KlaraFestival: September adventures

It’s back to school, back to work and back to a packed diary of cultural events. Just as suddenly as the concert halls and theatres of Brussels go very quiet in August (as most of the city disappears on holiday), come September there’s more to choose from than you could possibly have time for.

For classical music fans in Brussels, the first two weeks of September are dominated by the KlaraFestival, which takes its name from the classical music radio station Klara. This year the festival’s theme is ‘Imagine Paradise’ and, in the organisers’ words, moves “between hope and the imagination, between utopia and reality, between the beautiful and the horrific.”

As part of the festival, earlier this week I heard a mesmerising recital by cellist Steven Isserlis, with Denes Varjon on piano. Entitled Russian Utopia, the programme included Shostakovich’s Sonata for cello and piano in D minor and Scriabin’s Sonata for solo piano No. 5. The performances were exciting and energetic, be it Varjon playing the Scriabin with such panache that he literally jumped from the keyboard as he played the last chord or Isserlis emphasising the cheeky, almost sarcastic, moments of the Shostakovich with a wry smile of his own towards the audience. The engagement with the audience was maintained to the end, with final bows not only being taken by both players, but Isserlis also amusingly allowing his cello to take its own little bow.

This coming Sunday, the Brussels Philharmonic and the Flemish Radio Choir conducted by Sir Neville Mariner will be performing Britten’s War Requiem. The work, composed in 1962 to commemorate the bombing of Coventry by the German Luftwaffe 20 years earlier, has a score and text that “transcend historical circumstance and offer one of the most universal and poignant anti-war manifestos in the history of music,” according to the programme. Needless to say, this Sunday is the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks in the U.S.

Between now and the end of the festival on September 16, there’s at least one concert every day. Highlights range from the Akademie fuer alte Musik Berlin to Roger Norrington conducting the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. If you want something a little bit different though, then take a look at the final night’s line-up when a Brussels nightclub (Club Mirano) will open its doors to music from Bach to Glass played by DJs. The festival said it wanted to take "an adventurous approach" to classical music; no one could accuse it of failing to achieve that.

Antwerp’s MAS museum: making waves

Photograph by Jeroen Verrecht

Nothing quite prepared me for the ‘wow’ factor of the new MAS – Museum aan de Stroom (Musuem on the River) – in Antwerp. I’d seen plenty of photos and thought the stacked-tower design with its contrasting blocks of red sandstone and glass looked great, but the pictures didn’t convey any sense of what it would be like to be inside the 10-storey building.

As you go up the escalator from floor to floor, you feel how every level is twisted 90 degrees to form a giant spiral. Each time you go up a storey, you’re treated to one stunning view after another through the ultra-modern, wavy glass. When you get to the top, there’s a real treat in store: an open-air rooftop with a 360-degree panorama of the surrounding port and the city itself (an experience that can, incidentally, be enjoyed for free without an entrance ticket to the museum). There are even portholes in the glass safety barriers so that you can take the perfect photograph.

The museum has been built in Antwerp’s old harbour area and is supposed to herald a new era of development in this part of the city. I have to admit that before I visited the idea of ‘an area under development’ had made me think I’d be heading to a desolate part of town, probably in the middle of nowhere, where one stunning building would stand all on its own. In fact, the area is just a 10-minute walk from the city’s historic centre and the proximity to the water not only ties in with the maritime theme but also looks and feels good.

But what about the actual exhibits in the museum? All the publicity before the opening in May this year had gone on and on about how the museum would tell the story of Antwerp and its place in the world, but I couldn’t quite grasp what that really meant and what would actually be in the museum. My expectations dropped further when I learned that it would bring together former collections of the Ethnographic Museum, National Shipping Museum and Folklore Museum. I had images of a mish-mash of dull pieces that no longer had homes.

Far from it, it turned out. The sculptures from different religions, the scale models of old sailing ships and the oil paintings of Antwerp have instead all been given a new lease of life in this new environment. The curators have grouped the objects by theme (four themes over five floors) and included audio and video to help bring the exhibits to life and put them in context.  Next to old musical instruments there are buttons to press that make the sound of the bells or the flute you’re looking at; old paintings of Antwerp’s port hang from walls made of wooden crate strips to evoke the port atmosphere; the floor dedicated to the ‘World Port’ theme has the history of the maritime world running on a screen the length of the room; and as you leave the port-themed storey, you are encouraged to write a message and pop it in a bottle.

With a total of 460,000 items on display – and that’s not even taking into account the temporary exhibitions – you’re unlikely to get round the whole museum in one visit, but you can certainly pop your head into each floor and then focus on a couple of the themes in more detail. One downside for non-Dutch speakers is that a lot of the information is only in Dutch, but the introductory boards to each floor are in English as well as the national languages of Belgium. To get a taster, you can take an online tour at http://livetour.mas.be/uk/ . But don’t forget that photos and videos just don’t convey the wow factor. For that, you have to pay a visit in person.

Pina: All About Dance

Pina, the 3D film by Wim Wenders for the late choreographer Pina Bausch, is all about dance. Nothing surprising there, you might say. But the film really is about the visual beauty and physicality of dance and movement, not an intellectual reflection on dance. It is about the dance works created by Pina Bausch, not Pina Bausch the person.

Going into the cinema I had anticipated hearing a lot of the choreographer's own voice and listening to insights from dancers who had worked with the German choreographer. Don't get me wrong, the film includes archive footage of Bausch, but she doesn't say much in these clips, and it incorporates interviews with dancers who worked with Bausch at Tanztheater Wuppertal, but their comments reveal little.

Instead it really is the dance productions that take centre stage. Extracts from four of Bausch's works - Kontakthof, Le Sacre du printemps, Café Müller and Vollmond - dominate the film. Each is mesmerising and beautiful, enhanced by the 3D experience. For the film's 3D Supervisor François Garnier, using 3D was  ideal because dance is, by its very nature, movement in space. "3D has all the space, all the action, and all the movement to offer. The sense of physical sensation is much more powerful than any intellectual reflection," Garnier says on the Pina website.

The dance is left to speak for itself, creating a rich visual and sensory experience full of colour, movement and beauty. Viewers are left to make their own interpretations, rather than be guided by any voiceover or strong verbal narrative. The picture of Bausch that emerged for me was of a woman who expressed herself through gestures and movements, not lengthy discussions and debates. Her words to the dancers were few and far between, but the words she did utter were exactly what was needed to motivate, encourage and inspire them.

© NEUE ROAD MOVIES GmbH, photograph by Donata Wenders

The dancers are filmed both on stage and in outdoor locations in and around the German town of Wuppertal, which was Bausch's home and creative centre for 35 years until her sudden death in June 2009. As Tanztheater Wuppertal's long-time costume designer, Marion Cito, says, "I sometimes cannot believe that Pina Bausch is no longer here...One senses, however, that she lives on in her works." That is perhaps why it is so apt that it is the works that are at the centre of the film.

Toni Morrison gives Desdemona the voice Shakespeare never did

Last night I saw one of the first performances of the new theatre production ‘Desdemona’, directed by Peter Sellars with words by Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison and music by award-winning Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traoré.

My overall impressions of the production, which gives a voice to Desdemona, the wife of Othello in Shakespeare’s play, were simplicity, beauty, radiance and power. Not just the words, but also the music, the staging, the lighting, everything.

To give you a taster, here are the production's opening words:

My name is Desdemona.  The word, Desdemona, means misery.  It means ill fated.  It means doomed.  Perhaps my parents believed or imagined or knew my fortune at the moment of my birth. Perhaps being born a girl gave them all they needed to know of what my life would be like.  That it would be subject to the whims of my elders and the control of men.  Certainly that was the standard, no, the obligation of females in Venice in the fifteenth century.  Men made the rules; women followed them.  A step away was doom, indeed, and misery without relief.  My parents, keenly aware and approving of that system, could anticipate the future of a girl child accurately.
They were wrong.  They knew the system, but they did not know me.
I am not the meaning of a name I did not choose.

Desdemona is at the KVS theatre in Brussels until Sunday May 29. It will go on to be performed worldwide, including at the Barbican as part of the London 2012 festival during the Olympic Games. To read my published article about the genesis of the show and how it ended up being performed in Brussels, click here.

Kunstenfestivaldesarts: Mexican theatre tackles guerrilla warfare

We may only be halfway through Kunstenfestivaldesarts, an annual arts festival that takes place across Brussels, but I’m pretty sure I saw one of its overall highlights this last week: the Mexican documentary theatre piece El Rumor Del Incendio (The Sound Of Fire).

The play explores a period of Mexican history, the guerrilla movements that sprang up in the country during the 1960s and 1970s and the subsequent deaths, political prisoners and forced disappearances. The subject is approached through the life of one former guerrilla: historian and teacher Margarita Urias Hermosillo.

© Carlos Somonte

The three actors, all in their mid-twenties, bring the period to life in an intelligent and thought-provoking way. They incorporate into their performance archive audiovisual footage, old tapes being played on cassette recorder and documents and film clips projected onto a screen, all of which remind us that this theatre production is based on real events.

© Carlos Somonte

It’s not simply a history lesson though. There is a strong narrative that is brought out by strong performances from the actors, particularly Luisa Pardo playing the role of Margarita Urias Hermosillo. There’s also a playful element as they use toy soldiers and a children’s train set to re-enact historical scenes. And moments of brilliant production, for example when a lit match is thrown towards a large screen projecting an image of a forest that at that moment switches to an image of a forest bursting into flames.

The play’s relevance to today is also highlighted as the actors ask questions such as: can a critical look at the past change the future?; what battles were fought before we were born?; how can we build a better country?; are there other systems for running things?; and why is it so difficult to criticise the present system?

While acknowledging the differences between then and now, the theatre group says in its notes about the play that they feel as if they live in a country where people have become insensitive to inequality and are incapable of shaping political projects bearing hope. “We feel straitjacketed faced with the very widespread opinion that the world is shut for good and only one system of political, social and cultural organisation now exists. A system which proves moreover to be very difficult to criticise, even though we are brought face to face with its enormous flaws and its terrible drawbacks in our everyday lives,” the group writes.

The project, which comprises this documentary theatre piece as well as a blog and a book, is not a call to take up arms. Rather it is what the theatre group calls “an attempt to restore the idea of utopia and the possibility of creating new thinking, making it possible for us to imagine fairer worlds.”

© Carlos Somonte

The Brussels shows are the first time that the theatre group, ‘Lagartijas tiradas al sol’ (‘Lizards stretching in the sun’), has performed in Europe. It won’t be the actors' last though. A list of other cities where they will be performing this year can be found on the theatre group’s website.

Vengerov to Make Comeback in Brussels: Relationship With Violin Back On

Maxim Vengerov broke off his relationship with his violin three years ago. “I needed these three years to put down the violin, to rest a little bit, to cool down,” Vengerov said in a recent interview with Radio Télévision Belge Francophone (RTBF). Now he’s decided it’s time to resume the love affair, and he’s chosen the Bozar in Brussels as the place to make that comeback on May 2.

Vengerov has spent the last three years concentrating on conducting. “If I would combine it with my violin playing, violin playing would be very jealous,” the Russian told RTBF. “I am incredibly happy that the time came again that I can rejoice with my beautiful violin.”

The music chosen to relaunch his performing career is the cycle of three violin sonatas by Johannes Brahms. “The cycle...is in itself perfection,” according to Vengerov, who will only play during the first half of the concert.

The concert's context is a new Musica Mundi project to develop a school for musical excellence, for which Vengerov is acting as an ambassador. Consequently, the second half will be performed by Musica Mundi Young Talents and the Belorussian Youth Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Perlin.

However, the concert will not be a one-off for Vengerov, who told RTBF that he planned to do a tour with the Brahms sonatas and then take Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade on tour worldwide, combining violin-playing and conducting.

And what about the violin’s jealousy of the conducting, the interviewer asked. “Now it’s all in harmony,” he laughed. Having experienced the violin concertos from the orchestral side, Vengerov feels he has a more complete experience of the works.

“Having this wonderful three-year rest from the violin, I feel reborn,” Vengerov said in the RTBF interview. “When people ask me, Maxim, who do you think now is the most promising young violinist in the world, I say I think it’s me! ... For me, every note that I play now is a revelation, a new thing.”

Mikrokosmos - Rosas at the Kaaitheater

Dance and music have to be two of my favourite artistic disciplines. Make that contemporary dance and a string quartet playing live and it doesn’t get much better. Last night I was treated to such a combination with the performance of Mikrokosmos.

Mikrokosmos is one of choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s early works (created in 1987) and is a performance that starts with a couple dancing to music for two pianos by Bartok and concludes with four women dancing to Bartok’s String Quartet No. 4. The striking rhythms and energy of both the music and the dance complement each other perfectly, making the overall performance one fizzing with excitement, and with several cheeky touches thrown in for good measure

The creation is part of Early Works, a project made up of four pieces choreographed by De Keersmaeker in the 1980s and being shown at Brussels’ Kaaitheater over a three-week period. Early Works will next be shown at Sadler’s Wells, from 10-16 April.

Having the music played live is simply wonderful. It is no longer the background sound to which the dancers move but an integral part of the work, with the musicians on stage, their entries and exits choreographed, and the dancers including them as part of the piece, either by dancing right up to them or by looking across at them as part of their choreographed movement. The Bartok string quartet was played by the UK’s Duke Quartet, which has been working with De Keersmaeker and her Rosas dance company for many years.

For more about string music and dance, click here to read my article ‘All The Right Moves’ for The Strad magazine. The interview with De Keersmaeker below (nothing to do with me) is also worth listening to.