Waltzes for a New Year
Art and Culture
By María de la Soledad
The first day of the New Year, after a night of celebration and maybe an excess of food and wine, there’s nothing better for the body and soul than a good waltz. You could say it’s a little late for that, when almost a fortnight has gone by since the New Year began. The reason is that the New Year Concert still resounds in my ears, a tradition that increasingly wins new fans when they see and hear de Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra playing its already classic New Year Concert. Some lucky persons, a small minority, saw it in person. Several million of us enjoyed it live through television in scores of countries, and still others resigned themselves to read about the concert through the media.
This year the guest of honor conducting the orchestra was Italian Ricardo Muti. It’s the fourth time that the prestigious conductor is invited for the occasion. And under his baton the Vienna Philharmonic performed the waltzes composed by Johan Strauss, Sr., whose bicentennial is commemorated in 2004.
This year there was something special: ballet at the concert. But it was a ballet fused with the Americas and the Caribbean, because the two pieces that the orchestra played to be danced (Acceleration Waltz and the Champagne Polka) were performed by Cuban dancer José Manuel Carreño, with choreography by Russian Boris Eifman, of the Kirov Ballet. Carreño is at present lead dancer of the American Ballet Theater.
And another novelty, the concert broadcast for digital TV by satellite was shown simultaneously at 30 European movie theaters at 11 a.m., Vienna time.
The time that waltzes were left to mould all year round in some forgotten corner and maybe come out in some debutante’s decadent coming of age is past. Now they are heard often and most everywhere in order to augur that the year flows by as the tranquil waters of the Blue Danube.
News from all over
While 2003 was waning at the beat of the rehearsals of the Vienna concert, in the other corner of the world, in Havana, one of the world’s great conductors, Italian Claudio Abbado, was visiting the Cuban capital for a short New Year’s holiday. But he didn’t spend all his time relaxing at the beach. Maestro Abbado assembled an orchestra of 100 music students and several young professionals and rehearsed two masterpieces with them: Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, and Wagner’s Prelude and Death of Love from Tristan and Isolde. After two weeks of the tiring session, the orchestra held a general rehearsal open to the public.
Another great conductor, Argentinean Daniel Baremboim, conducted Tchaikovsky’s opera Queen of Spades in Berlin, starring Spanish tenor Plácido Domingo. But that was not all for Mr. Domingo. The audience is used to his excellent singing performances, but several nights later he went into the pit to conduct the orchestra in Puccini’s Tosca. Later on, at a press conference, journalists asked him about his versatility and how he could sing one day and conduct a few days later. Domingo answered: “When I sing, I never think about conducting, and when I conduct I don’t think of the stage, but of the singers.” As a conductor, Mr. Domingo has a repertoire of over 40 works.
But the world is not made only of classical music. Sigmatropic, a rock group from Greece, has launched a totally different CD. The lyrics of the songs are haikus, the short 17-syllable Japanese poems. The title of the CD is Sixteen Haikus and Other Stories.
The National Music Prize was bestowed in Cuba for the third time, and six of the country’s most important personalities were selected this year: Juan Formell, leader of Los Van Van Orchestra; Manuel Duchesne Cuzán symphony orchestra conductor; Doming Aragú, at 93, Cuba’s greatest symphonic percussionist; Celina González, queen of Cuban country music: Lázaro Ros, who has recorded the complete chants to the orishas (gods) of the Yoruba pantheon; and Luis Carbonell, for his work as a teacher. At the award ceremony, great Cuban pianist Jorge Luis Prats played in honor of the award winners.
And also the 2003 National Prize for Literature was awarded to novelist, essayist and poet Reynaldo González. A polyvalent writer – as described by president of the jury Lisandro Otero, the previous year’s winner – González has publishedSiempre la Muerte, Su Paso Breve, which won a mention at the Casa de las Américas Prize; Miel sobre Hojuelas (short stories); La Fiesta de los Tiburones (novel); Contradanzas y Latigazos (essay), Critic’s Award; Lezama Lima, el Ingenuo Culpable (essay), Critics’ Award; Llorar es un Placer (an essay on Cuban radio soap operas) Critic’s Award; El Bello Habano (essay), with a foreword by the recently deceased Spanish novelist Manuel Vázquez Montalbán; La Ventana Indiscreta (essays, newspaper articles and conferences); Échale Salsita (a cookbook). His novel Al Cielo Sometidos won some years ago the Italo Calvino Prize and the Critic’s Award in Cuba. His most recent publication is a poetry book, Envidia de Adriano. To his other passion, movies (for 10 years he directed the Cuban Cinematheque), he dedicated a book of essays, Cine Cubano, Ese Ojo que Nos Ve.
The Critics’ Awards for the best scientific and technical books published in Cuba in 2002 were bestowed in late 2003. One of the awarded writers was General Fabián Escalante (Ret.) for his book The Secret War: Operation Mongoose, about the Cuban Missile Crisis, a dramatic and extremely dangerous moment in October, 1962. Escalante is known to Progreso Weekly’s readers for an interview that appeared in our magazine in November, 2003 about the Kennedy assassination.
End of the year is a time for awarding annual prizes, as readers of this column have seen on this occasion. And the Alejo Carpentier Literary Prize for novels has just been awarded to the Uruguayan writer Daniel Chavarría, a resident of Cuba, for his novel Viudas de Sangre, written in collaboration with his wife Hilda Sosa. It’s a novel in which there are characters so unalike as the Russian Rasputin and poor peasants from the Cuban Zapata Swamps. Humor, intrigue and much more on the part of Chavarría. Tenderness and delicious originality by Sosa. As I had already told you, I had the opportunity of reading the manuscript and enjoyed it tremendously. Daniel Chavarría was the recipient of an Edgar Allan Poe award in the U.S. for his novel Adiós, Muchachos.
Cuba’s Hotel Nacional, 73 years after its inauguration, is a beautiful facility that all visitors to Havana should see. Whenever I have the chance I go and sit in its gardens that overlook the sea. As of a few days ago the hotel has a new attraction: a life-size statue of famous Cuban singer Compay Segundo, with a real cigar in his right hand, as was customary for the composer of “Chan Chan.” The sculpture is the work of Cuban artist Alberto Lezcay.
Spanish filmmaker Benito Zambrano wants to show his love for Havana in a movie. Zambrano, who directed Solas, which collected so many successes and prizes a few years back, studied in Havana at the San Antonio de los Baños International Cinema School, and after his recent success in Spain with his TV series Padre Coraje is preparing a new film with the title Habana Blues. The film is about the underground world of a group of Cuban musicians in contemporary Cuba. The director said that he still is in a preliminary phase, rewriting the screenplay. I have been told that there was a screening session in Havana, but the director has not made the final decision.
Anther movie personality that recently visited Cuba was American actor Danny Glover, whose presence in the island is becoming increasingly familiar. The famous actor met with students from the Higher Institute of Art and the San Antonio International Cinema School, as well as with a group of Cuban acting colleagues. Always good natured and smiling with the public that recognizes him in the streets, Glover answered the many questions posed by students and journalists. He said that he had recently finished the film The Woodcutter, about the Vietnam War, and he believes it will interest the public. He spoke of his visit to Haition the occasion of the bicentennial of the independence and of his project of making a film on the subject. To the question whether he was planning to make a new sequel of his famous Lethal Weapon, he readily answered with a No, because he prefers other subjects more in consonance with his vision of art as an instrument of social edification.
Many times Cuban prima ballerina Mirtha Plá, who was christened by famous British ballet critic Arnold Haskell as one of the “four jewels” of Cuba’s National Ballet, heard the ovation of the audience from the stage. But Mirtha passed away in Barcelona last September, a victim of cancer, and it seemed that she would never again witness her public’s admiration. Yet, her last will was that her remains be buried in Cuba, and her wish came true. The imposing foyer of Havana’s Grand Theater, the seat of the National Ballet, became a temporary funeral parlor, where many of her admirers came by to pay homage. Accompanied by friends and fans she went to her final resting place at Havana’s Columbus Cemetery, and there, at the moment when she was lowered into the ground, the voices were heard again: Shouts of “Bravo, Mirtha!” and a standing ovation said a final goodbye to the great dancer.
The spectacular Catalonian theater group La Fura dels Baus was well known in Spain when the whole world witnessed its performances at the inauguration and closing ceremonies of the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. From then on they became international stars. And so they will dedicate the next four years to celebrate their 25th anniversary, but in an original manner, as should be expected of them. They will sail through Europe, Asia and the Americas taking the anniversary staging in a ship that they have christened Naumón. Originally it was a Norwegian cargo ship built in 1964, but now its main deck is a theater where they will receive their Mediterranean coast public in 2004, from the Americas in 2005, from Asia in 2006, and from Africa in 2007. They already made their debut in Genoa on December 31 for the inauguration of the city as capital of European culture for 2004. By the way, the ships’ hull is also a theater, but with less seats. All who have a bay would like to welcome La Fura dels Baus and their new and original maritime theater. At every port even the town’s ghosts will demand tickets.
By the way, it seems that ghosts can be seen on TV, or at least in the closed circuits of the castles they haunt. That’s what some guards say at London’s Hampton Court Palace, the place where Catherine Howard, fifth wife to King Henry the 8th, was executed. Visitors to the castle have always heard talk of Catherine Howard’s ghostly presence opening and closing doors and moaning through the halls. But recently some guards that were watching the closed circuit’s monitors believe they saw the ghost closing a door. Want to check it? Tours of the castle are affordable.
And that’s all for today. See you in two weeks.
