Category: Classical music

The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is set to perform a historic concert at the Emirates Palace Auditorium in Abu Dhabi on December 20 at 8PM, marking its first performance in the Mena region in over 80 years.

Presented by Abu Dhabi Classics, an initiative of the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra will give a one-time-only appearance and perform Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No 1.

Written between 1884 and 1888, the symphony was inspired by the works of the German romantic period and imagines in music the possibility of a noble and heroic life. For this special gala concert, the orchestra will also perform Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 23 (in A major).

Founded in 1936 by violinist Bronisław Huberman, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the most renowned orchestras in the world. The orchestra has toured the world and played with the greatest performers in classical music including Valery Gergiev, Daniel Barenboim, Radu Lupu, Pinchas Zukerman, Gil Shaham, Gustavo Dudamel, Evgeny Kissin, Kurt Masur and his son Ken-David, Mischa Maisky, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Yefim Bronfman, Maxim Vengerov, Murray Perahia and Yuja Wang.

Since 2020, the orchestra has been playing under the artistic direction of star conductor Lahav Shani, who rose to fame as Chief Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, and is also going to conduct the historical performance this time in Abu Dhabi. Shani is notably the orchestra’s first native Israeli director.

© Provided by The National
The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the most renowned orchestras in the world.

This historic performance by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is adding to Abu Dhabi’s tradition of creating unique high-level artistic events for the Gulf region. G42, the first UAE entity to open offices in Israel, is privileged to host this monumental event as its main sponsor, which speaks for the blossoming relationship of the UAE and Israel, as the two countries continue to find common ground and commonalities in their cultures.

Standing at the intersection of technology and arts, G42, the leading UAE-based artificial intelligence and cloud computing technology company and Main Sponsor of this event, strives to explore the possibilities and push boundaries of bolstering the creativity of artists and enhancing the present and future of music and arts by harnessing the power of AI and technology. In this challenging world, music brings people together, making this concert a unifying event between Israel and Arab countries, and G42 is proud to support artistic performances like the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra which have been instrumental in shaping the future of classical music, arts and beyond.

Tickets available on ticketmaster.ae

Aparna Banerji

FOR the past 147 years, the chilly nights at the Devi Talab temple in Jalandhar have been lit up by the devotional sounds of musicians paying homage to gods or merely celebrating music. As festivals, melas, fairs, musical congregations and even gharanas died down in Doaba and elsewhere in Punjab, the blessings of the saints who started the Harivallabh Sangeet Sameelan have kept the festival — the oldest unbroken tradition of Indian classical music — going.

Baba Harivallabh, the music doyen and saint after whom the festival is named, welcomed people of all religions and social strata for this winter celebration of music. This established Harivallabh as a champion of not just music, but also secularity and syncretic cultural diversity, early on.

This year is special, for, the festival is being held after two years of gloom, thanks to the pandemic. Prior to this, the break was only forced during Partition and the terrorism era. The last two years also brought grave losses to the music fraternity as stalwarts like Pt Rajan Mishra, Pt Debu Chaudhary and Pratik Chaudhary as well as Amit, who painted an array of classical greats every year, were lost to Covid-19.

Rakesh Dada, former treasurer of Harivallabh Mahasabha and author of ‘Harivallabh — A Rich Tradition of Musical Geniuses’, says the gathering at Harivallabh suffered a huge setback during Partition as most Muslim artistes left. “It was resurrected by Ashwini Kumar, who headed the Harivallabh Sangeet Mahasabha for decades,” he says. Kumar galvanised Harivallabh in the 1950s and the festival saw it peak under him.

The festival suffered a setback during Partition when most Muslim artistes left the country. When Punjab was in the throes of militancy, it was celebrated with just a havan and singing of bhajans. And then came the pandemic. The festival was still held, but amid Covid protocol

When Punjab was in the throes of militancy, Harivallabh was, for several years, celebrated with just a havan and singing of bhajans near Baba Harivallabh’s samadhi. “Back then, it was held on the then dry bed of Devi Talab, a shamiana (tent) set up on pillars. Stairs were laid over with soil to build a temporary ramp. Still, people would sit through chilly winds just to listen to artistes,” recalls Dada.

In 2020, the 145th Harivallabh sammelan had to be reduced to a one-day affair with a 6-foot distance protocol owing to Covid and barely 100 invitees. The 146th Harivallabh too was celebrated in the compact Harivallabh Bhawan amidst vaccine mandates.

Yet, even during the peak Covid years, artistes like Ritesh and Rajnish Mishra (145th), Pt Ronu Majumdar and Kaushiki Chakrabarty (146th) were invited to keep up the spirit of Hindustani classical music.

Celebrating the return to normalcy, the festival organisers are all set to offer a sterling line-up of artistes and a crafts mela from December 23-25. The artistes performing this year include stalwarts such as vocalist Pt Ajoy Chakrabarty, Mohan Veena virtuosos Pt Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and Pt Salil Bhatt, sarod exponent Pt Tejendra Narayan Majumdar and flautist Shashank Subramanyam. Vocalists Mahesh Kale and Anjana Nath will also be performing.

Harivallabh Sangeet Committee president Purnima Beri says, “It surprises me to see that we have been able to sustain this century-and-a-half-old music tradition. Baba Harivallabh was himself a Dhrupad exponent. I believe his spirit blesses the festival.”

She says the Kapurthala royal family gave huge chunks of land to Baba Harivallabh and Ashwini Kumar took it to new heights. “Successive governments have supported it. The North Zone Cultural Centre and the Punjab Tourism Department have constantly offered support. The Prime Minister recently advocated restoration of old classical traditions. Last year, the Punjab Governor donated Rs 25 lakh and MLA Sushil Kumar Rinku gave Rs 5 lakh. All this goes into sustaining the tradition,” she says.

Dada says this is a moment to celebrate. “Everyone was eagerly waiting to return to the glamour of the pandal. That is the festival’s big charm.”

Today’s work in the 5:4 Advent Calendar is a typically leftfield piece by British musician Mica Levi. Levi’s music encompasses the deep and the trivial, the profound and the nonsensical, sometimes simultaneously. Their work BOUND. 9 Minuets, for two small snare drums & ensemble, tends more towards the latter than the former, yet there’s something intriguing and strangely entertaining about its ostensibly empty actions.

But first, the rules, of which there are two sets, one for the pair of snare drummers, one for the ensemble:

That would appear to be that, except that it’s clearly not the full story. Played verbatim, this wouldn’t last very long at all, but judging by its first performance at the 2020 Donauschinger Musiktage, the rules are to be followed repeatedly, giving a duration of just over eight minutes.

Apropos: in the festival’s programme book the piece was listed as having a duration of nine minutes; i can’t help wondering whether the second half of the title, 9 Minuets, is a mischievously misspelled reference to that intended duration, as there’s most definitely no aural sign of any minuets whatsoever or indeed nine of anything else. It’s entirely possible that the snare drummers each perform the phone number nine times, but impossible to tell as they both play pretty much constantly throughout the piece. As for the ensemble, depending on your perspective they do their thing anywhere from 19 to 27 times; the uncertainty arises from the fact that several of the arpeggio bursts (~3:15, ~5:09 and ~7:08) don’t sound isolated but appear to be stopping and restarting multiple times. That perceived sense of a longer, halting continuity is reinforced in the final burst (~7:08) due to the fact that, for no apparent reason, the clarinettist plays the melody for ‘God Save the King’. Regarding the first part of the title, BOUND., this could simply refer to the obvious fact that the players are bound to follow these rules without deviation (except for that rascally clarinet).

So many questions, yet the more time i’ve spent with BOUND. 9 Minuets the more i’ve come to the conclusion that it’s most definitely not a piece remotely intended to provide answers. And in case you’re wondering, i rang the phone number – and it went to voicemail; i left a message, but so far i haven’t heard back…

The world première of BOUND. 9 Minuets was performed by members of the SWR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Titus Engel.

One of the more memorable works performed at the inaugural Baltic Music Days in 2020 was Mundus Invisibilis by Latvian composer Anna Fišere (formerly Ķirse). That piece was concerned with fungal mycelium, and her earlier work Radices for 8 singers and electronics, composed in 2018, is similarly rooted in the growth of natural forms. Literally: the title translates as “roots”, and in addition to this the only other words used in the piece are “truncus” (trunk), “rami” (branches) and “folia” (leaves). Fišere’s inspiration came from the book The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, and in fact Radices is an introduction to a much more ambitious work, Tree Opera. Windthrows, that was apparently premièred in the woods of northern Finland in mid-2019.

What i find so intoxicating about Radices is the way it can be heard as entirely naturalistic, and as such nothing whatever to do with humanity, or ritualistic, an elaborate human act of perhaps reverence and homage to the natural world. The words emerge as broken phonemes, articulated in a variety of ways, both energised and gentle; the electronics provide both the environment and its atmosphere, including tolling gongs and a layer of buzzing shimmer. Those gongs enhance the ritual aspect, as do the way the lower voices intone their words earlier on. The naturalistic perception comes from the way it seems we are listening in on a diverse, private nocturnal chorus from the natural world: weird, heightened noises that one imagines could be the greatly magnified, otherwise inaudible, sounds of plant life.

The voices by turns gibber, wail, moan, shout and, in the work’s central section, sing, unleashing a beautiful chord, rich and intense. It’s that same intensity that causes the chord to be unsustainable, breaking apart as individual notes protrude with more force, fracturing the homogeneity. It leads to a climactic sequence where the singers erupt in a loud torrent of alien vocal tics and word fragments, a huge release of energy that just as suddenly vanishes, concluding as whistles while the electronics softly die away as wind.

The world première of Radices was performed by the Latvian Radio choir conducted by Kaspars Putniņš, with Anna Fišere herself on electronics.

“Fairytale of New York” is a drunken hymn for people with broken dreams and abandoned hopes. It is, therefore, a perfect contrast to some of the perkier perennial favourites we wheel out each Christmas.

The song begins with its narrator, an Irish immigrant, being thrown into a drunk tank to sleep off his Christmas Eve binge.

Hearing an old man sing the Irish ballad “The Rare Old Mountain Dew”, he begins to dream about his memories of the female character in the song, and so begins the story of two people who fell in love in America, only to see their plans of a bright future dashed.

Some of the best songs combine uplifting instrumentation with lyrics that are downright miserable, and such is the case for “Fairytale of New York”. It has none of the gooeyness of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” or Wham!’s “Last Christmas”.

Shane MacGowan’s slurring, bitter delivery of those opening vocals is played out over romanticised piano chords. Then to those wonderful, jaunty strings and Terry Woods’ mandolin.

MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl really get into their roles, and their call and response lyrics are brilliant, filled with sass. He calls her a slut and a junkie, she calls him a punk and a maggot… and there’s an underlying, albeit dark humour through it all. As it closes the chorus each time, you can picture the two characters staggering around the city, screeching at each other.

In 2007, Radio 1 removed the words “slut” and “faggot” from the song, backtracking when the move received criticism from the public and MacColl’s mother, who said censoring the words was “too ridiculous”. However, in recent years more radio stations have chosen to play a censored version, mostly due to the homophobic context of the word “faggot”.

There are differing views on how “Fairytale of New York” came to be. MacGowan, who was born on Christmas Day in 1957, claimed that Elvis Costello bet him that he wouldn’t be able to write a Christmas duet to sing with bass player Cait O’Riordan (Costello’s future wife).

Accordion player James Fearnley claimed that their manager Frank Murray suggested they cover the Band’s 1977 song “Christmas Must be Tonight”.

“It was an awful song,” Fearnley writes in his memoir Here Comes Everybody: The Story of The Pogues. “We probably said. ‘F**k that, we’ll do our own.’”

It took more than two years to perfect, and was recorded, oddly, in the sweltering heat of July 1987, at RAK Studios near Regent’s Park in London. The original plan to record with O’Riordan fell through when she married Costello and left the band. Costello was replaced with Steve Lillywhite, who brought in his wife (MacColl) to record the test vocals so they could see how the duet would work. They were so astounded by her performance, however, that they had to keep it.

The title was chosen after the song had been written and recorded, lifted from the title of Irish American author JP Donleavy’s novel A Fairy Tale of New York. The book’s main character, Cornelius Christian, refers to New York as “the city that is too rich to laugh at and too lonely and too ruthless to love and where happiness is a big cat with a mouse on a square mile of linoleum”.

The video is as much part of the song as the music itself; Kirsty MacColl leaning nonchalantly over the piano and telling Shane MacGowan how useless he is. It was decided that he would sit there instead of Fearnley, who said that he was “humiliated”, particularly when he had to wear MacGowan’s rings for the close-up shots of his hands.

A young Matt Dillon stars as the cop who has to arrest MacGowan – he was already a big fan of The Pogues and reportedly so nervous about manhandling him in the scene that MacGowan snapped: “Just kick the s**t out of me and throw me in the cell and then we can be warm!”

The song provided a launching pad for the mainstream success of both The Pogues and MacColl, the latter of whom had ambitions of being a pop star but was crippled by severe stage fright. The song never made it to the Christmas number one spot in the UK, but remains one of the most popular festive songs of all time.

This article was originally published in 2017

Mona

Shani Diluka has many firsts to her credit. A Sri Lankan born in Monaco, she is the first ever artiste from the Indian subcontinent to get into Conservatoire de Paris, first to enter the prestigious Lake Como International Piano Academy, she is signed by the prestigious label Warner Classics as an exclusive artiste. Currently, one of the greatest pianists of her generation, Shani is knighted by France and Monaco!

Trained under the masters, Shani feels fortunate for the position she is in, and finds it her responsibility to share all the knowledge she has gathered over the decades.

In Chandigarh, on Thursday, for a concert organised by the French Embassy in India, Institut Français, Alliance Française de Chandigarh, the Chandigarh Cultural Department and Furtados, the piano virtuoso opens up on high-flying life.

Born to Sri Lankan parents, Shani was spotted as a music protege at the age of five under a programme set up by Princess Grace of Monaco to promote classical arts in her country. Each year music specialists visit kindergarten schools to find child prodigies on the basis of a series of tests over rhythm and melody. Her parents were reluctant as they wanted her to pursue academics but relented. After a year of exposure to all musical instruments, Shani found her calling in the piano!

Her training started right then, practising the piano after school, waking up early to keep up with academics. In fact, she barely slept. At 12, she was offered to pursue music in New York full time, but Shani and her parents opted out of it.

“I lived in Monte Carlo, Monaco, but my family was in Sri Lanka. It was hard for me to fathom how these two distinct worlds existed on the same planet. Education helped me make sense of it, while music became my identity,” says Shani.

Music was to continue for life, as Shani got into Paris Conservatory followed by training under masters at Vienna, Austria and Lake Como International Piano Academy. Calling Paris home now, for about 20 years, Shani travels the world – holding master classes and performing.

“I realised power of music early on. I played for my family, who were never exposed to western classics and responded positively to it. Music is the universal language of love and peace.”

Shani’s love for Indian classical music is as intense. “I have listened to Pandit Ravi Shankar extensively. While the construct is different, I feel western and Indian classical are quite similar.

In fact, when signed by Warner Classics, her first record was Cosmos: Beethoven & Indian Ragas. “Now, who would have guessed that Beethoven was interested in Upanishads? In his quest he was captivated by the translation of the Upanishads that was published in Germany in 1816.”

The piano hasn’t been an easy choice for Shani. For every new place, every new country she finds a new piece. “It’s like meeting a new friend each time. In some regions like India and Sri Lanka, due to humidity and other factors, it’s difficult to find a good piano. But for me this is an experience of meting someone new that I cherish.”

A regular in India, she often comes for master classes at Zubin Mehta Foundation. Shani has read Tagore extensively and is happy to perform at Tagore Theatre. Her performances take her all over the world.

“I am almost always on the move. It does get hectic adjusting to different scenarios. The temperature in Sri Lanka was 28 degree C, in Chandigarh it’s 14 and I will be going to Germany where it will be -2 degree. I find my energy from the performances and the joy that music brings to people!”

Particles by Japanese composer Shiori Usui consists of four minutes of wild textural mayhem. The title suggests it’s all going to be about light, tiny impacts, and that is how the work begins. However, this opening chorus of skitterings is soon supplanted by the significant heft of what sound like intense exhalations; in turn, these are soon swept aside as a myriad glissandi get going. Usui has essentially laid out in the first 90 seconds the basic elements for the rest of the piece. Something different follows almost immediately, though, as the music opens out into a slightly clangorous soundworld, whereupon further exhalations appear and the glissandi start to dominate, though the tappings that began the work have not gone away.

It’s interesting the way Particles doesn’t so much move through different sections as either accumulate or dissipate material around its central focal point. The glissandi that end up everywhere remind me of the images created by the Large Hadron Collider, showing the spiralling trajectories of the particles they smash together. As such, perhaps the main component of the work’s material is not the particles themselves but the traces of them left behind, glinting streaks of light testifying to a momentary existence. The frantic energy finally, rather abruptly, vanishes, switching emphasis to swishings inside a piano – almost masking the outline of a melody – and a genuinely bizarre kind of muffled singing(!), silenced by a ratchet before ending in a huge final burst of more particles smashing into our ears.

Delayed due to the pandemic, Particles was finally premièred (without an audience) by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in February 2021, conducted by Alpesh Chauhan.

Peter Andre aka the “Head of Summer Holidays” has urged radio stations to ban the Christmas song ‘It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year’.

The pop singer and TV personality has written an open letter to UK radio stations to urge them to ban the classic after a recent survey found that the majority of the British public think that the summer holidays trump the festive period.

Travel company On The Beach is claiming that the song is factually incorrect after a poll it ran found that 78 per cent of those surveyed believe that going on holiday is better than Christmas.

Doubt has now been cast on Andy Williams’ 1963 classic, which is synonymous with the Christmas period. The song is sitting at Number 22 in the UK’s official singles chart this week.

Andre agreed with On The Beach’s findings, writing in his open letter: “The results of the survey do not surprise me. Sure, festive frolics are fun but let’s face it, Christmas can get repetitive and pressurising.

“It’s much more exciting to visit new places, experience new things and make meaningful memories, and there’s no better place to do that than on holiday.

“In my new role [as Head of Summer Holidays], all I can do now is politely ask radio stations to respect the British people’s viewpoint and not play ‘It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year’ at Christmas anymore. Perhaps they can play it on a loop in July instead?”

Andre also referenced Section 3 of the CAP Broadcast Code, accusing radio stations of false advertising by playing the song in the run-up to December 25.

“By playing this track you are giving your listeners false hope that Christmas and winter in general is the most wonderful time of the year, when in fact, it isn’t.

“And I even have data to prove it! Recent findings from On the Beach have confirmed what we already suspected; 78 per cent of people, so more than three-quarters of Brits, believe that going on holiday is better than Christmas.

“Therefore, unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the population (85 per cent) agree the Andy Williams song is factually incorrect, proving Christmas simply is not the most wonderful time of the year. While I acknowledge there are some extremely pleasant moments during Yuletide festivities, these are normally fleeting and often come with a busy schedule, an empty wallet and not much to show otherwise.

“Strip back the gift-giving, tinsel and twinkly lights and people are left with the stark reality that this time of year is cold, dark, and expensive.”

He added: “Factor in the cost-of-living crisis, national strikes, overall price hikes and general low mood of the nation and you get my drift.  Without sounding like the Grinch, but instead as proud Head of Summer Holidays for On the Beach, I put it to you Sir or Madam, overseas getaways are the most wonderful time of the year instead.

“A time to make memories with loved ones, splash around in the sea with the kids, enjoy sunsets on the beach, and truly discover yourself again. These are all the magical factors that constitute it being the most wonderful time of the year.

“So, I am urging you to refrain from playing what is in fact misleading the public. And my request is backed up by solid data compiled by On The Beach.”

In other news, LadBaby have revealed their annual Christmas single for 2022, ‘Food Aid’.