February 2018

volume 7 • issue 7

SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA OF INDIA

SPRING 2018 SEASON ANTONI WIT | ZANE DALAL | GAVIN CARR | BENJAMIN APPL

ON Stage

Chairman’s NoteA

s we begin the month of February, the NCPA is proud that its makeover by way of infrastructure, image, welcoming entrances and areas is almost complete and in keeping with the expectations of our organisation. It is now imperative for the quality of our offerings to match

our facade.The danger in thinking only of commercial success in the running

of a performing arts centre is that it is not in keeping with the vision with which performing arts centres are meant to function. Performing arts centres cannot solely depend on the box office for their survival, and it is vital that they seek support for their artistic standards by procuring assistance from elsewhere. In the case of Europe and many countries in Asia, the government is a large contributor to the welfare of the organisations with which they are proudly associated.  It has been established that a good artistic sensibility in a city is a positive attraction, not only for tourism but also for business.  We hope and pray that our government also recognises this reality.

Back to business, our dear great Girija Devi passed away about three months ago and it is only right that the organisation which used to light up with her inspirational force and singing until her very last day, should honour her with a tribute worthy of her stature.

Our dance department, which is growing from strength to strength, is introducing a new festival called Spectrum this month, featuring dances from across the world in order to celebrate the diversity of dance culture.

The Symphony Orchestra of India (SOI) has now reached maturity as an orchestra and the ambitious planning of the February season will reflect this position.  The music presented will range from an oratorio and a mass to huge and daring works of the high Romantic era. One such work being presented is the orchestral reduction by Lorin Maazel of Richard Wagner’s music from The Ring. Our Mumbai audiences who love romantic music will definitely warm up to this concert. Another great work being presented is Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony with its humongous requirements. The roster of conductors and soloists this season is most impressive and includes Antoni Wit’s debut conducting the SOI. He was awarded the Gramophone Editor’s Choice Award a few years ago and will be leading the SOI in a performance of The Ring Without Words.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I hope we have satisfied some of your expectations from the NCPA but, rest assured, we will keep aiming to move ahead.

Khushroo N. Suntook

Chairman's Note.indd 3 18/01/18 3:41 PM

Contents10

Features

08Reflections On India and the World. By Anil Dharker

10 The Ring Zane Dalal looks at the music, the drama and the pervasive social message of Richard Wagner’s epic music drama, Der Ring des Nibelungen

16 Choir and Choral MasterThis March, Mumbai audiences will get to see Gavin Carr conduct Beethoven’s Choral

Fantasy and Haydn’s Mass for Troubled Times. Interviewed by Cynthia Lewis

20The Heart of MusicThe Italian classical pianist Roberto Prosseda explores the past and the future to underscore the most important element of music: feeling it. Interviewed by Cynthia Lewis

24Voice of the EastGirija Devi was the face and the voice of Purab ang gayaki for six decades. With her demise

NCPA ChairmanKhushroo N. Suntook

Executive Director & Council MemberDeepak Bajaj

Editorial DirectorRadhakrishnan Nair

Editor-in-Chief

Oishani Mitra

Consulting EditorEkta Mohta

Senior Sub-editorCynthia Lewis

Editorial Co-ordinatorHilda Darukhanawalla

Art DirectorAmit Naik

Deputy Art DirectorsHemali Limbachiya

Tanvi Shah

Graphic DesignerVidhi Doshi

AdvertisingAnita Maria Pancras

(advertising@ncpamumbai.com; 66223820) Tulsi Bavishi

(tulsi@mansworldindia.com; 9833116584)

Senior Digital ManagerJayesh V. Salvi

Cover CreditEpigram

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in October last year, the Indian musical stage has lost yet another titan. By Meena Banerjee

27A Thousand NamesB. N. Goswamy explores the many artistic visions of Vishnu and their painters

30Dancing to a New TuneA brand new festival called Spectrum is set to woo audiences with Western classical and contemporary dances spread over two evenings at the NCPA. By Vidhi Salla

36Portraits of a LifePaul Cézanne’s complex life and unique perspective gave birth to a new movement in art.By Abisha Fernandes

We look forward to your feedback and suggestions. Please do drop us an email at onstage@ncpamumbai.com.

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40A Tribute to Ahmad JamalHarpist Susan Mazer will play a tribute concert to the jazz master at the NCPA this month. Interviewed by Cynthia Lewis

44Mohan Rakesh – A TributeKamleshwar pens a tribute to his friend and contemporary, Mohan Rakesh, translated from Hindi by Satyadev Dubey

48Programme GuideAll of February’s events at the NCPA

57What’s NextWhat to look forward to in the coming months

Zane Dalal looks at the music, the drama and the pervasive social message of Richard Wagner’s epic music drama, Der Ring des Nibelungen

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The Ring

Der Ring des Nibelungen at The Metropolitan Opera

Much has been written on the life and work of composer Richard Wagner, and even more on his famous tetralogy of operas, Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). There is much scholarship that provides for much to understand and much to recognise. For the purposes of this short edition for ON Stage, I’m putting forward three main areas of interest – in a single thread of enquiry – which I hope will fascinate you.

The MusicWhen most musicians think of Wagner, they contextualise him in the musical language in which he wrote. It’s unmistakable, and for those involved in performance or singing his music, it’s the only place to start. We know that the English spoken today is not the Middle English of Chaucer, nor the Early Modern English of pre-1850. Similarly, taking Hindi or Marathi as an example, we would find many historical versions that have led over time to current colloquial usage. So it is with music. The musical language known to Handel is different to the one used or adopted by Mozart or Beethoven, who, in turn, through Schubert, Schumann and Brahms deliver a changing musical

language to Wagner. What makes Wagner remarkable is the manner in which he exploits what is given to his generation – stretching the boundaries of harmony, form and structure.

On listening to Wagner, even the first-time listener is aware of a soundscape that is large, engulfing and, at times, overwhelming to the point of distraction. He takes his listeners on a journey that gives them harmonies and chord progressions that are more adventurous, more lush, more extreme and more iconoclastic than his contemporaries imagined or allowed. He created a following of young disciples who were ready to boo at live performances of Brahms. Similarly, the Brahms camp were present to boo back. Wagner wasn’t one to fit in; he was one to create his own path, and demand that others follow it completely and obediently or abandon it altogether. The result is a musical score that demands much – in skill, in understanding and in sheer stamina and strength. Wagner demands it equally of the orchestral player, the soloist, the chorus member, the conductor – and the entire drama regie as well.

Some would say that Wagner’s musical language is stretched to the point of breaking – or collapsing back on itself. It has the framework of what is known, but

constantly suggests the unknown. A literary comparison might be with the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins in his use of the terms ‘inscape’ and ‘instress’. Inscape refers to the unique quality of a thing, a moment or word – its real presence. Instress is the binding force of the inscape and the impulse of its delivery mechanism

to the beholder. A romantic religious notion that everything in existence has the stamp of the creator, taking it beyond scientific mass to something more special, permeates the poetry of this period. With Wagner, there is an almost constant experiment with the sound of a note. What it means, what it implies, how it is connected to neighbouring notes and how the whole is perceived by the listener. For the purposes of this article, suffice it to say, that the musical language of Wagner alone provides no finite explanation and each question it affords is typically answered by another question. When you next listen to his music, you will instantly be aware – if you haven’t noticed it

already – that you are listening to two or three directional strands simultaneously: what is actually played, what you actually hear, and what you actually thought you heard. This emotional complication is a necessary part of understanding Wagner, and is fully intentional. Now imagine all those leitmotifs – those small set phrases,

NCPA February 2018 • 13

On listening to Wagner, even the first-time listener

is aware of a soundscape that

is large, engulfing and, at times, overwhelming to the point of

distraction

12 • February 2018 NCPA

sounds or chords that connote particular dramatic themes or objects throughout the Ring Cycle: one for Valhalla, one for the Rhine, one for the Ring, one for the Curse, one for Notung (the sword), and so on. They are no longer just the music, they mean so much more.

The DramaIt is not always healthy or appropriate to have your librettist and composer in the same person. In fact, without a doubt, all the greatest operatic achievements are always a great poet/librettist brought together with a great composer, each knowingly working his expertise to join with the other – two souls combined in one. Whether Mozart and Da Ponte, Verdi and Boito, Puccini and Illica, or Richard Strauss and von Hofmannsthal, there is real pleasure that opera lovers have in seeing great textual drama come alive in music, and conversely, the music exploring a textual point. In the case of Wagner, the end result would have benefitted a great deal from a second source for text

and dramatic impulse. Wagner had already embarked upon developing a whole new art form, in which he positioned himself in complete dominion over all that he surveyed. He would deliver to the world, a single masterminded concept of drama in which the drama, action, props, sets, costumes, storyline, orchestra, orchestral instruments, players, singers, chorus, cooks, engineers, workmen and local politicians all marched to the same step. This vision was fully realised in the great Bayreuth opera house; and his great-grandchildren running Bayreuth today suffer from not being able to be as autocratic and dictatorial as their forebears, though not for lack of trying.

I cannot for the purposes of this article summarise the plot of the Ring Cycle because even that would be a longer endeavour than the whole article. I do, however, recommend that our readers read a synopsis of the plot, and then follow by reading George Bernard Shaw’s The Perfect Wagnerite. In this short, eminently readable volume, Shaw discusses the origins of what

Facing page and here: Scenes from Der Ring

des Nibelungen at The Metropolitan Opera

follows here below at length. There is a link between the story of the Ring, its didactic processes, and the changing dynamics of society in Germany. There are many parallels to medieval feudal lordship, hierarchy, perceived power over another being, a sense that everyone is born in a place in society, and that the strong might have dominion over the weak to their own ends. The idea of the gods failing to keep their contract with the giants and getting tricked by an unseemly dwarf, the curse of stolen gold laying waste to characters throughout the plot, the magical powers of the Tarnhelm, a cloak that renders its wearer invisible – may seem childlike in its fairytale impulses. But there is a strong and dark undercurrent. The idea that those at the top of society (the gods), through their military instruments (the Valkyries), might decide who died and who lived. This process – mirrored in the inner workings of The Reich - was to define who was a hero and who was not, and the aim was to ensure that the purity of Valhalla, the last abode of gods and heroes, would remain unsullied. How much of this played out in the real life of the Wagner family, the controlling mandate of the Gestapo and the machinery of concentration camps?

The Social ConstructThe autocratic command structure at Bayreuth presents a fascinating inherited legacy, which is still partially in effect today. Everyone is and must be Wagner-obsessed. This is realised in an extraordinary way. The orchestra is made up of Wagner experts, who know the opera back to front and often better than the conductor who stands before them. I remember in Bayreuth in 1989, a singer who forgot his line during a rehearsal was greeted with the sound of 25 voices from the orchestra, singing it for him. Similarly, there is a going rate for singing Brünhilde or Siegfried or a Valkyrie, and those rates and tables don’t really consider if you’re a diva or not. Everyone is there to serve the common purpose, with a devotion that borders on obsession. I saw it when I was there. I hope that some of it remains uneroded, because it made for the most vital and extraordinary music-making. However, to all this there is a dark side.

Everyone had to be obsessed. While Wagner lived, they had no choice. While his son Siegfried lived, they had no choice – this time fanned by Hitler’s Third Reich. Siegfried’s wife, an Englishwoman named Winifred Williams, was a close personal friend of Hitler, smuggling to him in prison the paper on which he scribbled Mein Kampf. The family and the Reich were intertwined by fate and history. If you go to Bayreuth and listen – as I have done – to the eerie silence of the dense, humid summer air, and look up at the window of the opera house where Hitler appeared to soldiers below, and remind yourself of the photographs you’ve seen of performances of the Ring, of Wehrmacht and SS officers in uniform with red and black swastika armbands, then you will hear the sound of a thousand tramping boots and the echoes of the repeated “Sieg Heil”.

There are a few more obvious comparisons that make one shudder. The SS, Vice-Führer Himmler’s group, modelled themselves, their underground

activities, oath-taking and their espoused medieval view of the purity of white Christians entirely upon Wagner’s opera Parsifal. If you take the title ‘Valkyrie’ for the operation that would save Hitler’s Germany if there was a coup, there is an ironic sense of justice that the operation would seek to see who would live or die, and who would be transported to the land of heroes. Darker still, the words used to describe the properties of the Tarnhelm, to allow its wearer to disappear

into Nacht und Nebel – the night and the fog – was the secret underpinning of the December 1941 edict of whisking away anti-German instigators in the middle of the night, which culminated, unchecked, in the Holocaust and the Final Solution. That so many Wagnerian phrases, themes, views and beliefs would find themselves ripe for use in the legal underpinnings

of communiqués within Hitler’s Germany is a Gordian knot that is better cut than unravelled.

The Ring without Words, adapted by Lorin Maazel, which will be performed by the Symphony Orchestra of India this February allows us to listen to the orchestral scope of this story, without dealing with the drama or a somewhat clunky libretto. However, the music in and of itself is where Wagner is the real master, so we have the best of the Ring. Maazel’s edition, while an epic evening of music-making and listening, from time to time truncates at the wrong place, and often leaves out some portions essential to those who know the operas well and expect the drama to unfold in a certain way. However, this is exactly what Maazel was after, to present an orchestral feast while not being fettered by the direction of plot and drama. To the first-time listener, it will be an extraordinary experience. To a Wagnerian disciple, it will still have enough of the pull

of the original score. After immersing yourselves in this Charybdis of music, many of you may seek out the original four operas of Der Ring des Nibelungen, and if you get that far, you will be hooked onto Wagner as only his followers can be.

The Symphony Orchestra of India will perform The Ring Without Words on 11th February at the Jamshed Bhabha Theatre. Zane Dalal serves as Associate Music Director of the Symphony Orchestra of India. He is a frequent contributor to ON Stage and blogs at www.zanedalal.com/blog. He will be delivering talks on Wagner and other topics during the Spring 2018 season. Check with the NCPA for dates and timings.

Wagner wasn’t one to fit in; he was one

to create his own path, and demand that others follow

it completely or abandon it altogether

A fine and very powerful performance by Fürtwängler and the Orchestra of La Scala, which tempts us into the sounds and tempi that Fürtwängler would have certainly played for Hitler in earlier years. Available as Teatro alla Scala Orchestra. Opera d’Oro 1501 (12 CDs). A very famous collection of recordings, made for recording (not live performance) by Georg Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic, along with a documentary film, The Ring Resounding, which explore how powerful music might sound if one could rehearse and play and not be distracted by live opera. The result is absolutely glorious. The international cast assembled, still unparalleled in the history of the repertoire, makes this a must-have, must-own piece of history. A marvellous and visceral performance by Karl Böhm and the Bayreuther Festspiele Orchester, which is exactly the opposite of the Solti/Vienna, a live dramatic rendition that will make your hair curl. Perhaps, my favourite, and truest to the compelling dramatic line in the music. The Patrice Chereau Ring at Bayreuth with Pierre Boulez conducting. This is a staging that is worth seeing even if the music, a little restrained and perfectly placed a la Boulez, doesn’t overwhelm the way Wagner perhaps intended. Available as Deutsche Grammophon 000506209 (eight DVDs). And, lastly, have a look at both the Kupfer/Barenboim Ring – again a fascinating staging, and some wonderful orchestral playing, a personal soft spot, because I was there to see it live (available as Bayreuth Festival Orchestra. Unitel D4755 (11 DVDs), and La Fura dels Baus staging of Zubin Mehta’s Ring with the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana. Mehta has long had a special association with the music of Wagner, taking it to another level as he does with the music of Strauss (available as Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana. Unitel 703808 (eight DVDs).

Our recommendations of the Ring:

NCPA February 2018 • 1514 • February 2018 NCPA

Brünnhilde and Siegfried

Sieglinde fetches a drink for Hunding

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Mohan Rakesh was one of those literary personalities who never accepted the traditional set-up and always aspired to find and project something challenging and new. Rakesh was a pioneer in more than one field of literary and creative writing. In the field of the short story, he initiated the ‘New Story’ movement in Hindi. In the field of drama, he opened up new vistas with his untiring efforts. And in his novels and travelogues, he explored the vast expanse of man’s inner

and outer worlds. In fact, no genre of creative writing was left untouched by him: Rakesh brought a whiff of fresh air into each of them.

RAKESH, THE WRITER Not many among us know that Rakesh wanted to start his literary career by writing for films. The world of Hindi cinema, as it was then, probably lacked the mettle to digest a literary genius, who sought to bring about a revolutionary change. In retrospect, Rakesh’s whole life appears to be a long and unending struggle to achieve his cherished goals. To earn a living he had to take up various jobs – ranging from teaching to journalism – but never for a moment did he lose sight of the ends that he had marked for himself.

When Rakesh started writing his stories, the Hindi short story was still floating in the world of make-believe. That utterly romantic world in which the Hindi short story writer and his characters moved was accepted as ‘truthful’. Rakesh brought them all back to earth. Rakesh was the first one to point out that the creator of stories is no superhuman; rather, he is an earth-bound creative who must participate in the life of his fellow beings. And he firmly planted the common man right in the centre of the short story. It must undoubtedly go to his credit that after him the Hindi short story never looked back.

RAKESH, THE PLAY WRIGHT In the 1950s, the Hindi stage was in a sorry state. Our classical drama had its own rich traditions, but even after Independence, the Hindi stage could not boast of any serious plays. We had our mythologicals, our historicals and our pseudo-socials: but none of these made contemporary life their chief concern. Rakesh, the pioneer, came up with a brilliant set of real-life plays. His full-length plays – Ashadh Ka Ek Din (1958), Lahron Ke Rajhans (1962), Adhe Adhure (1969) – and his short one-acters and radio plays opened up new horizons for the Hindi stage. He tried to penetrate the human mind, and to

Mohan Rakesh – A TributeON Stage brings you excerpts from the NCPA Quarterly Journal, an unsurpassed literary archive that ran from 1972 to 1988 and featured authoritative and wide-ranging articles. Kamleshwar pens a tribute to his friend and contemporary, Mohan Rakesh, translated from Hindi by Satyadev Dubey

ARCHIVES

44 • February 2018 NCPA

No genre of creative writing was left

untouched by him: Mohan Rakesh

brought a whiff of fresh air into each

of them

Mohan Rakesh

46 • February 2018 NCPA

understand its depth and its vagaries, its moods and its agonies. He established the common man as the focus of his dramatic writings. In fact, that is what Premchand had tried to do in the field of short-story writing. But then Rakesh, in his plays, was a much more awakened individual. He injected them with an intellectual profundity that was wholly absent in the plays that were written before him.

Lahron Ke Rajhans won immediate acclaim, both academic and popular. Ashadh Ka Ek Din won him the Sangeet Natak Akademi award. But it was his play Adhe Adhure that came to be appreciated the most and provoked the sharpest controversy. Adhe Adhure is a faithful portrayal of the socio-economic predicament of an average, educated couple: the struggle between the working wife and her unsuccessful husband; the conflict of two egos; the disappointments, frustrations and complexes of their children.

When Rakesh finally came back to the world of films, he did so with a bang. He lifted it out of the commercial rut in which it had fallen and placed it on its coveted and rightful place on the pedestal of art. Today, nobody can challenge the assertion that the now well-established movement of the new Hindi cinema started with Uski Roti, written by Rakesh and directed by Mani Kaul. Kaul’s second experimental film was once again a picturisation of Rakesh’s play Ashadh Ka Ek Din. Adhe Adhure was also going to be filmed but owing to some unforeseen difficulties it could not be completed.

Both in his plays and in his work for the

screen, Rakesh sought to explore ‘The Dramatic Word’. This was the research project for which he was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship. He tried to analyse the use of the dramatic word in the theatre, and in contemporary life. He wanted to investigate the link binding

sound, silence and the image. He was looking for new nuances and meanings in the spoken word.

RAKESH, THE MANRakesh was a good writer, but he wasn’t

a good person. If you spotted a person, wearing a silk shirt with terribly long collars, with old-fashioned cuff buttons visible a good six inches below his coat sleeves; with a tie indifferently knotted round his neck; with trousers of expensive material which seemed to apologise for the wearer, who himself was furiously chewing his lighted Gold Flakes, taking good care to see that the burnt matchsticks and the ash landed at the right spot; who had heads turning towards him simply on account of his spontaneous, uninhibited laughter; and who did not look like a writer but a plutocratic regular of a bar – and at first glance, a rustic proprietor of an urban bar – then you had located Rakesh.

This article first appeared in the NCPA Quarterly Journal in December 1972 (Vol. 1, No. 2)

He was a good writer, but he wasn’t

a good person

Mani Kaul’s Ashadh Ka Ek Din

Mani Kaul’s Uski Roti