The Herald: A Tale of Two Concerts
17 Jun 2023 | 03:44am IST
Vivek Menezes
Vivek Menezes
Goa is increasingly Dickensian - just look at the front page of this newspaper. It really does appear to be “the best of times and the worst of times”, an age of wisdom and foolishness and the season of both light and darkness. Yet, snarled within this depressing “winter of despair” there’s an unmistakable “spring of hope” coming from an ongoing cultural renaissance of immense significance. For concertgoers and lovers of classical music, the recent weeks have rolled out an astonishing series of delights in India’s smallest state, capped by the spellbinding sister pianists Chloe and Chelsea de Souza on June 3 and 4 at an elegant new location in Porvorim, and the brilliant Portuguese guitarist Ricardo Martins (along with Sonia Shirsat and Franz Schubert Cotta) in Panjim last Sunday on June 11.
To be sure, these were not the only major performance highlights of the last few months. On 11 April, the British-Goan master pianist Karl Lutchmayer – the first Indian to become a Steinway Artist – played an extraordinary benefit concert at the Instituto Menezes Braganza for the Panjim-based Child’s Play India Foundation (https://childsplayindia.org/). And earlier this year in February, that same excellent organization founded by Dr. Luis Dias in 2009 – it “seeks to instill positive values and provide social empowerment to India’s disadvantaged children through the teaching of classical music to the highest possible standard” – also hosted the Moroccan pianist Marouan Benabdallah at the same venue.
I am sorry to have missed Benabdallah, not only for what the New York Times hails as his “lyrical instincts and thoughtfulness” but especially due to his programme, which included, as per the artist’s note, “discoveries from my exciting exploration of the music from the Arab world — and beyond: Two Syrian (Dia Succari and Amer Ali), a Moroccan (Nabil Benabdaljalil) and an Israeli composer (Paul Ben-Haim)”. All these were part of his Wigmore Hall debut in London two months later, which the critic Barry Creasy described in music OMH as “full of variety and delight”.
Those adjectives apply just as much to Lutchmayer’s appearance in April, followed by the blockbusters in Porvorim and Panjim this month, especially relating to freshness and originality. We’ve had generations of great classical musicians from and in Goa, and seen many concerts of the highest standard, but the music only occasionally ventures away from “greatest hits” of the European repertoire. That situation is changing much for the better in the 21st century, and what I appreciated above all in the four concerts I did attend (Lutchmayer, Chloe de Souza, Chelsea de Souza and Martins et al) is the wide-ranging selection.
Here, one absolute highlight was Lutchmayer’s crashing, tumultuous rendition of Le festin d’Ésope (Aesop’s Feast), composed in 1857 by Charles-Valentin Alkan, which stretched the physical limits of both performer and instrument. It was the first time this challenging étude has been played in India, and it is rather wonderful to see Wikipedia cite the early-20th-century Parsi-British composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji about it – “full of astonishing harmonic quirks and twists” – because it this fascinating, born-again-Zoroastrian’s own composition In The Hothouse was one of the unexpected treats during Chelsea de Souza’s presentation/recital The Silk Road: Interactions of Culture and Identity between East and West.
Much has been said elsewhere about Chelsea (29) and Chloe (27), the prodigiously talented – and equally hard-working – Goan sisters from Bandra, who have separately stormed through colleges and conservatories in the USA to emerge as two of the most promising young artists of our times. Each is proving to be an individual powerhouse-in-the-making, but together (particularly when playing side-by-side) the siblings are uncanny, literally incredible. Venus and Serena Williams come to mind, which is probably unfair, but they did deliver two superlative performances on two successive nights in Porvorim.
Also notable here is the new and highly impressive venue – it is named Kamra - which retains the physical profile and period detailing of an early-20th-century home typical of that once-lovely road to Mapusa, but the rugged old doorway instead opens to a state-of-the-art cube of air performance space: “Kamra is the living room of a private home in Porvorim originally built in the 1940s, which has been restored to preserve the original elements, while allowing for a 1200 square foot modern living room where live music can be shared in an intimate setting. The home of the 105-member Stuti Choral Ensemble is equipped with two baby grand pianos and an elaborate technical setup to facilitate rehearsals. It is completely non-commercial and driven by a sincere commitment to promoting performance culture within the local community.”
Kamra is intimate, but versatile, perfectly suiting Chelsea de Souza’s eloquent presentation/performance themed on music that tries to pose and resolve questions of identity that might seem irreducible in terms of nationalism. She played Debussy leaning eastwards, and the Japanese pioneer Tōru Takemitsu shading in the other direction. The triumph was Reena Esmail’s shockingly good 2012 composition Rang de Basant, where the 40-year-old Indian American composer manages the singular feat of successfully inhabiting both Hindustani and western classical musical traditions. A side note: it appears her mother is Goan, from Kenya.
This, then, is the paramount lesson from the great classical music we’ve been privileged to hear recently. Art far surpasses boundaries, languages, nations, eras. It gets to the heart of the matter. That is why, if pressed for the single highlight of this run, I would say Chloe de Souza’s probing, powerful rendition of Prokofiev’s second “War Sonata” – aka “The Stalingrad”. The composer’s preoccupations are so apt for our times: coded, dark, heart-rending, resolute. I felt it also in the jangling, emotional three-part suite A Guerra, composed and played by Ricardo Martins, which he dedicated to the people of Ukraine. In the end, of course, the showstopper was undoubtedly Sonia Shirsat, our reigning diva who just keeps getting better. Don’t miss the next chance to hear her.