The Klara Top 100 is a list, Klara 20 was a birthday. Between the two lies a world of difference. Both evolved, that's true. One each year slightly. The other over those twenty years much. And how! In the list newcomer Arvo Pärt displaced the old faithful Bach. But over those twenty years much more has changed. How could Klara otherwise come out with a silence book and with a jazz publication.
Without shame Klara embraces two quite divergent music genres with it. A sign of the times? Is Klara then no longer that beloved classical station? Recently two professors shared their opinion on the Top 100 list. Musicologist Pieter Bergé found a "longing for slowness" in it, and added: "hopefully that is not only a longing of ever aging lovers of classical music." Music philosopher Marlies De Munck found the list, with a contemporary composer like Arvo Pärt at the top, precisely proof that classical really does still live. With the difference that Bach directs your attention outward and Pärt invites you to direct that attention inward. Has a changed way of listening emerged among us? And if we were to balance that attention between outward and inward in our listening, was her suggestion. "You can learn to listen."
Classical lives!
Is that not precisely what the station has been doing for years, opening our ears? And succeeding in that too! Foreign stations also make popularity lists. Recently the German classical station celebrated ten years of "WDR 3 Lieblingsstücke." It became such a predictable and especially truly "classical" Top 100. No Arvo Pärt or Pergolesi to be found. Beethoven's Ninth at the top, followed by four seasons and a famous river, the Moldau. Plus Peer Gynt and the Bolero. That would not have been a choice even for Radio 3 listeners of more than twenty years ago. Here only "Music for the Millions". Where there's nothing wrong with, of course. But still.
At Klara too the classics get their due. Listen in the morning to Bart Stouten and in the afternoon to Mark Janssens. The duo is a rock in the classical surf. But they too regularly leave those well-trodden paths, however beautifully they sound. Recently Bart Stouten talked about Stockhausen in his "Classical lives". He did so following a work by postminimalist Jòhanns Jòhannsson. A composer of the "new melodious" functional music"? In any case not a Karlheinz Stockhausen, nor a Xenakis or Varèse. I understand that. That belongs with the late-night programs. For real discoveries and surprises with truly contemporary guests we have to take shelter in that late evening. There can be more than just Richter or Einaudi. Composers of film music also get their place. France Musique recently dared to organize a "Journée de la Création". You heard iconic works all day long that had once been created in their Maison de la Musique. And Varèse was there. Still a rarity.
More than classical
There is another trend that has not escaped the foreign classical stations either. Recently I heard Katelijne Boon open her "Liefhebbers" program with "There's no business like showbusiness." A song by musical composer Irving Berlin. Yes, then you know there's evolution on Klara. And that was followed seamlessly by "Sposa non mi conosci". Baroque of the top shelf by Gemiano Giacommelli, of course with that restrained and heavenly voice of Cecilia Bartoli. All of that is possible. And speaking of "easy listening", BBC3 has a program with that name. And I too am a fan of Klara's "Django" in the busy early evening on the way home. Just as I am of the similar "La Dolce Vita" at Musiq 3, "pour commencer une soirée en douceur." Those incidentally have two other such toppers in house with "Farniente", a program "où le plaisir et l'éclectisme sont le fil rouge" and "Sunset boulevard" where even place is made for crooners. Mix and cross-overs, it is acquired at "classical" stations.
Jazzy in life
And Klara has something to do with jazz as well, of course. For years now, from Elias Gistelinck via Rob Leurentop and Marc Van den Hoof to Karel Van Keymeulen's book: "All that Jazz". It contains fifty "iconic jazz numbers for every mood." And those are eight emotions, each with an appropriate selection of numbers. Some examples from the eight chapters? He starts with a feeling of Drive, so characteristic of almost every jazz number and the first example couldn't be better chosen to illustrate that drive, Moanin' by Art Blakey. With Swing, Count Basie cannot be missing with his One o'clock jump. His colleague and competitor Duke Ellington has his turn in the Spirit section and under Blue Note he cites, among others, Coleman Hawkins. I would have liked to see him under Swing as well, because when you hear him in the recordings with The Ramblers when he played in Europe for a couple of years: that was real swing. With Blues you can't get past Miles Davis with All Blues from "what is called that ultimate jazz album: Kind of Blue." When you want to feel unrest and suspense and Freedom, Van Keymeulen recommends Charlie Parker with his "Koko" for example. "Virtuoso improvisation at a scorching tempo" he writes. If your heart rebels against injustice, you can take solace in Billie Holiday and that tragic "Strange Fruit". And if you finally want to be surprised about what has become of jazz, you'll find what you're looking for in the last mood "Surprise" with, among others, Brad Mehldau and Vijay Iyer. With each of those numbers you get background information about the musician and his time, some anecdote and – importantly – what you will actually hear. It looks like a picture book, it's so beautifully produced, but it's a reading and learning book and above all a listening book, with a Spotify playlist included. That's welcome!
The silence of then and now
That other new Klara book is even more beautifully produced, also by Borgerhoff & Lamberigts. "The silence of music before Bach." Klara-net coordinator Liesbet Vereertbrugghen is its originator, her colleague and presenter Nicole Van Opstal and musicologist Hendrik Vanden Abeele are the co-authors. Here not fifty but "sixty key works from ten centuries of music" and that ranges from 600 to 1600, from the monastic world and the troubadours to polyphony. Not only Low Countries music from the Franco-Flemish period. You'll also find quite a lot of other European composers. All the well-known ones (Thomas Tallis with his Spes Allium or Guillaume Dufay with that unique Nuper rosarum flores) and also many lesser-known ones (Adam de la Halle for example) get their place. For each of the chosen works there is context to be found, clarification and musicological insight, all in very comprehensible annotations. Important too: all song texts are given their translation. The authors ask you to listen more than once. "Do it, again and again" and they recommend slow listening. And it's already a Spotify playlist totalling 5 hours and 25 minutes... Remarkable also: they end with silence in contemporary music. And yes, Arvo Pärt is included but also Satie, Feldman, Cage, Messiaen, Scelsi and Max Richter and Jòhanns Jòhannsson. So we're back to that attention for slowness, restraint, quietness: "It's about music that takes its time and even stops it." Music that gives you goosebumps, but from the inside, as a witness told the author. You also become quiet while browsing through the surprisingly beautiful illustrations in the book. Not only from the miniature or score books of that time or images of Flemish Primitives. Also by, among others, Dirk Braekman, Michaël Borremans or Berlinde De Bruyckere.
Both books prove that neither old music nor jazz are niche products, but rightfully belong in that broad sound spectrum of the Klara universe. Especially if we also add that other successful book from 2014, "Iedereen klassiek". Which by the way is in its third printing and perfectly fills the gap between the other two. The collaboration with the Klara Festival, especially now that it had to go online out of necessity (with 12,000 'visitors' nonetheless!) also proves that Klara can handle the digital age. And also the time when – who knows – other platforms might eventually displace linear radio. Already the station is on YouTube and has podcasts. As far as I'm concerned, Klara keeps amazing.
- WHAT: Karel Van Keymeulen, "All that Jazz. 50 iconic jazz numbers for every mood", Borgerhoff & Lamberigts/Klara, Gent, 2020, 225 pp
- WHAT: Liesbet Vereertbrugghen, Nicole Van Opstal and Hendrik Vanden Abeele, "The silence of music before Bach. Sixty key works from ten centuries of music 600-1600", Borgerhoff & Lamberigts/Klara, Gent, 2020