On November 11, at the Hyatt Regency, Port-of-Spain, Kwame Ryan conducted an orchestra made up of local and non-local musicians in a benefit concert organised by the youth NGO the Heroes Foundation as part of its tenth anniversary celebrations.
Ryan, son of Prof Selwyn Ryan, studied in England and Germany. From 1999 to 2003, he served as general music director of the Freiburg Opera and the Freiburg Philharmonic Orchestra in Germany. He became music director of the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine in Bordeaux, France, in 2007.
The faculty musicians and teachers of the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) made up part of the orchestra conducted by Ryan. Violinists Jonathan Storer, Eleanor Ryan and Simon Brown, double-bassist Caitlyn Kamminga, percussionist Deborah Moore are all regular presences at the free Saturday concerts held at the National Academy for Performing Arts in Port-of-Spain.
When you add to these the guest musicians, nine nations had a presence on the stage. From France came violinists Marianne Puzin, Marc Desjardins and Guillaume Artus; from Germany, violinist Andreas Popov; from Russia, violinist Evgeny Popov, and Alexander Mitenev, who plays the bandoneón. (Mitenev, who is one of the foremost bandoneón players in the world, on hearing of this project was so enthused that he shifted the dates of a concert engagement in Russia just so that he could take part.) Violinist Tasso Adamopolous is Greek, just retired from his principal viola job in Bordeaux.
Ryan, the UTT musicians and the guests in this project participated with the intent to mentor and nurture the young local talent with the aim to inspire them to a higher level of achievement. The students included Karianna Ali, Sameer Alladin, Kesica Brewster, Renelle Maharaj, Laurissa Maharaj, Amanda Manmohan, Tariq Osman, Harley Robertson, Wasia Ward, Mawasi Warner, Caryll Warner, Janelle Xavier, Janine Xavier, Sheena Richardson and Mikhel Carter.
I've always thought that the genre of music loosely referred to as "classical" easily made minced meat of some modern forms. Its underlying infrastructures, hidden behind the architecture of phrases and conversations between instruments with just enough hints at the main theme, make genres like pop and rock look like a child's scribble in comparison.
The music lineup in this concert was mostly tango, which hails from Argentina, and though originally not concert hall music, composers like Piazzolla managed to change this. One piece in the lineup, Fratres, was included in observance of Remembrance Day, and was the one piece that, had I missed everything else, would still have made the concert worthwhile. Not that the rest wasn't good-far from it, these musicians did a breathtaking job.
The first piece played was El Choclo, whose tune is well known throughout Argentina and other parts of the Spanish-speaking Americas. This arrangement by Dimitry Valeras, however, was a more elaborate version than others I've heard. Here, traditional spaces in the piece were intricately filled with comments from the violins, but the tempo was more or less the traditional pace.
Next was the first piece in which the younger musicians participated: Volver by Carlos Gardel, which starts with a dark pulse of the strings, eventually joined by the bandoneón, which actually reminded me more of France than Argentina. The strings give way to the bandoneón solo, then rejoin it, going to a slow, soft, knee-weakening end, like that of a 50s Hollywood love scene.
Oblivion, a milonga, came next. Milongas are usually danced fast, but not this one. A slow, regular throb of the violins led into a romantic instrumental which for one brief moment in the piece brought to mind works of Antonín Dvo?ák. At one point the double-bassists were plucking the instruments with slow, steady rhythms, offering a heartbeat to the life of the piece, which closes with all the instruments converging on a single note.
The start of Meditango felt like it belonged in an action film, with a protagonist running for his life. The pulse quickened to a virtual cliff where the orchestra fell away, leaving the bandoneón solo playing a slower pace joined eventually by the double-bass and violins. The strings played a mournful melody, which ended on a long, single sustained note.
Like Meditango, Libertango started fast paced, with the vibraphone played by Deborah Moore chiming in, but in a subtle blend that quietly coloured the writing of the strings. The piece kept its fast pace, and ended with the help of a peal from the drums.
After a 25-minute intermission, the pace changed considerably with the performance of Fratres. A low continuous note from the double-basses set the tone; this was going to be a thoughtful, slow piece. The strings added in a haunting melody as an overlay. An occasional click of the wood block punctuated the strings' speech, and a slight dissonance in the strings added to the eeriness of the piece.
This continued for just over two minutes, dying down to silence other than the groundwork of the double-basses. The melody began again, a wonderful, sombre yet peaceful moment-broken by someone in the audience dropping his programme very loudly (nothing's perfect, I guess).
The overall piece conjured up the image of a sci-fi sunset or sunrise over a landscape of desolation, and yet again reminded me of Dvorak's work-the "New World" symphony's Largo in particular. The notes successively sank in loudness until the last, almost unheard note. It was definitely the most inspiring piece of the concert for me.
The seventh piece of the evening was Aconagua, named by the publisher, not the author, after the tallest mountain in the Americas, located in Mendoza, Argentina. The name is supposed to signal Piazzolla's opus magna, his greatest work.
The piece was written in the standard three-movement concerto format. The first, allegro marcato, began with a sudden start, and hit the ground running, certainly waking anyone who may have dared to doze off during Fratres. The fast dramatic opening slid into a section that actually sounded as if each section were playing a different piece, yet all were in unison, a bit like Mozart had done with vocals in at least one of his operas. The piece morphed into a definite tango rhythm, then sped up until it ended leaving the audience to fall off that virtual cliff again.
The second movement, the moderato, began in mournful mode with the bandoneón, then joined by solo violin, played by Jonathan Storer, and Deborah Moore on the vibraphone. The slow, thoughtful, haunting trio was eventually joined by the other strings.
The third and last movement of Aconagua was a fast flurry of strings punctuated by strikes of the timpani, which eventually led to a sort of walking pace. The drums and bandoneón remained in sync with each other until the strings took the baton, and carried the melody, while the drums and bandoneón did the punctuation. The piece built to a crescendo, then, as in the first section, ended.
I'm fairly certain that there was no doubt from the standing ovation at the end that all the efforts and intentions of the musicians were well appreciated. Perhaps we can do this next year?
Michael Tikasingh is a classical music fan. He has written on technology for the Guardian.