International Women's Day and the Brussels Week for Women's Rights received an appropriate, musical apotheosis with the help of Festival Kortrijk in 'the Wild West'. As warm-up acts for the closing concert of this five-day event, young and especially female talent demonstrated their abilities during Fireplace: a convivial discovery tour with four stops, but without face masks, along several unusual locations on and around the Buda island.
So much for the planned setup. In practice, track workers and a missed connection in Gent-Sint-Pieters meant that the first concert was almost over upon arrival at Broelkaai 6 (BK6). But no worries. A chance to hear Marlies Cornelis at the piano came just half an hour later. Fortunately, the initially chosen route could still be changed. From route 4, it went to route 2: a halving that ultimately ran from the stately headquarters on the banks of the Leie to the beautifully renovated Beguinage and back, towards the imposing Broeltowers.
With Fireplace, Festival Kortrijk emphasized several of its objectives during this thirteenth edition. The series of intimate (living room) concerts on the final day united live performances of twenty minutes each with special locations and room for the new, both in the persons of the musicians and in the repertoire they had brought. The conservatories of Bergen, Brussels, Ghent and Lille were asked to send out their sons and – as it turned out – especially their daughters. Together, these eight selected master's students would provide a broad spectrum of classical and non-classical timbres.
Abnormal circumstances
Guest curator Benjamin Glorieux had elevated abnormality to something like a leitmotif of the five-day festival. "Normal gets you nowhere", such is the motto of the cellist, born and raised in nearby Harelbeke. "But all in all, I am a fairly normal person. At least, that's what I think", as he laughingly said last year in Knack. "As far as music is concerned, I have always had the urge to do something more than what was prescribed to me." And so Glorieux likes to look over the fence and deliberately seeks out other genres and influences, with the exponent being the rhetorical question with which the foreword of the program booklet concludes: "The tree that stands there", with all its classical roots, "we might as well give it a gentle shake, don't you think?"
It was thus the 24-year-old pianist Marlies Cornelis who emerged from between the branches that Sunday afternoon as the first. The student at the School of Arts Ghent had brought along an interesting, and presumably unfamiliar to many, ensemble: Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953), an American composer with a relatively limited but nonetheless fascinating body of work. Of the nine preludes that Crawford wrote in the roaring twenties – there was no mention yet of her professor and later husband, the musicologist and composer Charles Seeger – Cornelis played numbers one through six. As promised, this happened at a beautiful fireplace and in a charming antechamber. Unfortunately, the rest of the circumstances testified to considerably less gratitude and respect. Although there was certainly room for a "baby grand", the pianist had to make do with a meager upright piano that was clearly not equal to the dynamic power displays that the music prescribes. However, this did not prevent her from letting the tentative and then nervous and percussive character of the score sound with the necessary flair and girl power. But misfortunes never come alone: the loud music that the bar on the other side of the entrance hall casually kept playing proved downright detrimental to everyone's enjoyment and raises another rhetorical question: was this an example of the abnormality that Festival Kortrijk was striving for?
Grande dame on guitar
After this unfortunate false start, the next young talent made her appearance in the beguinage, recommended by ARTS² in Mons, the new name for what was formerly the royal conservatory. A fireplace was nowhere to be found in the chapel. Guitarist Amely Di Battista (°2001) was standing by one of the radiators warming her hands for a short selection in which two musical continents, Europe and South America, were played off against each other. This was done with the neck of the instrument in the right hand: a rather rare mirror position for which the standard instrument is not built. The four pieces that passed in review were all written in the 20th century and had very diverse signatures. The Largo from the Libra Sonatine by French guitarist Roland Dyens (1955-2016) was a subtle and rather relaxed opening. Things moved more lively in Porro, a typical dance from the second Suite Colombiana by Gentil Montaña (1942–2011). And thanks to Verano Porteño, the summer from Astor Piazzolla's (1921-1992) meditative journey through the seasons, the southern mood broke through completely. With Armand Coeck (°1941) the program concluded in its own country. Constellations, a gripping sonic kaleidoscope, grew into a milestone in his career and today sits not only firmly in the repertoire, but also in the supple fingers of Di Battista. Without a white cap, but with a modest smile, this accomplished lady took the well-deserved applause on guitar.
The last stop on the musical route was a visit to the northernmost of the Broeltorens, also known as the 'Inghelburghtorre', which in the late Middle Ages served as a storage place for weapons and for the use of artillery. Today, the fireworks would instead be created by other means. On the second floor of the tower, under an impressive wooden roof truss, Elisabeth Klinck had installed herself with a small arsenal of instruments and accessories on a black carpet. The violinist, 26 springs young, graduated last year from the Brussels conservatory and eagerly made use of live electronics to bring a three-part sample of her own work. Each piece bore a familiar title, with which the artist – 'Betty' for those in the know – presented herself as a sleepy cat lover. Besides meowing, the tape was initially also filled with all sorts of household sounds: the cryptic canvas on which Klinck began to bow after some time. Via several loops a rather tedious and one-dimensional soundscape was then put together. Even less attractive was the experiment with scratching along the strings, which she resorted to at the end. Torturing a violin rarely produces a heartwarming moment.
During this last concert, Yuina Takamizo (°1990) was also in the audience, Klinck's neighbor downstairs in the Broeltoren. By redrawing the initial route, we did not hear this Japanese saxophonist at work. With the following video, she nonetheless gets the last word.
WHAT: Fireplace, intimate series of living room concerts
WHO: Marlies Cornelis (piano), Amely Di Battista (guitar), Elisabeth Klinck (violin & live electronics)
WHERE: BK6, Begijnhofkapel and northern Broeltoren, Kortrijk
WHEN: Sunday afternoon January 13, 2022
PHOTOS: © Carlo Verfaille and Gregory Vlieghe
ORGANIZATION: Festival Kortrijk i.s.m. Wilde Westen vzw