
Cairo Symphony Orchestra, soloist (cello) Kamal Salah El-Din, conductor Imre Kollar, Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 17 June
This radiant, happy concert might have added to the title, "I was fathered by an eagle, and I married two more." The fortunate one about eagles was the great Cosima Liszt, daughter of Franz, the composer of the opening number of our concert, called Les Preludes, who married Hans von Bulow -- and then Richard Wagner. She was some eagle herself, her nest being European music. This Lisztian concert created an enormous arch of sound from himself in his heyday until the tumultuous end of the 20th century. Fortunate us to have the listening of it because we had another eagle, Imre Kollar, the astounding young Hungarian maestro to conduct the Cairo Symphony Orchestra. When this orchestra is under the direction of a strong, imaginative player, we hear the striking results, proud, fearless, leaping bounds of sound all perfectly coordinated with no noise, just the full glory of the composer's notes and no more.
It began of course with Cosima's father, Liszt. He was always a problem, as Wagner found when he married his daughter. Liszt had everything -- he was a god, an immortal commanding the keyboard of a young instrument, the piano-forte. There were others of course, von Bulow, the great pianist, Cosima's first husband. But Liszt was the first, always number one, universally acclaimed as such. Had he died and gone to eternity, leaving nothing but his legend as a pianist, it would have been more convenient. But he left a lot of music besides. The divine hands had woven a strange hodgepodge, inspirations which often turned into portentous afterthoughts. Liszt was always grand and true. There is nothing small or second-rate about him. He is a Promethian but at times the Great Gesture escapes his grasp. Never at the piano, but his web of orchestral thought often gives out and falters in comparison with the really exalted orchestral composers, for example Strauss or Bartok.
We were fortunate to have had Imre Kollar here on a visit to present Liszt in this big piece, Les Preludes, as he seldom is.
Pianists of this age can no longer get away with a mere show of technique as they used to. Deep study has shown Liszt was often the show man but never the clown or comic relief. He was a true romantic who thought deeply about how to display the transcendence of music. Listening to his wonder piece, Jeux d'Eux at the Villa d'Este, the glistening cascades of sound are Horatian, tragic, brief glimpses of the true beauty of evanescence. It was this Lisztian aspect of elegiac thought that Kollar gave the audience. This long meditation on love begins with whispers and slight intimations before the grand, unreeling of the key melody which halts the entire piece. One may dispense with the fustian words of the Romantics but revel in the fustian movements of the music. That's exactly where Liszt catches the vulgar listener. He has placed a supreme chout d'esprit down as a snare in front of them. There is a slip -- and the vulgarian goes far away to toy land in deepest dark.
This aspect of Liszt was much used in the 20th century to show his greatness and breadth of vision, and so it is with Kollar. Our sympathies fly away with Lisztian grandeur and majesty. The world he wrote about is gone, all the greater a treasure to have musician-poets like Kollar who can understand and deliver it. The Liszt spirit lives in music.
The Dmitri Kabalevsky concerto no.2 for cello and orchestra is a disturbing masterpiece without ancestors or descendants. It is an event. Like the music of Liszt, we are conscious of something like great wings spread out above us, swooping away to far places -- fortunately the eagle is the bird of Zeus, king of the gods, and so there is plenty of room on his back for travellers into music's strange, peripheral distances. East or west, north or south, no matter where, it is a vast new space that we enter. Imre Kollar is an exciting guide, because of his sympathy and penetration. His ego doesn't explode all over the place. It's not me, what I'm giving, but look what I've found, let's share it. Kollar of course is young, and that makes a difference -- in his case for our pleasure, because the laying out for the listener of this vast, complex piece is a trial for the maestro, soloist and orchestra -- with the result that we are given a revelation.
This concert was one of the great nights in the Cairo Opera House and for which they can be proud, especially the soloist, Kamal Salah El-Din. The orchestral web is huge. The orchestra seemed ranged, one line above another, like an army. All of the players were deeply involved, nothing was careless. Kollar has many eyes and ears. He also, without undue demonstrations, shows what the greatest maestros achieve -- quiet insistence on the composer's rights. he showed us Kabalevsky in the original and it was quite devastating. It is a strange sort of music. The cello soloist is called upon to perform horrendous difficulties at lightning speed, flutters of double stops and endless runs, and all of it in a hushed, subversive manner, secrets, receipts for plots that will never take place. Most of the first movement suggests a great sleeping thing, maybe a beast waking from deep sleep, lazily stretching out its great strength. Could it be the European Doppelganger, the Minataur or merely the ghost of a political terror. Everything is done gently, horror is presented with a satin surface, the endless colours alluring and inviting. But for what -- something terrible is going to happen. The writing for every section of the orchestra is full of virtuosity -- the cello becomes a new sound, never heard before -- pitched high, hysterical and nervous. Gone is its baritonal security and poise. It never stops fluttering and darting like a moth. Kabalevsky certainly made it a cello's Mount Everest, and Kamal Salah El-Din enjoyed the challenge. His fearless power made nothing of the terrors he was passing through. His cello had become a different being to usual. The second movement was visual, like a film script without any objects -- just unease and suspicion.
Then it collapses in the last movement into a sort of great becalment. The cello sings and croons. The orchestra, like a blanket of flowers, rocks back and forth. The music with the cello smiling contentedly becomes a lullaby, like a berceuse rocking a bomb to sleep. The big wings of the eagle make their final swoop to the musical land of Bartok, hungry naturally. Bartok always plays a game of tit for tat. He makes it clear where we are -- a trace of Zigeuner, then we must passionately wait for him to unleash all his tonal splendour on a comforting gypsy piece. He turns away in the opposite direction to cerebral, almost Stravinskian geometries, and leaves us stranded in no man's land. The orchestra actually laughs at us in the last part of this orchestral concerto, laughs at our weakness and our sheer love of the sensuous sound we hope he makes. Why not unbutton -- Bartok is a hard nut to crack, he will but he won't. He can poise an entire piano concerto on this same question. Having laughed, the orchestra swaggers away. Are we to be left in an arid region devoid of Hungarian colour. The concerto says firmly, No, and so outpours a tune, a grandiose pile of sound like an ocean wave. We are treated to a gorgeous step ladder of Bartokian modulations. Hair-raising richness. Kollar and the Cairo Symphony Orchestra have played like angels. The eagle hovers -- maybe we can beg another journey. Like Bartok, eagles can be cruel, but they offer, if they wish, the best thrills.
