H Συναυλία για τα 30 χρόνια από τον θάνατο του
ANDRÉS SEGOVIA
(15 Μαΐου 2017 - Μέγαρο Μουσικής Θεσσαλονίκης)
Στις 15 Μαΐου 2017, διοργανώθηκε στο Μέγαρο Μουσικής Θεσσαλονίκης μεγάλη συναυλία, με την ευκαιρία της συμπλήρωσης 30 χρόνων από τον θάνατο του σημαντικότερου κιθαριστή του 20ού αιώνα, του Andrés Segovia. Την επιμέλεια της εκδήλωσης είχε η σολίστ Έλενα Παπανδρέου, Επίκουρη Καθηγήτρια του Τμήματος Μουσικής Επιστήμης και Τέχνης του Πανεπιστημίου Μακεδονίας. Συμμετείχαν διακεκριμένοι φοιτητές και απόφοιτοι της ειδίκευσης κιθάρας του Τμήματος, που γιόρτασαν τα 12 χρόνια από την ίδρυση της τάξης, παίζοντας έργα από το ρεπερτόριο του μυθικού Andrés Segovia που καθιέρωσε την κιθάρα στις αίθουσες συναυλιών σε όλο τον κόσμο. Με την παρουσία τους απέδειξαν ‘επί σκηνής’ πως οι καλλιτεχνικές αξίες του μεγάλου κιθαριστή εξακολουθούν να εμπνέουν και να καθοδηγούν τις νεότερες γενιές. Η εκδήλωση αποτελούσε μέρος του κύκλου συναυλιών ‘Το ΠΑΜΑΚ στο Μέγαρο’. Το TaR, το οποίο ήταν από τους βασικούς χορηγούς επικοινωνίας της εκδήλωσης, σας παρουσιάζει ολόκληρο το βίντεο της συναυλίας. Για να θυμηθούμε τον Andrés Segovia, αλλά και να απολαύσουμε τις μουσικότατες ερμηνείες των κιθαριστικών... τρισέγγονών του.Επίσης, είναι μεγάλη τιμή που ο maestro Oscar Ghiglia (μαθητής αλλά και άμεσος συνεχιστής του έργου του Andrés Segovia στην Accademia Musicale Chigiana στη Siena) έγραψε ένα κείμενο ειδικά για το TaR, με αφορμή την εκδήλωση. (Το κείμενο δημοσιεύεται στα Αγγλικά, ώστε να διατηρηθεί ο ιδιαίτερος τρόπος γραφής του συγγραφέα).
Για το TaR
Κώστας Γρηγορέας
(διαχειριστής)
About the concert-tribute to Andrés Segovia
(15 May 2017 in Thessaloniki)
Oscar Ghiglia & Elena Papandreou
Elena Papandreou has been putting all her best energies into a project displaying the meaningful teachings and the tradition which Andrés Segovia had established in the musical world during his deeply influential concert and teaching activity in the XX Century. Reviving his ideas as well as his example was the aim of Elena’s intention when she created this celebrative event, several months ago and last night finally came to be.
Although Elena's personal acquaintance with this unprecedented Spaniard’s Art had usually been limited to listening to her father’s choice to share with his family many of Segovia’s recordings, at home or through the CD player of their Citroen DS, during travels to their European destinations, thanks to his considerably long existence on stage she could catch a living glimpse of Andres Segovia.
In her childhood, her chosen study of the guitar received her mother’s encouragement and the supporting foundation of the collective learning of some of Segovia’s best Greek pupils who had been studying with him, first in Siena and later in Santiago de Compostela : their learned skills began to influence Greek opinion on the classical guitar. Among these young promises, her first real direct teacher was Evangelos Boudounis, who helped her build a solid approach to the main physical components of the guitar: its technique, the respect for the beauty of its tone and a solid repertoire.
Last night she told the attentive public about the only moment she spoke to Segovia. It was in London. Having stood in line with the multitude of autograph seekers, as it was always the case at the end of his concerts, it slowly came to be her turn to receive one. As she was telling him how to spell her Greek name and get a souvenir signature, which - as in every interpretation of his- was studied to follow a particular spelling order ( first a horizontal line, then, a little at a time his autograph would appear, firmly drawn in a firmly decided path of lines and dots… Even in his older days this action never lost firmness.) When this was done, he gave it to her, and she asked him an unexpected question: “Can I give you a kiss?” He nodded affirmatively.
"I kissed Andres Segovia!” She proudly told her numerous public during her speech, in last night’s historical event!
She was then in her teens and had already started her eventfully brilliant musical career!
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This project of hers made us feel Elena's sense of life priorities : thanks to Segovia’s influence, to one's musical instinct and search for greatness of human spirit, one may achieve a truly sincere contact with the soul of one's instrument and a truly meaningful relationship with the art of music interpretation.
In Segovia’s recorded interview, from the precious series of Christopher Nupen’s frames of the greatest artists of the XX Century, his words clarify this intent ( falling perfectly on what the new generations have unfortunately shown a tendency to ignore ): namely, that ( paraphrasing Debussy’s words, after hearing a guitar concert ) “The guitar is like an orchestra, perceived through the other side of a binocular, where all instruments are present, in their specific sound diversity : strings, woodwinds, brass, percussions…! All these differentiated sounds may replace its lack of loudness with tone colours, when treated with real love and real artistry… Or, as Garcia Lorca stated one day: “ The song of a piano is a speech, that song of the violin a lament, that of a cello, an elegy, the song of the guitar…is a SONG!”
During last night’s celebration the public was made aware of what the results of Elena's teaching’s priorities are: four of her pupils performed beautifully, each expressing his choice of Segovia’s repertoire with his own clearly individual personality.
With a wittily pertinent speech of her own Elena presented her personal “song” to Segovia’s memory, after which, under a huge screen picture of a black and white photograph depicting a Practicing Segovia, towering on the stage, the young performers appeared in succession : Angelos ANTONIOU, played a typical starter of the Classical part of a program which Segovia would often dedicate to Sor and gave a strong and convincing performance of his well know "Grand Solo”; Dimitris PAPAVASILIOU did a charming “Granada’ by Albéniz and continued with a sparkling and singing “Sonatina Meridional” of M.M. Ponce ending thus the first half of the evening program.
After a short intermission, Elena walked to the stage and asked me to say something about my own personal experience with the Maestro as a clip of a masterclass in Santiago de Compostela (1965) was projected, where I played “La Frescobalda” and Segovia provided me with his insights on that work.
At this point I believe I could insert a personal addition to Elena’s history, speaking of my own direct experience with the monumental personage at the core of this report. The above mentioned three factors : solid guitar technique, absolute respect for the beauties of its tone and a solid repertoire had always been among the qualities aired at the new pupils who filled Segovia’s classes of Siena's Accademia Chigiana as prerequisites for a further study towards developing their talent, possibly within the Maestro’s artistic guidance.
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Angelos Antoniou
Most of these pupils, including this writer, had no doubts as to the universality of the foundations on which these values were resting. No Facebook or other collective information means were available in those days and his recurrent hints referring to the “Tradición” were what seemed to matter most in his teaching, when the direct examples on his guitar - always resting on his lap - wasn’t called to speak in the very-first person.…
I inferred that what he meant by this word derived from the collection of the many key changes in the history of his Spain, his own accumulated cultural
This truth, as we could understand from his words or from his generous musical examples was evident both in showing the musical expression of music’s emotional meaning and, at the same time, in the tenderness exerted by his left hand on the fretted strings or in the direction of the precise attack of his right hand ‘multipurpose' fingernails on the strings which produced, in chosen spots, such particularly beautiful quality of tone on a very few luckier notes… This would create in us the implicit acceptance that artistic quality and equality of importance within the general melodic components of a piece are not necessarily the same thing… Some sounds are noticeably more important than others in a common context and each instrument express this diversity in its particular way… His guitar, thanks to his believing in “ her” inborn expressivity went extremely far in this direction, leaving to us the responsibility to discover our own answer to her "ancestral call"…
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Dimitris Papavassiliou
Segovia left to us the responsibility of finding the answers to all the “W” key-questions of knowledge : the “what”, the “where” , the “when”... The “why” was not always a favourite question… nobody had the guts to ask about it! When a solution was shown by his own playing, the general response was almost invariably a choral: "ESO ES!”. THAT’S IT!
However we might rate his opinions as inviolable, it was only through our own inner judgement that were we able to question or answer some musical solutions that didn’t seem too clear to us.
Finally, each of his students had the duty-right to speak his own truth through the musical logic in his own playing; this was the only way to improve our playing and to better understand “why” we were there in the first place.
As in every student-teacher relationship, It was important for us to summon attention and be appreciated for our efforts, according to a scale of values slowly developed individually and finally agreed upon by each of us. But it was also natural to believe that the solutions we found were almost never differing from what Segovia had previously suggested.
Once, throwing the sponge after trying to decide how to find a hitherto impossible solution to phrasing problems in a sequential passage of a phantasy by Weiss, I found the guts to ask him “how” this passage had to be done. I was overwhelmed by his immediate reaction: he showed me, one after the other, a multitude of totally different ways to perform that passage... and each solution seeming to be the absolute right one! This was a whipping to the self-esteem foundations of my capacity to interpret musical signs one way or another and, as a result, my personal seeking for “W” questions and “How” answers continues still today, half a century after those pioneering days!
Indeed, my most pressing matter was to achieve an upgrading within my own self opinion and to this respect I personally added to my bag of learning-tricks all the sayings about good playing I had gathered from my mother's quotations… As from her own German piano teacher Adela Aus Der Ohe, who insisted in inciting her hands to “fly!”, or to play a particular passage “Come una bella nuvola!” (“like a beautiful cloud!”) or about Arturo Toscanini’s demand that "every note in the score be played as if it were being sung!”.
Yorgos Karalanidis
I recalled all the good impressions I had always received from my mother's beautiful playing, from my father’s outstanding artistic ability to draw the very image of his model’s soul and his outspoken convictions on what real Art (with capital A) had to be. Therefore, I decided to learn an important piece - Segovia’s transcription of Bach’s “ prelude and Fugue in D”- using all the means at my disposal : ten months’ time, all my knowledge, instinct, hope, perseverance… and present it to Segovia’s class in Siena the following year.
For this purpose I chose to use my old metronome as a precious ally : every day, I played my Bach’s choice four times. At first, stretching eight times the relative value of each note, the second time, doubling the speed to four time slower than normal, the third time at half its tempo and finally once “ A TEMPO! ” .
Every day the same routine, plus Sor, Giuliani, Pujol, etc etudes, and whatever my guitar teacher at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia, Benedetto Di Ponio would demand from all his pupils for the week.
Thanks to that discipline Segovia’s and Alirio Diaz’s opinion of me changed drastically! The first time I played that Bach for Segovia I received a full applause from the whole class (including a young John Williams!) and to top it all, Segovia himself stood up, shook my hand and stated that the improvement he witnessed in my playing was the sign of a way of practicing I should never give up, but place it at the very top of my priorities…
Chronis Koutsoumpidis
End of personal involvement in Segovia’s tradition.
After the videoed Frescobaldi lesson episode, when the Past and the Present joined each other, in a meaningful way, forming an unbroken link with Segovia’s tradition and the sound of the “young" me playing and the “old” me present on the evening stage, the show went on.
A superb rendition of M. Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s “Capriccio Diabolico” was delivered by Giorgos KARALANIDIS and the program ended with a solid and expressive Hronis KOUTSOUMBIDIS' version of Turina's "Sonata op. 61”.
A not announced quartet came back to the stage and gave us the familiar Catalonian lullaby “El noy de la mare” structured in four separate parts never joining together, except on the last chord. Segovia’s own recorded video performance closed the event!
From one end to the other I could sense the overall presence of what appears during Elena’s own playing: a deeply felt urge to express music in its most humanly meaningful existence in time. In Segovia’s days I felt the same when I sat, high on a cheap gallery seat of the Aula Magna of the University of Rome, when Segovia sat still for a few moments, waiting for the large hall to reach complete silence, enabling the full audience to enjoy his slightest caress on his guitar, in an A major chord slightly brushed pianissimo, which signalled to us all where to direct our listening skills.
The high quality of the playing showed a general agreement within Elena’s requirements in her learning group of gifted young Greeks, often with no family history in music or art, but having decided to choose the guitar in order to fill up their university curriculum… Elena’s clear teaching words and her whipping advice guaranteed by her own unbending example has totally discouraged any possible tendency to take music without total dedication and continued effort. Her results under Segovia’s towering image are clearly in the direction the Maestro kept pointing at in his own teaching to us and to himself whom he considered his best pupil and best teacher: “Music comes from the excellence of our spirit and must never be taken as a means to show off either one’s superior ability or in order to overcome the other!"
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Oscar Ghiglia
(May 2017)
ΤΑ ΒΙΝΤΕΟ ΤΗΣ ΣΥΝΑΥΛΙΑΣ
1ο μέρος:
Πρόλογος Έλενα Παπανδρέου
VIdeo*
Άγγελος Αντωνίου (απόφοιτος ειδίκευσης κιθάρας τΜΕΤ 2015)
F. Sor Grand Solo
Δημήτρης Παπαβασιλείου (2ο έτος ειδίκευσης κιθάρας τΜΕΤ)
I. Albeniz Granada,
M.M. Ponce Sonatina Meridional
*(The video was made for educational purposes, using excerpts from 'Segovia at los Olivos' (1967) and 'Andrés Segovia, the Song of the Guitar' (1977) with the kind permission of Christopher Nupen and Allegro Films http://www.allegrofilms.com/)
2ο μέρος:
Video: Oscar Ghiglia master-class με τον Andrés Segovia (Santiago de Compostela, 1965)
Oscar Ghiglia λίγα λόγια για τον Segovia
Γιώργος Καραλανίδης (4ο έτος ειδίκευσης κιθάρας τΜΕΤ)
M. Castelnuovo Tedesco Capriccio Diabolico
Χρόνης Κουτσουμπίδης (απόφοιτος τΜΕΤ 2009)
J. Turina Sonata
Αντωνίου-Καραλανίδης-Κουτσουμπίδης-Παπαβασιλείου
El Noi de la Mare (Catalan song)
Video finale
(The final video was taken from the film 'Andrés Segovia, the Song of the Guitar' (1977) with the kind permission of Christopher Nupen and Allegro Films http://www.allegrofilms.com/)
ΜΕΓΑΛΟ ΑΦΙΕΡΩΜΑ ΤΟΥ TaR ΓΙΑ ΤΟΝ ANDRES SEGOVIA
(Επιμέλεια: Γιώργος Β. Μονεμβασίτης)
(Η επιμέλεια του κειμένου είναι ευθύνη του αρθρογράφου)
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