ARCHIVE
ODEGAND 2008
- The International Festival van Vlaanderen in Ghent, Belgium
-- one of the fastest growing festivals in Europe – opened
its 50th celebration with the OdeGand City festivities on the
13th of September, 2008. Some 50 concerts took place in diverse
locations throughout the Medieval inner-city and 250 internationally
acclaimed virtuosi peformed, making this year's event an especially
jubilant one. Practically all tickets were sold and the estimate
is that some 8,000 visitors flocked to the city. The Festival
has set a high benchmark for future events. For the next two weeks
classical music will wash over the city of Ghent and Flanders.
Tickets can still be booked through the Festival's hot-line,
but as the fame of the Festival has grown in neighbouring countries
over the last two years, and many more Dutch and German classical
music lovers flock to the concerts, some are already sold out.
In total there are 400 concert planned, of which 180 will take
place in Ghent in the following weeks.
The new Festival
MADE dimension of the festival will introduce in its vibrant program
both the innovative experiments of local artists and feature the
original version of Mozart’'s ‘Kleine Nacht Music’.
Since 2002, the festivities have begun with the now renowned OdeGand
street festival that takes Classical Music to every corner of
the city, even onto the boats on the canals where spectators get
'live' classical rides'. The whole of the mediaeval town of Ghent
turns classical in September, and although the Festival has something
of the exuberance of a 'Night of the Proms', it is many notches
higher on the scales of inventiveness and quality. Other major
Flemish cities follow suit with similar events during Festival
Time, all of which form part of the International Festival. (Antwerp
with Laus Polyphonia; Brugges with Musica Antiqua; Brussels with
KlaraFestival; Limburg with Basilica and Mechelen with Novecento
& Transit.)
With its well-programmed
partnership with the BFO Family Office, Banks and Media, this
yearly event in Belgium – this year with its jubilant '1001
Nights' of Classical Music - has now firmly established its contribution
to the International Classical Music scene in Europe. And this
year it will attract even greater attention from outside Belgium.
For the American and foreign visitor this is an ideal time to
get acquainted with the high standards in Classical Music there
are in Belgium.
Red shoes
in the gothic Cathedral of Saint Baafs & efficient train and
tram connections.
é Kodo
drums in the Collosseum
'1001
Nights'
Archive
September 2008 - The success and intricacy
of the Happening that the Festival van Vlaanderen has become lies
in its yearly, dynamic, creative deconstruction of previous successes
and its interpretation and use of all available pertinent information.
It has an ingenious recreative approach and everybody engaged
in the planning of the Festival works hard to deliver the best.
For many years it has refused continuously to ride down the lane
of its previously successful formulas and has shunned 'standarising'.
(This is the death blow to so many festivals when they succumb
to the lure of mass marketing and commercialism.) Through its
steady approach, the Festival conveys the sense of 'on-going'
activity and exciting creativity towards new definition. There
isn’t the slightest hint of suspicion of the hype of a passing
fad in any of its activities; and it is an explorative, educative
Festival and the pedagogic behind its decisions is sound.
This year the Festival is more alive than ever. It has
'teared down' its previous strain and rejuvenated itself in an
exuberance of exotic music choices with its theme of 1001 nights.
It also has become a matrosjka doll with ever-deepening levels
of 'touching upon' unfamiliar music elements in the classical
and folkloric traditions. Visitors to the Odegand opening cannot
but agree that 'the educational part' of the Festival's program
brings initiation and a deeper understanding of classical music
to the man on the street. Continuous innovation and the craftmanship
of its programmers has resulted in a high benchmark for its current
50th edition.
Over recent years the Festival has developed 'three accents' within
the one super-structure of the larger whole. There are now the
'Odegand' (the opening day of festivities), the 'Avanti' (when
the classical music tour moves to the most beautiful and idyllic
areas of Flaenders) and the this-year, newly-created 'Festival
Made' by Jelle Dierickx. The Festival Director, Serge Platel stressed
in the Festival's luxury publication, 'Festival! 50', that creativity
will also be a central theme and drive in future '1001 Niights
of concerts'. While many non-classical music lovers regard classical
music sceptically, as a 'thing of the past', these newly-created
triptic festivities nullify that pathetic fallacy and passive
approach. The Festival is proving that good classical music can
be brought forth in its original 'old' form, such as the programming
of 'Eine Kleine Nacht Muzik' from Mozart with original instruments,
and it can, at the same time, be incorporated into 'new' approaches
such as those of quadric-phonic remixes with participation from
listeners.
The Festival's emphasis on dynamism, combined with honest marketing
without acromania, has opened up the way to the popularising of
the 'real' and bringing it to the streets where 'everyman' can
enjoy it. It is very new to the world music scene which has always
been prone to exploitation as a quick money-making venture. The
Festival van Vlaanderen has brought to its '1001 nights of Passion',
high love, good vibes and education, and the participation of
the listener in the festivity is homespun, real and jovial. On
the day of 'OdeGand', with its sixty separate concerts and 360
virtuosi from around the world, came music out of just about every
possible location - castles, city hall, market places, streets,
boats and theatres.
The Festival van Vlaanderen is the ultimate
'in-scene kaleidoscopic experience' of Classical Music today in
Europe.
Vivaldi
and Maria Antoinette & ses Airs (Zimmerman Café)
| 
©Festival van Vlaanderen
|
Maria
Antionette & ses Airs - Anne Cambier
Quel
Beau Jour
Anne Cambier,
soprano, Ann Fierens, harp and the actor Michaël Pas caused
a sensation with their thrilling performance of Quel Beau Jour
in Kaffee Zimmermann (organized this year in the Lully Hall of
the Vlaamse Opera, Ghent). Since the Festival van Vlaanderen started
organizing the Zimmermann events, this is the most successful
marriage yet of the entertaining aspects of high tea (with Zacher
or Zwartzwald Törte included in the democratically priced
ticket) to Baroque music. The concept, taken from the original
Zimmermann Café in Leipzig in early 19th century, was welcomed
by the audience due to the professional control of the performers.
It was as if this was the moment the Festival van Vlaanderen had
all the while waited for: Kaffee Zimmermann has found its definition.
Quel Beau Jour brought music from the times of Lodewijk XIV, lofty
and poetic arias from the operas Grétry and Philidor reworked
by Hinner and Boely. These are songs from Maria Antionette
& ses Airs: songs and pretences of Maria Antoinette,
the newly published collection of songs of Anne Cambier. Anne
Cambier’s voice has a timbre that makes her especially suited
for operatic roles such as Karolka in Janacek’s Jenufa,
which she took on under Robert Carsen in the Vlaamse Opera last
year.
visit
anne cambier’s page
L'Arte dell' Arco
L'Arte dell'
Arco brought a taste of Antonio Vivaldi's opus 3 L'Estro Armonica
to the Bijloke Concert Centrum in Ghent, Belgium - yet another
of the Festival van Vlaanderen concerts in its “1001”
cycle of Baroque concerts. L' Esto, Vivaldi's 'Musical
Whim' in 1711 ensured his position as a composer of genius in
the contemporary European music scene. The 'exactness' with which
Federico Guglielmo (violinist and maestro) interpreted the various
parts in the concertos (8 out of the 12 opus 3 concertos were
performed) and his virtuosity during the recurring ritornellos
created a noticeable strain in the listener, almost as though
the cerebral exists in opposition to sensitivity. This juxtaposition
is precisely what Vivaldi intended with his 'new style' composition
in 1711, when he exploited symmetry to its fullest and made use
of its dramatic ersatz. The effect is that the music sounds “new”
every time it is heard and the attention of the hearer is focused
on the virtuoso solo passages. Frederico Guglielmo and Christopher
Hodgewood, clavecimbelist and present director of L'Arte dell'
Arco, respectively, deal with Vivaldi's work with razor sharp
precision. The Festival set high standards in its choice of interpreters
of Baroque music.
L'Arte dell' Arco's discography
Orchestra
Of the Age of Enlightment
Rachel Podger
(violinist and Director of the Orchestra Of the Age of Enlightment),
herself a font of energy, delivered on the 18th of September 2008
in the Vlaamse Opera House in Ghent, Belgium a triumphant illustration
of what professionalism, enthusiasm, energy and a perfect setting
can do with Baroque Music. She engaged a select full-house with
such ease that everybody present was at ease from the first Overture
from G.P Teleman’s Tafelmusic (1681 – 1767). Without
the pretense of carrying a message in her choice of music - the
selection of the music chosen ranged from J.P. Teleman, J.S. Bach
and Pisendel to Vivaldi and Zelenka – she delivered food
for thought, an attitude towards late 17th and early and middle
18th century repetoires.
Rachel Podger's homepage
Interview
with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
[Pending and
strictly for sale - Australia & NZ
Not available via the archives - contact
Argo Spier]
DRAFT QUESTIONS
1. On your website there’s video link to a video recording
made of an interview you gave some time ago. In it you make a
most provocative statement, about the hidden force that is the
driving force of a singing career. Here it is - ‘…the
profession only chooses you, you cannot choose this profession
(a singing career) … you cannot say you want to be a singer’.
Can you elaborate more on this? And in your work with young singers
are you able make them see their careers in this perspective and
understand the concept ‘driven talent’?
2. Concerning young singers and their hard work to move up the
ladder of recognition, I read something that the young New Zealand
soprano, Ana James, wrote in the May 2008 issue of ‘NZ Singers
Taking Flight’. She wrote about her stuggle in the USA and
London and the ‘shock of realising I was just another soprano
in a city of thousands’. She said it was ‘even tougher’
lately, due to the terrible ‘management of singers’.
Here’s what she said said of pressures that have nothing
to do with developing and supporting talent: ‘Now, opera
companies want to cast slim, healthy singers’. And she spoke
of 'anorexic singers’... 'As a soprano I feel huge pressure
to stay slim,toned, fit, and look as good as possible at all times’.
This isn't something new in the profession, is it? I think of
castrati and the fact that it was whispered among the in-crowd
that Maria Callas suffered from anorexia... Can you, yourself,
relate to what Miss James conveys in her article? What other,
similar pressures are sopranos under? How difficult is it to deal
with these pressures? Do you still remember instances of pressure
in your own early carreer? The first ‘turning point’
in your career? The first time ‘Dovo Sono’, Mozart,
Le Nozze di Figaro? Your early days?
3. How do you
deal with stress factors today? I am thinking about the burden
of travelling from one Opera House to another; doing interviews,
constantly re-locating, the distractions and time consuming delays...
The Times in London made a sinister report in September 2009 that
you were ‘winding down’. I find this a most horrible
mistake from the Times. The journalist in question didn't even
take the time to check your program and schedule. I have seen
you performing as Marscallin in Rosenkavalier recently in Köln.
You delivered a gripping character with a voice that now has that
deliciousness of full maturity. I mean your trip this last week
from Toulouse, London, Oslo and Ghent, Vlaanderen -- doesn't that
say it all; that 'winding down' (I hate the expression too) is
obviously NOT on your agenda. How do you deal with such irrelavancies
in the Press? … when do you rest?
4. Regarding
the workshops ‘Curtain up’of the ‘Opera Factory
of the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation’ --
With the guidance of yourself and Dame Malvina Major and the others,
Terence Dennis, Rosemary Barnes, Helen Medlyn and Raymond Hawthorne
and the wide range of fundamental opera topics, including vocal
presentation and performance, role study, stagecraft, repertoire,
characterisation and interpretation -- it all must draw attention
from all over the world, not only of non-New Zealanders. How do
you make your selection of those that may participate? In what
way are you favouring young artists from New Zealand? How is your
criteria reached? But then, also, isn’t favouring young
New Zealanders a contradictio sine qua non when it comes to the
idea of the ‘pure heart’ and 'driven talent' as we
talked about it in the first question? Can art be restricted by
regional factors, by country borders? And to ‘poorer students’
... what if a rich entrepreneur’s daughter from, say, the
Silicon Valley in California, who happens to be a ‘driven
talent', is also prepared to work hard applies to partake in these
sessions? Would you then still favour a lesser talent from New
Zealand? Can you merely refuse her because she’s from stinking
rich parents and the USA? Isn’t here that same tension as
in poetry when one talks about something rediculous such as ‘women’s
poetry’, 'gay poetry' or 'black poetry'? Isn’t poetry
just poetry and music just the purest form of a non-cogtive bubbling
up from the collective unconscious of culture one can get and
that sec like Brut Champayne? I am having over the description
of 'raw driven talent'.
5. Have you
had the time and chance to familiarise yourself with the Opera
Studio of the Vlaamse Opera in Ghent? With its workshops and performance
nights? Apart from practical issues and the costs of travelling
between Vlaanderen and New Zealand, can you see some sort of exchange
taking place between the two countries in some distant future?
I ask this as I am hoping you will express what your attitude
is towards other singing schools and initiatives across Europe.
Many of these students may wish to apply to study at the Kiri
Te Kanawa Foundation or attend summer courses in the annual Solti
Te Kanawa Accademia di Bel Canto in Castiglione della Pescaia,
Tuscan, Italy. When will this course take place in 2011? (It is
reported that the Tuscan event has grown much in acclaim over
the last 6 years, is this true? ... Oh, and there's another part
to the question – the 08/12/2010 December gala concert in
the Royal Albert Hall to raise funds for the José Carreras
International Leukemia Foundation … what can be expected
of it?
6. My closing
question is one about compassion and sopranos – How does
a soprano tells a devoted admirer (and in this case the interviewer
himself) that it is time for him to leave her as she has to prepare
herself emotionally for the concert she is having and that was
the trigger that trigged his interview ... the Kiri Te Kanawa
& Julian Reynolds performance in one of the most lovely and
midieaval concert Halls in Europe, the De Bijloke Music Centrum
of Ghent, Vlaanderen?
I thank you
very much for your valuable time and the kindness you have shown
to engage in this interview. May the Festival van Vlaanderen and
your performance in the De Bijloke Music Centrum of Ghent, Vlaanderen
contribute to your career and your renouwn.
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