| |
||
WORLD HARP CONGRESS 2005
|
||
| The formal reception at
Dublin Castle demonstrated it immediately – the World Harp Congress as
a big, inclusive, all-embracing event that did Ireland proud as the
host country for 2005. Truly a call to a gathering of the harp world, with participants and performers from every continent, accents milling together from USA, Canada, South America, Russia, Japan, China, Korea, Lebanon, UK and mainland Europe, Africa, Australia and, of course, Ireland. Bondings already, old friends remet, harp lovers isolated at home found shared interests with new companions, student groups met with teachers for their first big international event. I located fellow panellists for our coming harp therapy presentation. President Cliona Doris welcomed, cead mile failte also from Olive Braden for the Minister for the Arts, a special honouring bouquet for Sheila Larchet Cuthbert as lynch pin for Ireland throughout the preparations. It was the ninth WHC over 27 years – others held in Maastricht, Jerusalem, Vienna, Paris-Sevres, Copenhagen, Seattle-Tacoma, Prague, Geneva, each Congress with its own particular flavour. As its harp signature, Ireland elected being Irish roots of a world harp tree. The opening concert at St. Patrick’s Cathedral said it all for ancient instrument and centuries long home country associations – beginning with the replica of the 14C Brian Boru wire strung harp, it sharing traditional repertoire with several lever harps, and classical Irish music of John Field/Hamilton Harty/Brian Boydell on concert harps. Six harpists, plus poems from Seamus Heaney, sean nos with Iarla O Lionaird and flute by Ellen Cranitch. As encore applause faded, my harpist friend from Pennsylvania sighed “It made all the fluster of getting to Ireland worthwhile”. With host roots firmly in place, a planet wide abundance spilled its astonishing range through the packed programmes of the week. Of course, with multiple choices, everyone attended a differently shaded congress. “Mine” noted that – Students had the hardest task, with first thing in the morning “Focus on Youth” performers in a lecture room at University College Dublin where most of the conference was held. Students practised all over campus, parents looked after domestic details, teachers and students ate in digs together to save money. There is no age limit on harp learning. One US Southerner told me he took up harp at 52, was now playing, at 73, in a harp trio and doing solo spots at receptions. An American mother said she followed her teenage daughter as harp student, they play at home in duet and you could sense the bonding of it between them. Advance students bravely learnt in public at master classes. In one, Isabelle Moretti pinpointed the necessity for both technique and expression in her charming French way. That necessity showed up in front of your ears through the week with students, contest winners and star performers alike. It is one thing to play accurately, another entirely to bring out the music of the piece. For that you need something from within the performer – feeling and understanding of what the music is communicating. It was there in the emotional strength of Emily Mitchell, stately in her inner quiet, articulating Mozart with diamond clarity at the National Concert Hall. I caught it too in the sensitive musicality of Triona Marshall on Irish lever harp at a corner lunchtime performance in the Arts Centre. That is where all the harps were, hundreds of them on exhibition. Regal 47 string concert harps from the giant Salvi and Lyon and Healy camps, alongside 22 string troubadours by Camac and the pack in the overhead locker type by Triplett, with every variation of style in between – pedals, levers, vividly coloured electronics from familiar names of Pilgrim, Morley, William Rees, David, Dusty Strings, Aoyama and, less familiar to me, Horngacher, Harfamives from Hungary, Sialket Pakistan and Tenon from Taiwan. Not forgetting the lone makers – George Stevens from UK with an array of wirestrungs, Paddy Cafferky over from Galway with a single harp and a three year waiting list, Hugh Jones, maker of my 38 string harp, exhibiting a single and double action harp, the latter the first concert harp to be built in Australia. Because it is Ireland, Salvi exhibited the 1824 John Egan harp from their museum, lovely in its finelined emerald green, gold head, shamrocks and all, its dital forepillar controls a forerunner of levers. At the Composers Seminar, Philip Martin told us he worked closely with harpists when first writing for the instrument, especially Una O’Donovan and now with Andrea Malir. Ditto with others present – Canada’s Kelly-Marie Murphy watching “to see how harpists move” in classes she attended, which helped make “more sense” of the sonorities. Up till then she “didn’t feel my music suitable for harp” and wondered how to move “romantic” sound forward while “respecting what the harp does”. While paying tribute to “that extraordinary harpist” Judy Loman, with whom she consulted, she nevertheless was cautious as an “introvert” of “collaboration” and the need to hold to her “own vision” in the process. Mario Falcao countered with agreement on harpists contacting composers but also reckoning the need to know how a composer thinks “can be dangerous” for a performer’s own interpretation. The amazingly articulate John Buckley observed “the harp can do things no other instrument can do” whilst hearing “mystery and mystique embedded in their sonorous resource”. Eminent octogenerian John Michel Damase, who played piano because his mother didn’t want him to learn harp, emphasised how different writing for the two instruments is, and the need to take into account how the physique of left and right hands are affected, especially the left, with the harp. I thanked him for chamber music of his that I used to end my radio documentary on the history of the concert harp, which helped give me an idea that there would be very new music coming for the instrument. Every day brought a lunchtime Celtic concert in O’Reilly Hall – Irish, Welsh, Breton and Scottish – which collectively told an evolutionary story. Ireland sped off with an exuberant traditional piece from Janet Harbison, later joined by two of her harp orchestra players. Anne-Marie O’Farrell and Cormac de Barra married traditional and classical backgrounds in a lively harmonious duo of Irish and baroque, their presentation showbiz smooth. Anne-Marie’s amazing dexterity with levers, including lifting several together in split second time, gives the instrument concert harp flexibility. That skill led Lyon and Healy to engage her as consultant on the relative weight of levers before launching their own lever harp. For this concert, the Welsh emphasised their traditions with acclaimed Llio Rhydderch being lyrical on triple harp, Gwenard Gibbard with penillion, song and harp going in simultaneous opposite directions and Elinor Bennett with Meinhir Heulyn playing a progression of Welsh from John Thomas to Ann Griffiths and Osian Ellis. There was a generational story deliberately told by Scotland through the pioneering Isobel Mieras, a harpist originally left to teach while still a student herself at a demise stage of harp in her country, “my students taught me to teach”. On stage with two of her former students, Mairi Macleod and Catriona McKay, now masters themselves, you could see the generational shift in technique, style of playing, body language and music ranging from traditional to contemporary, some of the latter mood compositions from the keep-your-eye on Catriona. The Bretons startled with Marie Jan and Dominiq Bouchard, both eclectically moderns, he a standing player in whom you can see the way the future is going. That Celtic pulse as a distinguishing feature of the Congress was a decision of the Irish committee of nine harpists, enlarged to twelve, that underpinned the six year local organisation of this huge event, with its 979 attendees and around 200 performers. The host committee, together with a professional organising company, Conference Partners, followed guidelines laid down by WHC, now led by USA’s Patricia McNulty Wooster as Chairman and Susann McDonald as Artistic Director. WHC started with one woman, Phia Berghout, whose longrunning harp weeks in Holland evolved into the present three yearly Congress as an international event. Inspired by her, and helped onto a firm foundational footing by American organising and fundraising knowhow, it still depends on first generational idealism of doing for its own sake. International organising committees receive no fees and pay their own travel expenses to meetings, local committees the same, while performing artists travel, register, accommodate themselves and play at their own expense, though orchestras and assisting musicians are paid. The “Irish Dream Team”, as the Americans dub them, worked co-operatively and unamisously throughout, chaired by pintsized tyro Cliona Doris from Downpatrick, who also linked with the organising company and international committee. Ireland had the immense benefit of author/harpist Sheila Larchet Cuthbert’s long experience as a member of the Corporation and Board of Directors of WHC. And yes, there were financial concessions from Irish organisations who recognised the value of what the local committee was bringing about for harp and country. So much of harp every day at the Congress. Midmorning and afternoon choices were the hardest to make from a mixture of lectures, seminars and performances simultaneously. At the “Orchestral Harpist” seminar John Marson was an engaging and humourous communicator, Karen Vaughn spoke with a feeling of tremor of the “beauty and priviledge to be associated with music”. Two lovely stories from Sheila Larchet Cuthbert. In the days of one early Irish symphony orchestra, the harpist on salary was thrown out to make way for an extra needed bass player. When bass left, harpist was restored from contract to security. The other had the revered Nicanor Zabaleta appearing with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in his prime as performer. When told by the manager that the second harpist was too ill to play in an orchestral rehearsal he agreed to fill in. Too unbelievable a story for the Roumanian conductor. “Oh yes, and is first harp being played by St.Peter?” I became adept at ducking out of sessions halfway to taste others. An experienced panel, led by Patricia McNulty Wooster, discussed techniques for protecting bodily and mental health of harpists. Sioned Williams was touching in the way she obviously looked after her students wellbeing with good old maternal commonsense. Elena Zaniboni did a slide presentation on preventing injuries, Claire Heppel filled in on Alexander techniques, Willa Postma with breathing and postural correction, while a Pilates instructor from the audience, Danielle Perrette, gave a scientific slant on how that system works for good foundational support. Mary O’Hara’s session also had a full house. A natural personality, she linked cautiously with her Power Point presentation of a dramatic life, video clips stirring memories of her journey from folk through traditional to the landmark “Lord of the Dance”, her music always tinged with meaning. For harpist David Watkins “it’s the best session I’ve attended so far”. Mary’s husband Pat spotted me from stage and gave me her book “Celebration of Love” saying “a signed copy has been waiting for you on the table at home for a year”. At Siobhan Armstrong’s history of the wirestrung harp, we’re linked with at least 1000 years of the language, poetry and music of this land. It was all there - brass, silver and gold strings, the bardic connection, life brought of near death through the Belfast Harp Festival of 1792, “tuning of the harp bringing order out of chaos” – represented in the dark wood splendour and beautiful resonance of Siobhan’s 14C “Brian Boru” replica harp, and in her own pioneering resurrecting of interest in it. No need to choose midafternoon on Thursday – it was our own harp therapy session. Christina Tourin domonstrated her own harp therapy course via Power point, sharing it with nurse/harpist/therapist Sarajane Williams who also publishes a harp therapy magazine. They are in the front line of groundbreaking efforts in the USA in organised harp therapy which helps put that country ahead of the world in that arena. Lyon and Healy are aware enough of this opening field of music therapy, and its links with harp, to have just sponsored a conference in the States. I reminded the audience of ancient harp associations with healing and funerary rites, not forgetting love and war, myth, magic and mysticism – no accident this. Also that there is a biological primacy in sound with hearing as our first sense to develop and the last to leave us at death. Correspondingly the Bible puts sound first “In the Beginning was the Word”, so does Hinduism with its generative “Om”, and Chinese definition of sound as inner feminine being, yin energy, and visual as outer masculine doing, or yang. Psychologically C.G. Jung echoes with “music is dealing with such deep archetypal material….used therapeutically from this deep level, music should be an essential part of every analysis….Music expresses in sounds what fantasies and visions express in visual images….(It) represents the movement, development and transformation of the collective unconscious”. Una O’Donovan marvellously topped us all with lived in stories of her work as harp therapist with Los Angeles Mount Sinai hospital – the dying musician whose family could feel the vibrations in his body as Una played, a cantakerous man who then became amiable to the surprise of nursing staff; the blind woman who initially didn’t want music, came alive and danced under its influence. Una works with instinct, intuition and a big heart, qualities that formal training can encourage, but not give. There were four music therapists in the audience, half a dozen more harpists wanting to do more than perform, three deciding on the spot to train. Over the next twenty hours, a number of people told me my talk had touched something in them and they could have heard more. Encourages me to say on track. Our session over, I could relax more but that didn’t mean I had mastered the art of being in three places at the same time. So I continued to play hit and miss in multiple time slots. Yes, I did hear Jana Bouskova in a liquidly musical solo, Kathleen Loughnane playing Irish traditional with ease, a tiny bit of Joy Hu Hoffmann on double strung Chinese harp and wished I’d heard more, Patricia Tazzini receiving the first standing ovation of the week after dazzling Smetana and Albeniz. But I missed out on the Suzuki Tour Group, a couple of master classes, Aibhlin McCrann being “erudite” on Irish harp, Marshall Maguire with his self-commissioned new Australian music, the “funny” harp-in-cinema lecture by David Ice both times and the general WHC meeting with audience input. However, the big nightly “dos” in the National Concert Hall – every one I heard. A succession of harps on stage in their most royal form. You could see why “noble” has always been attributed to the instrument. Chamber and choral groups, trios and duets, the RTE National Symphony and the Ulster Orchestra. Harp performers from twenties to seventies. Human highlights of the week’s big concerts had to be the two standing ovations for harpists from their peers. A reminder of John Buckley’s remark that he had never seen such an appreciative and giving group of people as at this Congress. Although the easy elegance of Catherine Michel’s playing was echoed in her appearance, her body language, as the audience rose in prolonged applause, was a startled mouthing of “no, don’t”, hand up to catch a tear, a step forward, kiss blown and a silent “I love you”, hands stretched out in embrace to the audience. This after a forty year career that included a very early stint as principal harpist with RTE Concert Orchestra. And who could forget the sheer bizzazz of Elinor Bennett and Catrin Finch as they romped through Karl Jenkins Double Harp Concerto with intergenerational humour, which again brought a laughing audience to its feet. Musical variations abounded – shades of classic repertoire, sometimes with more flower than flavour for me; the sophisticated improvisation of Palle Mikkelberg’s trio arrested by Helen Davie’s standout traditional slow air; the high energies of the Duartes with that so different South American technique; the dissonant period of music engaging little that is human; the popular late night corner of Alfredo Rolando Ortiz, Cuban artist of rhythm and silence, light and shade; the loosebodied swing of Christian Brega’s Brasiliera – more “future” in her. But it was the contemporary compositions that told me music is turning a dark corner, heralding a fuller engagement with the forces of life. Music is, after all, communication and there was nature being evoked by John Buckley’s wispily “endless white clouds”, a world premiere; in the lone and wintry elements of Valery Kikta’s Sonata, tellingly sounded by Russia’s Anna Verkholantseva; the stunning sweep of Kelly-Anne Murphy’s “And Then I Paint the Stars”, so redolent of Canada’s vast landscape and brought home by Judy Loman’s technically superb expressivity. A love of nature stirred in me in response. Human elements of that nature were fed by Philip Martin’s Concerto for this “Queen of instruments” with its melodic and rhythmic music, unexpected cello, metallic percussion and return of harp to centred solo in Andreja Malir’s very individual style. Deeper still, spirit found reflection in Victor Ulanich’s “Morning Stars Hymns” played with that special Russian emotional nuance by Natalia Shameyeva; in moving memorials to Deane Sherman, key founding member of WHC, by harpists David Watkins and Mario Falcao, both noticeably humble in their richly sensitive “anima” feeling; and the still centre in Hugh Webb’s surprisingly chosen “Magdalen Prayer” encore. In a darkening, unstable world this congress showed a way forward in its allowing of all kinds of music by all types of harps; its bridging of old and new, young and older, male and female, North and South on this island; its weaving together of an interconnected web of community whose energies could disperse in who knows what extended ripplings worldwide. Last concert over, the ending too sudden for me, I headed off to morning-after church where two harpists play. I turn round and found large chunks of Irish harp world behind me, the “Dream Team” almost completed over a family style lunch, joined by Sheila Larchet Cuthbert, farewelled by Patricia McNulty Wooster. A fitting ending. Claire Dunne © clairedunne@mail.com 9th September 2005
|
||