The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Famed Hungarian music academy gets new lease on life Posted: 22 Oct 2013 04:19 PM PDT One of the world's cherished concert venues, where audience and performers alike praise the acoustics and say the spirit of musicians past seems to seep through the walls, the Large Hall in Budapest has been painstakingly restored during a four-year closure to its early 20th-century Art Deco style. "The starting point was that this building is more than 100 years old and had never been renovated," said rector Andras Batta, 60, who will cede his post November 1 to harpist Andrea Vigh. "Practice rooms were shabby, heating was bad, there was no air conditioning, there were a lot of problems so I thought with such great music and immense possibilities we must grow, we must develop it as one of the 21st century's great concert halls." Liszt was a renowned virtuoso pianist and one of the 19th century's great classical composers. The reopening, on Liszt's birthday, will feature a gala concert attended by heads of music institutions from around the world and include remarks by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The reconstruction of the 1907 hall, where such greats as pianist Sviatoslav Richter, violinist Yehudi Menuhin and conductor Leonard Bernstein performed, is distinguished by ebony-hued wood panelling laced with white geometric decoration. It replaces a drab brown coating dating from communist times. A new chamber opera house is named for the late Jewish conductor Sir Georg Solti, who fled Nazi-allied Hungary before World War Two. New "green rooms" for soloists and modern catering facilities are part of the 40-million-euro (RM173.4 million) overhaul. The 800-plus students who used to take their classes at the building housing the concert hall have been accommodated at a new building a few blocks away, named for the late Hungarian avant-garde composer Gyorgy Ligeti. While the older building has been a hive of construction work, the new one resounds to the glorious din of students playing in practice rooms. It lacks the storied atmosphere of the old, but for some students that is a plus. "A lot of students were very happy when this building opened," Anasztazia Razvalyaeva, 27, a native Russian who is now a pupil of Vigh's, said while showing a visitor around. "They said, 'At last, it feels like a real music academy, and not like such a place of mystery'." That "place of mystery" looms large, however, in the Hungarian government's plans to push Budapest up the league tables of European cities with a reputation for music-making. Silicon Valley of music The makeover of the famous building located on Franz Liszt Square in the heart of Budapest was financed 90% with European Union funds and 10% by the Hungarian government, which hopes to use the refurbished hall as a marketing tool for luring tourists to Budapest as a "music capital", Batta said. "I had this idea 10 years ago that we could be the 'Silicon Valley' of music because there are so many good musicians and concert halls and we should make an image, a concert branding, with music," he said. The academy, launched in 1875 with five professors and 38 students in Liszt's apartment, has a faculty of 168 today and is being split into two legal entities, the Liszt Academy and the Liszt Academy Concert Centre, each with its own logo. It is an ambitious gamble, especially taking into account that with the academy's big hall reopening, Budapest, a city of some two million people, will have six mainstream concert, opera or music venues. If they are not competing for the same performers, they will be competing for the concert-going public. The job of filling the 1,100-seat hall, plus 300 seats in the Solti opera house, has fallen to cultural director Andras Csonka. Despite limited resources, he has lined up American septuagenarian cult figure Steve Reich in November, violinist Isabelle Faust a month later and violinist Joshua Bell and cellist Stephen Isserlis to play chamber music next year. Csonka, who came to the academy from the larger Palace of Arts hall on the banks of the Danube River, thinks the concert-going public, local and visitors, is big enough to go around. "We like not to compete but to cooperate," he said. "It is the only way to survive." For music academy alumni, it is essential that the institution survive and build on traditions that have given it pride of place in Hungary's distinguished musical culture. "This building has been renovated so beautifully, so carefully, I can't wait to see it in its original shine," said violinist Barnabas Kelemen, who will play at the gala. – Reuters, October 23, 2013. |
| Venice gondola builders strive to keep tradition alive Posted: 22 Oct 2013 03:25 PM PDT Each steered by a lone gondolier in a striped shirt and straw hat, the slender luxury vehicles offer a romantic setting for a serene cruise and, not uncommonly, a proposal of marriage. There were some 7,000 in Venice about 700 years ago, according to gondoliers' association Ente Gondola, but their use as everyday transport has been supplanted by modern boats. The remaining 433 are now primarily a tourist attraction. At the Tramontin boatyard – known as a "squero" in Venetian dialect – gondola builder Roberto Tramontin explains why the family business founded by his great-grandfather in 1884 still makes the classic boat. "It is like a woman, without too much make-up, in a black Armani gown, with just a diamond at her throat," he said. It takes two months to build one from 280 pieces of various wood including lime, oak, mahogany, walnut, cherry, fir, larch and elm, all adding up to a price tag of about 38,000 euros (RM164,652), Tramontin said. The wood is treated for up to a year before it can be wrought into the slightly asymmetrical banana shape that allows a single gondolier to propel it in a straight line. The gondola builders practise for years before starting to build boats to measure according to each gondolier's weight. "In 1970 I started working and in 1994 I made my first gondola on my own," said Tramontin, leaning against a gleaming example which weighs 500 kilogrammes and is 11.1 metres long. Tramontin says he builds gondolas 60% according to the old methods, but he uses some pieces of wood that have been cut by machine and a type of plywood for the boat's flat base. Layers of black varnish are applied to the whole structure, but ornamentation has been limited since the city's ruling Doge decreed in the 1700s that gondolas had become too ornate. The lavish "felze", small cabins on the deck, which had once shielded passengers from rain and prying eyes, were removed. Losing a culture "We work in the old style. Everything is done by hand," said 48-year-old gondola builder Lorenzo Della Toffola, chiselling at a half-built gondola at San Trovaso squero, in Venice's Dorsoduro neighbourhood, which produces one or two each year using century-old techniques. The surviving distinctive features, such as the curved metal plate on the boat's prow and the carved wooden oarlock known as a "forcola", are the craft of a few remaining artisans. "This work was once done by many dozens of people in different workshops around the city," said oar and oarlock-maker Saverio Pastor as he and his employee Pietro carved a hunk of walnut wood using a double-handed saw. "In the past, everyone knew how to row, now few have any need for oars," said Pastor, shaking his head. "It is a thousand year-old culture that is being lost." The artistry surrounding gondolas should be preserved regardless of this change in behaviour, Venice Mayor Giorgio Orsoni said. "The gondola is one of the symbols of the city and therefore it's clear we have to make all possible efforts to safeguard it and also maintain the profession, the techniques." Pastor's oarlocks are also bought as ornaments for homes, costing up to 1,000 euros (RM4,441) each plus tax. Gondoliers must have a gondola to obtain a licence, so many skirt the costs at the beginning of their careers by buying a second-hand boat, and later get a bank loan to buy a new one. "It's like when a taxi driver buys a taxi," said Aldo Reato, head of gondoliers' association Ente Gondola. Many gondoliers – who are predominantly men – inherit the trade from their fathers, and are keen to point out the close connection between their work and the life of the city. "You need to transmit to the tourists the love you feel for Venice," said gondolier Stefano Bertaggio, 47. Sometimes the gondolier does this job so well that tourists make the ultimate romantic gesture. "I once had a couple from Mexico in the gondola along with the lady's parents," Bertaggio said. "He asked her to marry him and they were all so moved I had to ask a friend to join me helping them out of the boat at the end." – Reuters, October 23, 2013. |
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