A mini festival of chamber music as part of the Music in Great Irish Houses series brings ARMINTA WALLACEonto the streets of Paris, among monuments to revolution and to hear the tragedy of war
THE STREETS of Paris's Latin Quarter are about as historic and romantic as it's possible to get. Narrow and cobbled, they wind up and down the little hills of the fifth arrondissement, springing to life at dusk when the pale stone of their facade catches the last rays of the evening sun. These are the streets which gave birth to the Paris Commune of 1871 and the student uprising of 1968 – and they still offer a pot-pourri of delights for the mind as well as the senses.
On one short walk you can happen upon a multi-media exhibition on the history of evolutionary biology at the Botanic Gardens on Rue Cuvier, followed by an impromptu lesson on how to make a Buddhist bowl sing from the woman behind the counter at the tiny Tibetan art shop on Rue Monge. You can gaze at the door of the parking garage at the physics lab of the École Normale Supérieure – adorned with graffiti of an illuminated lightbulb surrounded by sperm-like humans undulating towards it – as you wonder what discoveries regarding the origins of the universe might be going on within.
What you don't expect to find on these streets, frankly, is a Great Irish House. Turn the corner from the Écoleand you'll be standing on the Rue des Irlandais. There, at Number Five, you'll find the Centre Culturel Irlandais, site of an Irish presence in Paris since the 14th century. In the golden light of a Paris autumn it's hosting a mini-festival of chamber concerts whose theme is cross-fertilisation: intellectual, musical, spiritual. It's part of the 40th birthday celebrations of the KBC Music in Great Irish Houses festival, and it's programmed by the festival's artistic director Ciara Higgins.
The opening concert pairs the young quartet Quatuor Modigliani with the spectacular New York-based Irish clarinettist Carol McGonnell in a programme of Ravel and Mozart, both of whom were kicking against the conservative artistic traces of their times when the pieces were written – to the obvious delight of the audience in the magnificently restored chapel of the Centre Culturel Irlandais. It features people of all ages and comprises, according to the centre’s director, Sheila Pratschke, a good number of American and Asian students as well as visitors to Paris.
On the following evening the Irish ambassador's house on the Avenue Foch is the venue for an invite-only, black-tie affair to which the great and the good of Paris have been invited. The upmarket dress code, not to mention the somewhat overwhelming ambience of the gilded grand salon, doesn't dampen the spirits of the musicians in the least. McGonnell is joined by the accordionist Dermot Dunne, the soprano Lynda Lee and the violinist Katherine Hunka for a programme which balances a handful of Irish folksongs with Stravinsky's uncompromising Histoire du Soldat– a reminder that not so long ago, the great Russian composer was a seminal figure in Paris's musical life – and Kodaly's Galanta Dances.
Both of the instrumental arrangements are by Dunne, and their fizz and virtuosity – along with a seductive slice of tango from Astor Piazzolla – works its magic on the crammed Ferrero-Rocher audience, which ends up cheering and whistling like a Friday night crowd in Vicar Street. The genial ambassador, Paul Kavanagh, later confides that the Countess Tolstoy, no less, was so impressed by Dunne’s accordion playing that she assumed he was Russian.
Meanwhile Eugene Downes of Culture Ireland, which is bankrolling the festival, explains that while it may all look like a bit of fun, it has a serious artistic purpose.
“Generations of Irish students, priests and soldiers have made their homes in Paris going back to the sixth century and Columbanus,” he says. “What the Centre Culturel is now doing is renewing and nurturing the unique cultural relationship between the two countries.”
It’s not just a matter of showcasing Irish artists in Paris – the cross-fertilisation works both ways. “There is a tendency for the English-speaking world to dominate our international cultural relations; or for us to focus on exchanges with China, for example. Paris rebalances that, and symbolises the continuing challenge for Irish artists to communicate with our European neighbours in the way that, for example, Wilde, Beckett and Joyce did.”
A very European challenge is offered by the final concert, which presents a selection of music associated with the internment camp at Terezin, billed by the Nazis as “a model ghetto” for Jews of special merit or circumstance.
Ciara Higgins first encountered this music on a CD by the Swedish mezzo Anne Sofie von Otter, and has been determined to make it known to as many people as possible ever since. Among those interred at Terezin were the composers Pavel Haas, Hans Krasa and Victor Ullmann. All three were deported to Auschwitz in 1944 and gassed on the day of their arrival – leaving to posterity a tiny fragment of what they might have achieved in their musical lives.
“There’s a whole generation of music lost – great composers lost to history,” says Higgins.
It proves to be an unforgettable evening. An hour before the concert is to start, the air over central Paris turns black and a barrage of thunder, lightning and torrential rain is unleashed on the city. A complete coincidence, of course – but still a precipatory outburst of which the famously emotional God of the Book of Genesis could be proud. Happily, it doesn’t deter the audience which has squelched its way to the Rue Irlandais – where it becomes clear that if God is shedding a tear or two on this Saturday evening in Paris, he isn’t the only one.
The chapel is in darkness apart from some grim white strips of fluorescent lighting laid on the floor. Then, from above and behind us, the sublime, serene voice of Lynda Lee floats from a balcony: " Ich wander durch Teresienstadt . . ." It's the first of many surprises in an evening choreographed dramatically – if discreetly – by the theatre director Tom Creed. At first, the performances are greeted by respectful silence. But when Katherine Hunka steps up to play Erwin Schulhoff's violin sonata with dazzling intensity and panache, we can't help ourselves – and applause explodes around the chapel. Minutes later, Jack L definitively takes the place by storm with his rendition of the cabaret classic Mac the Knife.
It ought to be a jolting change of musical gear, but it works. It is, in any case, horrifyingly apt; cabaret performances were a major part of life in Terezin, a way for people to escape the appalling reality of their situation. The reality, however, is never far away. The simplest, yet also the most haunting, music of the evening is Ilsa Weber's little lullaby Wiegala, sung as a duet by Lynda Lee and Jack L. A Jewish poet and writer of children's books, Weber took on the role of nurse to the Terezin children, writing songs which she sang to them, accompanying herself on the guitar. Not surprisingly, it's chosen as the terrible, tender encore with which to send people out into the Left Bank night.
As mini festivals go, the KBC Music in Great Irish Houses in Paris event has been hugely varied and totally satisfying. There has also been some good news in this time of financial string-tightening. KBC has announced that it’s to continue its sponsorship of the festival in Ireland, while the trio from the Avenue Foch – Dunne, Hunka and McGonnell – have agreed to play as an ensemble at a Great Irish House near you next summer. Higgins is also determined to mount her Terezin programme in Ireland during next year’s festival. If she does, don’t miss it, whatever you do. In the meantime, check out the final instalment of the festival’s 40th birthday celebrations with its chamber gigs at the RDS in November.
There's an irresistible little Paris post-script: on our final morning we queue for nearly two hours to get into the hottest show in town, the flamboyant and disturbing retrospective of work by Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Musee d'Art Moderne. And we don't complain even once about the wait. Paris, it seems, is a good cultural influence – even on Uber-impatient Irish hacks.
For more information on Music in Great Irish Houses, see musicgreatirishhouses.com
