It doesn’t take much digging to see that many classical composers have borrowed heavily from the music of the streets, bars and countryside. Some classical performers — like Toronto pianist Serouj Kradjian — aspire to do the same.
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On Wednesday at Trinity-St Paul’s Centre Kradjian teams up with Russian classical guitarist Sasha Goryachev and flamenco singer Antonia Contreras in a Soundstreams concert that joins classical and folk while also augmenting it in some way.
On the programme are works my Manuel de Falla — including his best-known Ritual Fire Dance from El amor brujo — Isaac Albéniz and Paco de Lucia. The concert also features the premiere a new work by Canadian composer André Ristic.
Some of the most difficult and intense preparation for this concert has been Kradjian’s, as he sat down to rearrange Albéniz’s music for solo piano to also include guitar.
In Asturias, taken from the first Spanish Suite, and El Albaicín, from Book 3 of Iberia, Kradjian began almost afresh, with Goryachev at his side, “so that we could find how and where it has its flamenco dance roots, and what can be added on the piano score, what the guitar can do, and what the guitar can do to enhance the piano score even more.”
The solo piano score is fiendishly difficult to get right, so I ask if arranging it for two instruments helped ease the load.
Kradjian, never one to shy from technical challenges, responds that, with the extra musical lines and textures, much of the music is now more difficult than the original. “I wanted to emphasize the raw, ethnic feel,” he adds.
The pianist says his love affair with flamenco music was kindled in Spain, where he lived and taught in early adulthood, before he met and married soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian. He had many friends in Madrid active in the flamenco music scene, and he would go to the bars and cafés — “to dance, to eat, to drink and then dance some more,” he recalls.
Even with total immersion, it took a while to figure it out. “For me, it was so rhythmically complex that it took a while before I got used to the different ways in which they interpret this music,” he says.
Kradjian’s passion for arranging, on the other hand, was kindled in the company of Bayrakdarian, as they prepared concert programmes that included Armenian composer Gomidas and other musical treasures from their shared ethnic ancestry.
“I’m enjoying all this,” enthuses Kradjian of arranging music, “especially when I feel I’m being innovative without taking away anything from the original – be it the composer or the character of the national music.”
What the audience — both at Trinity-St Paul’s and in a live web stream — will experience on Wednesday is the first installment of a larger programme. Kradjian is crafting a full survey of folk influences in Spanish music using both guitar and piano — “starting with [Domenico] Scarlatti and Padre Soler and going through to Paco de Lucía.”
The obvious starting point were the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a time when nationalism matured everywhere in Europe, and composers in each country sought to incorporate their ethnic identities into the music they were writing. Falla and Albeníz were no exception, writing pieces clearly inspired by folk practices, yet smoothed out and buffed for the demands and aesthetics of art music and opera.
Wednesday night’s concert is a true premiere. The pianist says that he and Goryachev already have some future concert dates lined up next season for their attempt to bring the streets and the stage a bit closer together.
You can find out more details about the Soundstreams concert here.
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Kradjian agrees that there’s nothing quite like the late pianist Alecia de Larrocha’s interpretations of Iberia — “that recording has been the guiding light through so much of my life. She is in a class by herself,” he says. So here she is with El Albaicín, to help compare Wednesdays new creations with the original:
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
