St. Petersburg's wintry allure

I got back this week from my first trip to St. Petersburg and I certainly hope it won’t be my last one. What a city!

I just loved the facades of the buildings lining the city’s rivers and canals – blues, pinks, browns, greens and beiges. The coloured fronts, along with the white snow covering the ground, brightened up what otherwise could have been rather gloomy, grey January days.

It’s an easy city to explore on foot and so I made the most of that. And when it got too cold, there was always a cafe to hand for a pot of tea (I hadn’t realised what big tea-drinkers Russians are. I thought they generally just went for the harder stuff!) or a bowl of soup, a meat pie or a stuffed pancake. Of course, there was plenty of culture to enjoy too.

The Hermitage was amazing – I spent an entire day there and still barely touched the surface of what was to be seen. The Russian Museum was of a more manageable size and yet because there were so many new artists for me to discover, once again I felt that I didn’t really do it justice. That said, it more than piqued my interest to learn more about Russian art and I’ll be on the lookout for Russian exhibitions closer to home. I particularly liked the work of Natalya Goncharova (1881-1962), who painted both Winter (at the top of this blog post) and Four Envangelists (below).



On the musical front, I went to the Mariinskiy Theatre and saw Tchaikovsky’s Pikovaya Dama (Queen of Spades). I thought it was a brilliant production and the tenor playing the lead role of Herman, Vladimir Galuzin, was particularly impressive. Being in the Mariinskiy was a great experience in itself and then to be seeing a Russian opera set in St. Petersburg just topped it off perfectly.

An afternoon concert in the St. Petersburg Philharmonia was another highlight. The Philharmonia has an amazing history, with a seemingly endless list of famous 19th century musicians who performed here and great Russian composers who premiered their works here. The best-known example perhaps is Shostakovitch’s “Leningrad Symphony,” which was written during the Blockade of the city in World War II, and broadcast from the Philharmonia in August 1942.

Unfortunately there wasn’t any Russian music on while I was there. Instead I was treated to a programme of Mozart and Haydn, with a mesmerising performance of Haydn’s cello concerto in D major by Lithuania’s Vytautas Sondeckis.

I could say so much more about each of the above aspects of my trip and maybe I will in a future blog post. For now though, I think I’ll put on one of the CDs I bought and have another look at my photos!

Amitav Ghosh on Opium, Migration and Cross-Dressing

If you live in Brussels, love books and haven’t yet discovered Passa Porta, all I can say is you’re in for a treat. Describing itself as Brussels’ international house of literature, it’s a multilingual bookshop, a venue for literary events and a temporary residence for writers and translators all rolled into one.

Amitav Ghosh, whose novel Sea of Poppies has recently been translated into Dutch, was Passa Porta’s guest this morning. Speaking for an hour to an audience of approximately 100 people, Ghosh touched on the inspiration for the book, the historical research he undertook before putting pen to paper and his relationship with language.

Ghosh first saw the migration of Indian workers as a potential theme for his latest book while he was writing The Glass Palace, which is set in Burma and India. The theme became “completely absorbing for me,” he said.

In Sea of Poppies, the author focuses on the departure of a boat in the 1830s, just before the Opium wars, taking indentured workers from India to Mauritius. This period of history isn’t well known in India and yet about 20 million people were “torn out of the sacred geography of India,” according to Ghosh.

To learn more, one of his research trips was to the Mahatma Gandhi Institute in Mauritius, which has preserved these people’s emigration certificates and other documents listing their caste, religion, height and other personal details.

Ghosh, his crop of white hair standing out from his all-black attire, came across as a serious and extremely well educated man who also had a great sense of humour and often broke out into chuckles. He switched back and forth between the serious and the amusing, one moment discussing the historical background to his novel, the next explaining how cross-dressing was a common part of ship life or how inventive the English creole language can be in obscenities.

It was a great way to spend a Sunday morning and I’m looking forward to future Passa Porta events.

Fairground Attraction

Belgium is renowned for its quirkiness and “Continental Superstar” is a perfect example. Situated in the Cinquantenaire museum (part of the Royal Museums of Art and History), Continental Superstar is a dance hall filled with fairground organs and other mechanical musical instruments.

The space is filled with bright and gaudily coloured instruments and statues, plenty of kitsch and mechanical music. In the far corner of the room there is a bar, but no staff, or potential customers for that matter, to be seen. I was left unsure as to whether I was in a dance hall, an exhibition room or just a temporary storage space.

According to the museum, around 1900 Antwerp developed alongside Paris as an important production centre for mechanical organs used in dance halls, cafes and at fairs. As the industry declined, replaced by jukeboxes, radios and gramophones, a Brussels man called Joseph Ghysels resolved to save and restore many of the organs.

It is his collection of street and fairground organs, barrel pianos and other instruments, bought in 2007 by Flemish minister for Culture Bert Anciaux, that are on show at the Cinquantenaire museum.

The name Continental Superstar was the title of a 1970s recording of what the museum calls the “world-famous star” of the Ghysels collection, a dance organ made by Theophiel Mortier in 1923. As far as the museum is concerned the title could also apply to Ghysels himself for preserving this quirky piece of Belgian patrimony.

Continental Superstar is on show until March 8, 2009.

Photo: Dansorgel Mortier 1905-1911 (Royal Museums of Art and History)

Heat, red bricks and too little music

Well I’m back in Brussels after my whirlwind tour around England. As well as family and friends, port and mince pies, there were also a couple of cultural highlights.

Art:
I saw the Rothko exhibition at the Tate Modern in London. It was brilliant. I left with a completely different appreciation for colours – some were so warm that heat seemed to actually be emitted from the canvas and others made you realise how individual any one particular colour is. I couldn’t believe how long could be spent looking at such deceptively simple works.

Architecture:
As you probably know, the Eurostar now arrives at St. Pancras station in London. While I’m not a fan of that from the point of view of my personal travel convenience, I am a big fan of the building itself. The Victorian architecture, and in particular the red brickwork, is just great. And I hadn’t realised until I made my first trip into Leeds this time that this northern city centre boasts some of the same Victorian brickwork.

Music:
Unfortunately my trip was somewhat devoid of music, though there was plenty of Radio 4 to be had, which is also very important. I think for this category, I’ll have to cheat and say the original music manuscripts on display in the British Library’s gallery of treasures.

And on that note, here’s to cultural discoveries, however small or large, in 2009.

Catching up with Gotan Project

Not quite sure how it took me more than a week to get around to writing a post about Gotan Project's recent concert at the Halles de Schaerbeek in Brussels, but if you're going to fall behind with updating a blog, the build-up to Christmas seems as good an excuse as any.

I only heard my first Gotan Project album this summer, but I immediately loved the group's sound – tango with an electronica twist. Given that the music can be moody and atmospheric, I wasn't sure what to expect from a live performance. I was both surprised and impressed.

The visuals were almost as important as the music. In many ways it was a show more than just a concert. The group opened their performance behind a gauze screen the height and breadth of the stage onto which images and film were projected. Just as I was beginning to think that the music would feel more live and more direct if the screen wasn't there, the screen disappeared and the group took centre stage - vocalist, bandoneonist, string quartet, pianist, guitarist and two DJs/programmers, all dressed in white.

The visuals continued with images projected onto a screen at the back of the stage, and a couple danced tango to a few songs, but for the most part the musicians were now in the spotlight. The audience was more than warmed up and the show really took off. Including the couple of encores, the audience was treated to about 2 hours of fabulous music. A most memorable concert.

No score, no encore, just Rattle

I can only imagine what it must be like to play in an orchestra with Simon Rattle conducting, but having seen him live last week I’m guessing it would be intense, fun and a bit nerve-wrecking in case you didn’t achieve the musical colour he wanted.

The music he elicited from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment was magical; it seemed to directly convey Rattle’s charisma and passion. He didn’t use a score for the Berlioz overture or the two Schumann symphonies on the programme, and this seemed to give him more immediacy with the orchestra. There was quite literally no barrier between him and the musicians.

He almost danced around his little podium as he reached out and gestured to whichever instrument or section whose sound he wanted to bring out. I laughed and smiled and was completely absorbed.

The orchestra, whose trademark is playing on period instruments, doesn’t have a permanent music director and so always works with guest conductors such as Rattle.

It was my first time watching him conduct live and I found it simply brilliant. I can’t wait to see Rattle conduct the Berlin Philharmonic in Brussels in February. Maybe he’ll give the audience an encore this time.

(For those of you who like Desert Island Discs, here is the link to his castaway choices. His chosen luxury was an Italian coffee machine and grinder!)

Following Folon around Belgium

I have to admit to not having heard of Jean-Michel Folon until a few years ago when my employer at the time moved into new Brussels premises and named each of the three conference rooms after “well-known Belgians”. They came up with Rubens, Horta and Folon.

Since then I’ve noticed various Folon artworks around the city, including a 165 m2 oil on canvas at Montgomery metro station, which I saw again recently and prompted me to write this post. On the Grand Sablon in Brussels, a bronze statue of a bird towers more than 4 metres high and at Brussels airport there’s a bronze statue of a person with a propeller on top (the centre of which forms the face).

2008 was in fact the “Year of Folon” in Belgium. That said, there doesn’t appear to be any particular reason for the choice of year (Folon was born in 1934 and died in 2005); the Tourism Office simply seemed to decide to dedicate resources toward promoting the artist and his work.

Whatever the year, I can thoroughly recommend a trip to the Folon Foundation, located in the grounds of the castle of La Hulpe, about a 20-minute drive out of Brussels. You can find there illustrations and magazine covers that Folon created for the likes of The New Yorker and Time, his posters for exhibitions and festivals, watercolours, engravings next to the original copperplates, stained glass, bronze statues, the list goes on.

The foundation was inaugurated in 2000 by Folon himself and its mission is to unite and conserve a heritage: the 500 artworks donated by Jean-Michel Folon.

I’d like the next stop on my Folon discovery trail to be a little church in Wallonia, which has several stained glass windows by the Belgian artist. And you?

Photos: © Thierry Renauld (Fondation Folon)