Songs from the Parisian Belle Époque
In the first of the Darwin Entertainment Centre’s 2018 Concert Series, French soprano Laetitia Grimaldi and South African/Israeli pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz offer a program of romantic French songs, presented in the style of a Parisian salon concert. Bushakevitz spoke to Off The Leash about the style of music they will be performing, and the experience he hopes audiences will have.
Can you take us to the Parisian Belle Époque – what was happening culturally at that time in Paris, and how did that influence the music that was being made?
This was an important and flourishing time in France for all culture – art, literature, music, fashion and architecture. Paris was a bubbling and exciting city attracting many people. It is the time of the 1889 Universal Exhibition with the new Eiffel Tower, a touring symbol of the industrial age and the coming modernity it symbolised.
Every evening one could find several Parisian salons taking place where poets, writers, composers, painters and many more artists would meet to share their new works, as well as to debate politics, philosophy and – of course – share the gossip of the day. We would like the audience to imagine them-selves in a Parisian salon surrounded by gilded mirrors and perhaps sitting next to Claude Monet or Marcel Proust.
How do you describe the music that you will be performing as part of this concert?
If anyone has read Proust’s great novel In Search of Lost Time (1908) they will understand the music we will be presenting. Like the novel, the music is typified by a fasci-nation with minute details, often details one would not notice when time passes too fast.
The music prefers charm and elegance over sentimentality and overt emotionality.
Perhaps I can say that it has the French je ne sais quoi, a romance expressed intimately and delicately. Composers were pushing the boundaries of tonality and were pressing the last drops out of Romanticism – just as they were doing in visual arts and literature.
What kind of experience do you hope the audience will have at this performance?
We hope to entrust the public with a way to understand French culture through our music. We will be inviting and transporting them on a voyage to the Belle Époque, its culture, its way of loving, its romanticism and its charm through our music.
Many of the songs we will be performing point towards the 20th century and the new forms of art it brought with it. Other songs look backwards, to the age that was coming to an end – the Romantic Age. Laetitia and I hope that our audience will leave enriched by the music of this exciting time and nourished by its timelessness.
What’s the experience for you, playing this style of music, just you and soprano Laetitia Grimaldi on stage together?
This is a great question because it is one of the most important facets of our concert – the fact that there are no microphones or any modern technology on stage, only us and the music of a bygone age.
Modern life can be hectic and it is wonder-ful to experience the peace and contemplation of such an intimate song recital.
THU 10 MAY | 8PM DARWIN ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE| $49 | $46 CONC, MEMB | $25 U18 | yourcentre.com.
Image by Dan Safier.
