EU Prize for Literature: reaching out for more readers

I have to admit that it’s a slightly odd feeling to look down a list of literary prize-winners and not recognise a single author, but in this case that’s kind of the point.

The prize I’m talking about is the European Union Prize for Literature, the 2010 winners of which received their awards just a few days ago. The aim of the competition is to throw the spotlight on new and emerging authors and to increase awareness of writers outside their home country. This year’s winners come from 11 countries including Denmark, Romania and Slovenia.

The idea of multiple winners is to ensure, in good old EU style, that during a three-year period there will be one winner from each of the 35 countries taking part*. Twelve nations participated in 2009, 11 this year and the remaining 12 will do so next year. It’s a European project: no one expected it to be straightforward.

But for all its cumbersome rules, not to mention the number of other literary prizes that already exist, I think this one probably does have a place. The EU is a region with 23 official languages, three different alphabets and about 60 regional and minority languages. If this competition allows an author to reach a wider readership, be translated into a more widely spoken language and be read beyond the book’s home base, then it gets a thumbs-up from me. Opening one’s eyes to different cultures and different perspectives has to be something to be encouraged.

As the EU’s Culture Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou says, “Each of us has only one life, but literature opens up many different lives to us, and access to the work of foreign authors opens up entirely new worlds.”

* The participating countries are the 27 that form the EU, the 3 EEA countries Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, the EU candidate countries Turkey, Croatia, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, as well as Serbia and Montenegro. 

Cafe de los maestros: Bozar transformed for tango spectacle

Last night the Bozar’s concert hall, renowned as a top classical music venue, transformed itself into Buenos Aires of the 1940s and 1950s for the final stop of the Cafe de los maestros tango orchestra’s European tour.

Tango legends, who first performed in the music’s heyday in Buenos Aires more than a half century ago, took to the stage and proved that those in their seventies, eighties or even nineties still have the energy to put on a dazzling show. Then again, these were the same musicians who starred in Gustavo Santaolalla’s 2008 documentary film ‘Café de los Maestros.’ Film, international travel, concert tours – who said life slows down at a certain age?

Never before have I seen or heard so much joy during a performance in the Bozar concert hall. The showmanship of one of the pianists, who finished his pieces with flamboyant flourishes and winked at the audience as if to share a joke, caused the house to burst out with laughter. World champion tango dancers Daniel Nacucchio and Cristina Sosa added a ‘wow’ effect, as they impressed with their passionate dancing and daring kicks. And as soloist Juan Carlos Godoy shuffled onto stage, he had won over the audience’s hearts before he even started to sing.

The orchestral numbers were interspersed with songs by Godoy and Nina Miranda, the only female musician in the group, as well as solos to show off the bandoneón, guitar and double bass. The violin was showcased by the leader of the ensemble, Fernando Suárez Pas, who used to play in Astor Piazzolla’s New Tango Quintet.

As an Argentinian sitting next to me in the Bozar last night said, part of the wonder of the live performance was seeing these tango musicians playing the music of their youth for what might be one of the last times. An inspiring evening. Now, where was the number for that tango dance course again?

Concertgebouworkest gets top marks; audience falls to bottom of class

The Concertgebouworkest played its opening concert as orchestra-in-residence at the Bozar in Brussels on Friday. The music was fabulous. If only the same could have been said of the audience.

As Bernard Haitink brought his baton down on the final chord of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7, some smart alec shouted out ‘bravo’ the instant the chord was struck and completely ruined the atmosphere. Instead of being able to savour the last note resonating around the concert hall and maybe even a fraction of silence to take everything in, the moment was spoiled by someone seeming to play a game of ‘who can shout first and loudest?’

Haitink had already expressed his displeasure with the audience when between the second and third movements there had been so much coughing and talking that the Dutchman used his baton to ask for silence. And when he didn’t immediately get it, he simply put his baton down and refused to start the third movement until he had the requisite silence. When the audience (well, one of its members at any rate) interrupted the ending too, I got the distinct impression from the tightening of his shoulders, his look to the ground and only the briefest of bows towards the audience that he wasn’t too impressed either. Just my impression, and possibly coloured by own reaction, but that’s the message that came across to me.

But enough of audience etiquette (or the lack of it). I must include a note about the music too. The highlight of the concert for me was Beethoven’s piano concerto No. 3, played by Till Fellner. I hadn’t expected it to be, not knowing the concerto or the pianist, but I was completely blown away. It was like listening to a fascinating conversation between the soloist and the orchestra and between the different sections of the orchestra. I was being told a story in the most beautiful tones, colours and dynamics and found myself physically moved by the music. The Bruckner also had wonderful moments from the opening of magical strings to a mighty cymbal clash, not to mention all the fantastic lines for the cellos and French horns. But it didn’t move me in the same way as the Beethoven. That said, that may well have been down to some audience members’ behaviour.

The Concertgebouworkest’s residency at the Bozar is for three seasons. The next concert is on April 8 with a programme of Messiaen’s Les offrandes oubliées, Franck’s Symphony in D and Dutilleux’s Tout un monde lointain. After that, there will be more concerts in the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons. Let’s hope the audience doesn’t let the performance down next time.

'Passage to Asia' sparks trip down memory lane

‘A Passage to Asia’ is one of the summer exhibition offerings at the Center for Fine Arts in Brussels, and one definitely worth seeing. I’ll lay my cards on the table from the start and admit that I have a soft spot for Asian decorative arts. I used to work in Singapore and while I was there travelled around the region as much as possible: the Angkor Wat temples in Cambodia and the Buddhist temple of Borobudur in Central Java count among my favourite trips, the Museum of Islamic Art in Kuala Lumpur and the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore among my favourite museums.

So as you can imagine, my visit to ‘A Passage to Asia’ was a bit of a trip down memory lane as well as a visual treat. There was also plenty new to learn. I fully recommend getting the audioguide (available in English) as it is full of interesting facts and anecdotes: I learnt that the English word ‘chintz’ derives from the Hindi word ‘chint’ meaning a dotted or painted cloth, that the Mongolian artist Zanabazar has been referred to as the ‘Michelangelo of Asia,’ and that Mary, mother of Jesus, was adopted into the pantheon of Hindu gods as Hindus became acquainted with Christianity in the 15th century.

In fact it is this cultural exchange that forms a common thread through the show, which runs until October to coincide with the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) hosted by Belgium that month. With more than 300 objects on loan from museums across Asia, the exhibition aims to highlight 2,500 years of exchanges between Asia and Europe. It is perhaps unsurprising that early on the project was nicknamed “mission impossible.” While acknowledging that such a vast subject matter cannot be dealt with in depth, the curators Jan Van Alphen and Kenson Kwok are happy to say that “mission impossible” has become reality.

The variety of artefacts on display - ranging from ancient maps to religious manuscripts, travelogues to textiles, bronze drums to ceramic vases - means that the visitor’s curiosity is constantly piqued and, if you’re anything like me, you’ll end up spending hours in the exhibition taking just one more look at this or that Korean ceramic, Indian textile or Balinese drum.

One fascinating theme within the exhibition is ‘Hellenism in Asia,’ where the influence of Alexander the Great’s conquests in Asia is highlighted. A second-century standing Buddha from India illustrates this fusion of Greco and Buddhist forms: on the one hand the Buddha has traditional long earlobes and his hair is piled up in a knot on his head, and on the other the figure wears a toga that shows the contours of the human body and is reminiscent of Greek sculptures.

The last section of the show is dedicated to cargoes recovered from shipwrecks, and includes many ceramics still intact centuries later. As the museum explains, the ships’ cargoes acted as ballast, causing the vessels to fall almost directly to the seabed and resulting in minimal damage to the goods. I can’t claim to have ever stumbled upon any archaeological treasures while scuba diving in Asia, but this part of the exhibition did bring to mind many an enjoyable diving trip in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. A wonderful exhibition, wonderful memories.

Inspired by writers

I love hearing authors speak about their works, listening to them explain where their inspiration came from, why they chose to approach the subject matter in the way they did and how many pages they discarded along the way. I don’t even need to have read any of the author’s works; what particularly fascinates me is their approach to the creative process and gaining an insight into what makes them tick.

During the last year, Booker Prize winners Ben Okri and A.S. Byatt, as well as Herta Mueller and Gao Xingjian, both winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature, have been among the authors I have heard in Brussels.

So what sticks in my mind? In the case of Mueller, it is the way that writing and research have allowed her to understand what she never understood as a child growing up in totalitarian Romania. It was only later in life that Mueller realised the significance of small details such as the way her mother had peeled a potato with as fine a skin as possible or had taken pleasure in eating; for a woman who had been deported to a work camp, it was important not to waste food and to show that she wasn’t starving.

Mueller said her mother never talked about her experience in the camp and would simply say “I don’t know” when asked questions about it; her daughter wasn’t sure if the memories had been suppressed or if words simply couldn’t express the experience. In her 2009 book Atemschaukel (Everything I Possess I Carry With Me), Mueller explores such memories through the experiences of her late friend Oskar Pastior, who was a similar age to her mother and endured five years in detention.

As for Byatt, what inspired me was her curiosity and her desire to unearth as much as she could about people, objects, events, whatever it may be. Her research for her most recent novel, The Children’s Book, included learning more about the lives of children’s books’ writers, accumulating “heaps of books” about pottery and ceramics, and pursuing her love of decorative arts museums such as the V&A in London.

It was also fascinating to hear her explain how she feels a “deep anxiety” about stealing real lives for literary purposes; what she finds herself doing instead is mixing up so many people that she creates a new person, a bit like a “jigsaw.” Nor does she like to make direct use of events that happen in real life. What she prefers is being alert to repeated patterns, the same thing happening at least twice, because at that moment she realises she has stumbled upon a phenomenon that can be worked into her writing.

If you want to keep an eye out for future authors speaking in Brussels, the best place to look is the Passa Porta website. As for the next author to pass through town, it’s Turkey’s Elif Shafak tomorrow, June 25. Details are on this link. To read an earlier blog entry about Amitav Ghosh, click here.

Vuil & Glass: powerful performance

One of the advantages of living in Brussels is how close it is to other European countries, or put more cynically by some, how easy it is to leave the country.

This week I took advantage of this oft-cited fact and, straight after work, drove with a couple of friends to Eindhoven in the Netherlands to see ‘Vuil & Glass,’ a dance performance choreographed to music by Philip Glass arranged for cello octet - a powerful combination that had me mesmerised from beginning to end. It was by far the best dance performance I’ve seen since Nederlands Dans Theater came to Brussels a couple of years ago.

The eight cellists that make up Cello Octet Amsterdam sat side by side high up on a scaffolding on the stage, the seven dancers (there are usually eight, but one was unfortunately injured) moved around the whole stage, including around and under the scaffolding. The modern music and dance complemented each other perfectly.

The first time ‘Vuil & Glas’ was performed a few years ago its venue was a waste disposal station (hence ‘vuil’ – waste – in the title). The revival has been adapted for the theatre, but as the dance company, Conny Janssen Danst, says itself on its website: “Complete with new dancers, new choreography, new costumes, and a new composition – but still with eight cellists, a pile of mattresses, and the hypnotizing, pulsating music of Philip Glass.”

In short, it was 75 minutes of pure joy listening to and watching the musicians and dancers, who performed solos and duets interwoven with composition and choreography for the full ensemble. A double thumbs up from me.

Chopin and birthdays

I often tire of hearing that it’s one hundred, or however many hundred, years since the birth or death of this or that composer. Inevitably, these anniversaries serve as excuses for series after series of concerts or related events all focussed on that particular composer, which is all well and good, except that my reaction is often to get fed up with all the publicity before I’ve actually made it to a single performance.

This year is the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Chopin and needless to say I haven’t actually been to a concert of Chopin music this year although there have been plenty to choose from in Brussels.  

I simply find myself bombarded with choice and it all sounds so “samey” on paper. Instead I find myself being drawn toward the concert that’s on the bottom of a small leaflet or a footnote in a magazine, relishing the exciting new discovery. Fine, but there’s no reason why a well-publicised concert of a well-known composer who just happens to be having a posthumous birthday celebrated can’t be equally exciting.

And maybe after this weekend I’ll give the anniversary concerts more time of day. Why? Well, a stroke of luck really. Oblivious to my feelings about such anniversaries, a friend chose to take me to the small exhibition on Chopin that is currently showing at the British Library. And I loved it.

Headsets allowed me to listen to historic recordings of Chopin performances from the British Library Sound Archive and display cabinets were filled with original Chopin manuscripts, letters and even his death mask. The walls were full of information about Chopin’s life, from his early days in Poland to exile in France and his stay in Britain.

What did I learn? Well, Chopin didn’t like to perform in front of an audience, and gave only 30 concerts during his lifetime, he had tiny hands (as seen from a plaster cast of his left hand) and he apparently had an affair with the novelist George Sand that ended most dramatically (though we’re not told how) - and of course that I shouldn’t be as dismissive of events related to a composer’s anniversary.

Hidden gems: little-known art museums around Belgium

A word of explanation is probably in order as to why my blog has been so quiet for the last few weeks. The main reason is that I’ve been busy writing about the arts for magazines and newspapers, including a weekly column in Brussels Unlimited, and as a result have had little time left to update this blog.

So I thought I’d share with you a series of articles that I’ve written this month on little-known museums around Belgium.

·      The Gust De Smet museum, Deurle (Sint-Martens-Latem)

The spotlight is thrown on the Flemish Expressionist Gust De Smet, the golden years of the Sint-Martens-Latem art colony and the museum dedicated to his life and work.

http://www.flanderstoday.eu/content/inner-circle

·      The Autrique House, Brussels

The story of the adventure undertaken by an artist and a write to restore this Victor Horta house and open it to the public.

http://www.flanderstoday.eu/content/rebuilding-horta

·      The Roger Raveel museum, Machelen- aan-de Leie

A trip to the museum that was specially built for Roger Raveel, who - now aged 88 - is arguably one of the most important Belgian artists since World War II.

http://www.flanderstoday.eu/content/never-ending-illusions

·      Geo De Vlamynck’s artist studio, Brussels

A peek into the studio of the late Geo De Vlamynck, a champion of the decorative arts, who not only painted but also made frescoes, mosaics and stained glass.

http://www.flanderstoday.eu/content/traces-life

Collegium Vocale Gent and Saint Barbara

©Michel Garnier

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”

This quotation by the British novelist Aldous Huxley was placed on the first page of the programme accompanying a concert of Renaissance vocal music that I heard this week. More apt words would be hard to find.

It was the first time I had heard Philippe Herreweghe’s Collegium Vocale Gent, not least because whenever I’ve tried in the past to hear the ensemble they have either been touring or their concerts sold out. This week’s setting was the Eglise des Minimes in Brussels, the theme ‘Musica per Santa Barbara,’ the music a sheer joy to listen to.

Saint Barbara was the patron saint of Mantua, and in the 16^th century the Italian city’s duke had a basilica built in her honour. The Basilica di Santa Barbara attracted many composers including the Italian Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and the Fleming Giaches de Wert. It was their compositions along with those of Claudio Monteverdi (a pupil of Wert) that made up the evening’s one-hour programme of 16^th and 17^th century motets and mass excerpts.

The voices of the 14 unaccompanied singers, directed by Herreweghe himself, filled the church, no matter whether it was a quiet, mournful sound to accompany words of sorrow and misery or a rich, powerful tone as the joys of life were celebrated. The singing was pure, precise and simply beautiful.

My favourite piece was probably Wert’s motet “Vox in Rama audita est” (A voice was heard in Ramah), which opened with a wonderful bass voice that made my stomach feel tight such was the intensity, the tension building up further as the tenors, altos and sopranos joined in one by one. At times, the notes were so close together that the pain and anguish being sung about were almost palpable.

This was music that did indeed come very close to expressing the inexpressible.

The same programme will be sung in their Belgium home town of Ghent on Feb. 11 and then in Rouen, France on Feb. 12. A full calendar is available here.

Chinese culture: all fired up

  ©Palace Museum

I don’t know why I waited until the last possible week to see the exhibition 'Son of Heaven,' part of the Europalia China extravaganza that has been happening in Brussels during the last few months, but I did. Then again, I did go and see it twice that week!

My delayed visit may have had something to do with the fact that there were so many cultural offerings during the Europalia China festival that there was almost too much choice. And of course that time-old trap of saying to myself: ‘Oh it’s on for months, I’ll have plenty of time to see it’.

An added impetus to see it in January though was that I had just come back from a two-week orchestral tour to China, my first trip to the country, and was all fired up about everything to do with Chinese culture.

“Son of Heaven,” whose title refers to China’s rulers, didn’t disappoint. The exhibits included portraits of emperors on silk wall hangings, bronze ritual vessels, a jade shroud, and silk dragon robes once worn by the rulers. There were even a couple of terracotta warriors – admittedly not quite as impressive as the (almost) complete terracotta army I had seen in their Chinese home of Xi’an just a few weeks earlier, but you could view the ones in Brussels much closer up and could more easily see traces of their original colours.

The Brussels exhibition covered 5,000 years of Chinese culture and so was just a taster of the country’s imperial wealth during that time. Nonetheless the exhibits, many of which were on display for the first time outside of China, were simply exquisite. I couldn’t resist going back a second time, and if I hadn’t left it so late I may well have gone back again.