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Middle East Meets Bottom-of-the-World West New York
The 92nd Street Y
10/20/2024 - & March 11 (Canberra), 13 (Brisbane), 14, 15, 16 (Sydney), 18, 19, 20 (Melbourne), 21 (Adelaide), 22 (Perth), 25, 26 (Sydney), 27 (Wollongong), 2023, October 11 (Rohnert Park), 13 (Carmel), 16 (Stowe), 17 (Storrs), 18 (Boston), 22 (Troy), 2024
Mehmed VI Vahideddin: Nihavend Taksim
Antonio Vivaldi: Violin Concerto in D major “Grosso Mogul”, RV208: II. Grave – The Four Seasons, Op. 8: Spring, RV269, Summer, RV315, Autumn, RV293, & Winter, RV297
Joseph Tawadros: Kindred Spirits – Permission to Evaporate – Eye of the Beholder – Give or Take – Point of Departure – Existence – Constantinople
Tanburi Angel: Makām‑i‑Rehavi Cember‑i‑Koca (Ottoman March)
Joseph Tawadros (Oud), James Tawadros (Riq’ & Bendir)
Australian Chamber Orchestra, Richard Tognetti (Director & Violin)
R. Tognetti, Joseph & James Tawadros (© Samuel A. Dog)
“A hungry belly has no ears.”
“When you are beautiful, all existence is beautiful.”
Arabic sayings
What a singular conception! The Australian Chamber Orchestra, which last last played in New York with those humdrum composers Mozart, Shostakovich, decided to break loose, to enter another world, and ally itself with instruments, sounds and unheard‑of aural collages.
On the one hand, the dozen-odd virtuosos gave us Vivaldi–but a totally different sound than the usual Vivaldi. On the other hand, they played Egyptian-conceived music. And that too was supposedly inconsistent with good old diatonic fiddles, cellos, violas and basses.
How did this work out? Actually, it was rather exciting. The Tawadros Brothers, descendants of an esteemed Coptic family, are equally illustrious in Australia and around the world. James is a master of the riq, a fascinating instrument resembling a castanet, but capable of up to ten different sounds with the right player. Add to this counterpoint from ten different fingers, and you have a real musical instrument.
Joseph is a master of the oud, that multi‑stringed lute, well known throughout the Middle East up to India. It resembles instruments up to and including Japan. It deserves (and here received) the technique of a Strad. The sounds of the instrument are limited in color–but the scales are a Middle Eastern whirligig of notes.
Thus the challenge. How do you make Western-style fiddles–without fooling around with the tuning–to blend in with the exotic‑scaled oud?
Take the easy selections. Vivaldi violin concertos including The Four Seasons. Australian Chamber Orchestra director Richard Tognetti is a terrific violinist, and his solos were exuberant, enthusiastic and exciting. (If he wasn’t stamping his feet, he was jumping.)
The Australian consort had re‑arranged the Vivaldi, so the notes were almost the same, but they played percussive bowing, they and the soloist played more duet than soloist and orchestra.
The easy combination was with James’ riq. When the music reached fever pitch, he played his instrument with exact coordination, giving it an almost Spanish beat.
Joseph & James Tawadros (© Samuel A. Dog)
Brother Joseph strummed along–accompanied by theorbo Simon Martyn‑Ellis, who added a drone‑continuo.
And how would Vivaldi have taken it? He would have been ecstatic for two reasons. First, he wrote concertos for almost every instrument. So how about the oud? Or, if he was in a good mood, he would teach his young female students to study the riq, and made a piece for them.
Secondly, this wouldn’t have been “exotic” at all. Our so‑called Western music (especially strings) comes directly from North Africa, and he would have been aware of that.
Yet Vivaldi was only half of the program. The rest was mainly composed by brother Joseph, with a variety of timbres, technique and melody. In this case, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, probably not retuning, went with the Middle Eastern scales, blending in with oud, theorbo and of course the riq and its smaller cousin the bendir.
The result, according to an Australian woman sitting near me, made her “ecstatic”. One wondered about the word. This was hardly music of ecstasy. Nor was it exotic. Nor was it Western imitating Eastern (like Lou Harrison or Henry Cowell or sometimes Kronos), or Eastern playing our music with an other‑worldly twang.
Rather, it was an original compound. A compound which could only succeed with master artists both blending and dueling. The results were strange but never unpleasant. And as the afternoon went on, this mélange of Egyptian and Baroque-Italian-Australian seemed ineluctably right.
Harry Rolnick
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