The Art of The Arabic Violin

In case you needed confirmation, Arabic violin is not like western violin. For a start, the A and E strings are tuned a tone lower. They thus become G and D and the instrument, instead of being tuned solely in fifths, has one fourth and two fifths. Any western violinist will tell you that this matters a great deal!

More importantly, Arabic violin is made to play Arabic music. It therefore functions in a totally different musical universe where the “scientific” rules of pitch, rhythm, and sound production are abandoned in favour of pure emotions.

The result is not without merit. It’s certainly very interesting, and for a short while at least, quite enjoyable. Much like in Jazz, there’s a strong emphasis put on improvisation and it’s quite amazing to watch how the musicians communicate and stay together while inventing new melodies on stage!

The lack of technical prowess, though, does take its toll on the listener’s ears after a while. One can understand that Arabic music wouldn’t require the same level of technique as western music, but the ability to play in tune and to produce a beautiful sound are always important. Yesterday, this was not always the case and it took away from the wonderful rhythms and harmonies that the musicians were creating.

In any case, the concert was a great experience that, while not necessarily wanting to repeat, I advise everyone to try.

Shanghai Quartet

After a performance like the one I heard last night, it’s tempting to write the word perfect in bold characters and go off to review something else. I’ll nevertheless give this a shot.

The Shanghai Quartet was not perfect: the first violinist had a flat note in the second movement of the Beethoven 6^th Quartet. Aside from that, it suffices to say that these guys are amongst the best in the business, and it showed.

There was something quite marvellous about their sound. Not just the intonation - so perfect it buzzed in the listener’s ear - but an amazing togetherness that most chamber groups never really achieve. Competent professional musicians play in time and in tune. But in a quartet, probably the most exposed musical formation, it’s nearly always possible to hear small pitch variations and slight rhythm discrepancies, usually between the base line and the melody. Not last night. These musicians played with a pitch so centered and a rhythm so cohesive that it really did sound at times like a single instrument.

The programme was wonderfully selected: a perfect blend of classical, romantic and modern music from Vienna, Hamburg and Shanghai! Of the three works performed, I probably preferred Beethoven’s 6^th Quartet, though the Brahms 2^nd Quartet was the best executed and From the Path of Beauty was by far the most interesting piece. I must say that it was great to hear a modern work that was both innovative and accessible to a non-expert audience (like me!). The fact that it was composed in the Quartet’s home town (which I recently visited with my violin choir!!) made it seem like a more personal choice.

Before I log off, I’d like to give special kudos to the second violinist Yi-Wen Jiang. He was not only perfectly integrated to the melodic line, but also responsible for giving the music such a pleasant movement and flow. Second violinists have the hardest job in the quartet and rarely get the credit they deserve. Bravo to Yi-Wen and bravo to the Shanghai Quartet.

Chamber Music Festival

You may have noticed that I haven't updated my blog in the last few days. Well, I'll more than make up for it in the next two weeks with post on average twice every three days. The catch is that we're taking a break from politics and going into music.

For the next 14 days, I'll be posting on this blog reviews of concerts at the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival. For those of you who live in Ottawa, I strongly encourage you to attend a few concerts yourself as the music is really wonderful. And for those of you who don't, well, I'm sure some of those Chamber groups will be coming to your city in the next year!

Brass Bounty, Saturday July 26^th

Tonight’s programme was all about having fun: easy, tuneful music performed by a hearty brass band with the simple goal of giving the audience a pleasurable evening.

Things kicked off appropriately with Spirit of Brass, a fun and thoroughly unmemorable piece written by Uruguayan composer Enrique Crespo. I say unmemorable not in a pejorative way, but rather as a compliment: much of the charm of tonight’s pieces came from the fact that they were light, easy to take in, and yes, each one more unmemorable than the others!
Next on the list was a 7 movement extravaganza inspired by the works of John Aubrey. Each movement depicted a short story written by the English author, and if outlandish isn’t a strong enough adjective to describe them, let’s just say that we went from a sick patient thrown from his doctor’s office into the Thames, to a rude son slapping his father’s best friend, to a young man joining the Turkish army, and back again to the doctor’s office. Composer Simon Willis clearly had a lot of fun with this piece and teased the audience by sprinkling his tuneful melodies with unexpected wrong notes. He also created voice and tempo contrasts so exaggerated that they passed the point of grotesque and became simply funny!
We ended the first half of the concert with Brass Memorial to Brahms, a modern Dutch piece inspired by the oboe solo of the Brahms violin concerto. I think I probably still prefer the original, but it was nevertheless very nice.

The second half of the concert took place in the Latin world. After a quick stop-over in Algeria for Saint-Saens’ Marche militaire française from the Suite algérienne, the ensemble arrived in the Americas where it settled for the rest of the evening. They performed an Argentian Tango (written by a Dane), a Brasilian modinha, a Mexican andaluza and… a Canadian Tango. This one was written by 26 year old Rob Teehan, a promising composer en herbe on the staff of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada. He was by pure chance present for the performance with part of the National Youth Orchesta and gave the audience a nice introduction to his work. It was actually, in my mind, one of the nicest pieces of the evening, certainly better than the Villa-Lobos!

We're Making Things Worse

A few interesting albeit predictable developments this week on the Afghanistan front:

We start off with a report by U.S. security officials claiming that more districts of Kandahar are controlled by the Taliban than by the Afghan government. This report is backed up by an even more pessimistic U.N. study that basically describes Kandahar as a hopeless and deteriorating battlefield.

Next, we get an admission from our new Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Walter Natynczyk, that Afghan violence is indeed rising. And not only in Kandahar, says the general: "You have a worsening security situation, especially localized in three areas -- the Kabul area, in the Regional Command East, where the Americans are, and in the south where we are with the British forces and the Dutch,"
In my mind that “worsening” situation is actually better described as “rapidly deteriorating”: according to Natynczyk, year-to-year violence is up 34 per cent!

Finally, the Globe and Mail releases an internal Defense department memo revealing that Canada has decided to significantly downgrade its objectives for the Afghanistan mission. Specifically, the key original goals of significantly reducing the capabilities of Taliban insurgents and reducing narcotics cultivation and trafficking have been abandoned. Instead, the Harper government said in a June statement that the objective was to "maintain a more secure environment and establish law and order by building the capacity of the Afghan National Army and Police." Visibly, the Harper government isn’t interested in failure, so since violence and poppy cultivation have both rocketed since our military arrived, they are simply changing the mission description.

No one can deny based on all of this evidence that the NATO Afghanistan mission is failing miserably. Kandahar, where Canadian troops are stationed, is the worse area of the country.

So what do we do? If Gen. Natynczyk had his way, we’d simply send more troops. But it seems that the more troops we send, the faster the situation deteriorates. Actually there seems to be a proportional relationship between violence, narcotics trafficking and troop numbers. The sensible thing to do is therefore to pull out. Leave with the knowledge of having turned Afghanistan into a basket case and be thankful that it isn’t even worse. Let Afghanis fight a civil war if they wish, let the Taliban or the military establish a police state if they can. Keep sending in foreign aid for as long as the government accepts it, and hope that with time, things improve.

Où sont les chefs?

En ce beau mois de juillet, voici où sont nos chefs de parti:

Stéphane Dion: En Alberta sur le circuit des BBQ pour vendre son plan vert.

Jack Layton: En expédition de canot-camping avec son épouse Olivia Chow. Ils y vont pour filmer la régression d'un glacier qui alimente une partie de la rivière Alsek!

Pauline Marois: À Boston en stage d'immersion de langue anglaise.

Jean Charest: Au concert de Paul McCartney.

Stephen Harper: Silence absolu. Censuré par son nouveau directeur des communications.

Ambition Is Key

Since I was away for the past month, the blog had to go into hibernation. But now that I’m back, it’s woken up.

We’re July 17^th today, smack in the middle of the summer, so there obviously isn’t much political news. The 10 Premiers have spent the past few days meeting in Quebec City and seem to have reached a significant deal on labour mobility, but since the only thing I can find to say about this agreement is “How come it took you so long?” I’d prefer to comment on an event that occurred, yes, south of the border…

Al Gore made a speech today in which he challenged the United States “to commit to producing 100 per cent of its electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years,". Yes, that’s right, 100% clean electricity in ten years.

Mr. Gore’s challenge was of course immediately endorsed by both presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain, but they also refused to include it in their election platform. Politically, a 20 % reduction of fossil fuel electricity production in 10 years is already a tough sell, so a 100 % reduction is simply suicide.

But that’s the kind of reduction that we’ll need to make if we seriously want to halt global warming. Let’s face it, a 20% reduction in western countries, offset by the development of China, India, Brazil and others, simply won’t cut it.

The bottom line is that there are 6.8 billion people in the world and that if they all reach the high standard of living that includes a car and air conditioned house, we will be polluting far too much for the earth to handle.

If we want to stop global warming while maintaining our standard of living, we will need to use new technologies that produce NEXT TO ZERO greenhouse gas emissions. Some of these technologies already exist, many more can be discovered, but this will only happen with pressure from the government.

Targets like the one Mr. Gore suggested demonstrate the unequivocal commitment of the government to tackling global warming. They send a clear message to the industry and encourage innovation more than any subsidy. We should adopt Mr. Gore’s target in Canada, and then go even further. Why not aim to make all cars bought in Canada 100% green by 2018? If the penalty for buying vehicles that run off gasoline were big enough (say $15 000), you’d find that all of a sudden, companies started innovating and hydrogen became affordable.

The idea is very simple. If the government makes pollution punitively expensive or even outlaws it, industry will be forced to adapt to keep its customers. But if the government sets weak targets, industry will stay put, technology will change very little and pollution levels will stay the same.