Umgehört: MESSAGE OF PEACE

Text: Ivana Rajič, 23 April 2024

Translation: Alison Hindley

The Elbphilharmonie magazine format »Umgehört« (Asked around) gets very personal: Seven artists – be they composers or musicians, pop or classical music – are asked one question and reveal their (inner)lives. This concerns the togetherness and juxtaposition of different perspectives on broad topics, which are essentially only composed of individual subjective experiences.

Programme highlights to close the season: in this edition of the five-week festival, the great Hamburg orchestras and star guests explore the theme of »War and Peace«.

Strident in appearance, serious in their message: Since their performance at the pro-European demonstrations on Kyiv’s Maidan Square in 2013, Dakh Daughters do not just have cult appeal in Ukraine. After Russia invaded their homeland almost ten years later, the artists fled to France and found that »Ukraine is being portrayed in the world through the prism of Russian propaganda«. With their loud and bold mix of Ukrainian folklore, punk, cabaret, prog rock and classical music, they therefore wish to »convey the truth about the history of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and the war crimes of the Russian soldiers on Ukrainian territory«. In their mesmerising »Freak Cabaret«, the all-female band play documentary videos from Ukraine, tell stories of the fates of their compatriots and have an exchange with the audience after their concerts. For Dakh Daughters, this is how their art becomes a »weapon«.

»What we do as adults is the result of our childhood«, Ibrahim Maalouf, the jazz trumpet player born in the Lebanon in 1980 is convinced of this. »When my mother was giving birth to me, the hospital was directly bombed«, he says. »This shapes you forever.« Maalouf actually wanted to be an architect when he was a child in order to rebuild the rubble of his home city of Beirut from where he had to flee with his parents to Paris. Instead, the young expat tried to keep his musical heritage alive and practised in the dichotomy of civilisations: He played Bach’s »Brandenburg Concertos« as well as traditional Arabic music – on a microtonal trumpet that his father Nassim had developed in the 1960s. It helped him to combine »both identities« intrinsically, whereby he could only become a »human bridge«: »I believe that everything is interconnected and in the power of music to help people to understand each other and so create peace.«

A brutal civil war has been raging in Colombia for more than five decades. Almost 220,000 people have perished, millions were displaced. »It was very dangerous and oppressive in the 1990s with the drug gangs and all the other armed groups in Colombia«. This is the recollection of Edmar Castañeda, the harpist who originated from Bogotá, now living in New York. »Music was a chance to escape this madness in my homeland.« It took him on a virtuoso journey through the jazz world of the Big Apple, driven by improvisational freedom and intoxicating Latin American rhythms. With the physical involvement of a flamenco dancer, he plays his choice of instrument, the traditional arpa llanera (harp of the plains). For devout Catholics, it is »a gift from God« and helps him to let go of the pain caused by bloody conflicts and to spread joie de vivre. Because one thing is clear to him: »Music is powerful when you know how to use it.«

Born in Jerusalem in 1991, the oud and double bass player Bakr Khleifi only knows war and conflict in the Middle East. At only twelve years of age, he joined the West Eastern Divan Orchestra established by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said – a peace project, which consists in equal parts of Israeli and Arab musicians. »The war usually propels me further into music«, the 32-year-old Palestinian explains, »because it is a form of humanity.« After the attack on Israel by the radical Islamic Hamas on 7 October of last year, he knew: »Immersion in sounds is the best I can do to come to terms with the grim reality. Music moves me into another state of being, which is very therapeutic and can give me energy – it is an act of hope. Even if it does not solve the problem on the surface, it can bring internal solace, which is just as important to me.«

»The terrible massacre in Israel on 7 October of last year, the current war that my small country is conducting against the evil forces that are trying to destroy it and the shocking feelings of many people who are not sympathising with the victims, but with the perpetrators more than ever give me the feeling that I can represent my long-suffering Jewish people with my art«, says pianist Evgeny Kissin, who grew up in the Soviet Union as a member of the Jewish minority and now has both British and Israeli citizenship. »Every time I stand on the stage, I want to send a clear message: My people stand for the light while those who try to destroy us stand for the darkness, obscurantism and evil, which they want to spread across the entire western civilisation.«

In 2010, the Syrian oud virtuoso, singer and academic Waed Bouhassoun left her homeland to study ethnomusicology in France. Just one year later, the outbreak of a brutal civil war prevented her from returning to the city in which she had spent the past ten years: Damascus – »my second motherland which I think about every second«, as the 45-year old professes. In Paris, she got to know the gambist Jordi Savall and his ensemble Hesperion XXI and thereby found a »second family in Europe« as well as a place where she »could express and process her grief in music«. Together, they pursued the rich tradition of their homeland and recorded this »homage to Syria« on an album. Because,  since the start of the war, Bouhassoun set herself the objective of overcoming cultural boundaries with her music and »showing the people in Europe that my country has many beautiful things to offer.«

In the same year in which Illia Ovcharenko laid the foundation for his international career with first place in the Honens Piano Competition in Calgary, Russia’s war of aggression against his homeland began. »At first, I had sleepless nights and worried about my family, who is still living in northern Ukraine, and of course my beloved country«, reveals the pianist born in Chernihiv in 2001. Two years later, he has a primary reason for performing on the main stages of the world: He wants to represent his culture. He puts the rich and varied music of Ukrainian composers, such as Levko Revutsky und Valentin Silvestrov, in his programmes to make them known to a wide audience. »Music is my way of raising my voice and showing the people in my country that I support them – no matter where they are, in Ukraine or temporarily outside.«

This article appeared in the Elbphilharmonie magazine (issue 2/24).