A Spanish maestro in Israel
Spanish maestro Arturo Tamayo, one of the world’s leading interpreters of contemporary music, comes to Israel to lead the Israel Contemporary Players ensemble through the 2018-19 season opening concerts. Renowned Greek pianist Dimitri Vasilkis, for whom this will be his first appearance with the ensemble, joins him. The concerts take place October 13 in Tel Aviv and October 14 in Jerusalem.
Described as a versatile and adventurous maestro, Arturo Tamayo has graduated from the Madrid Conservatory, where he studied piano, composition, percussions and music theory. He then continued to University School of Music in Freiburg and later studied with Pierre Boulez. His music interests span from Baroque to contemporary; over his long career, Tamayo has lead such important collectives as Ensemble Intercontemporain and Klangforum Wien, as well as the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He has also cooperated with leading composers of our time, including Iannis Xenakis, John Cage and Wolfgang Rihm, to name just a few.
Speaking with The Jerusalem Post on the eve of his Israeli tour, when asked about his versatility, Tamayo explains that for him music is “primary expression and way to communicate with the others, I see this situation in a Baudelairian-way: always looking forward.”
A possibility to witness the music being written in our time is what attracts him in contemporary music first and foremost. He confides that his conductor’s position allows him “to shape musical life. I tried always to give the audience a clear aesthetic direction. My position helps me to look at the music in a modern way, with progressive mentality. I would like to quote a fundamental phrase of Arthur Rimbaud: ‘il faut être absolument moderne! (It must be absolutely modern!)’”
Tamayo recollects that he was just 22 when he met Pierre Boulez, one of the key personalities in the world of contemporary music, for the first time.
“You can imagine what it meant for a young person, who came from such isolated country as Spain,” he says. “This was his phrase, that profoundly influenced my professional mentality and that is always present in my mind: ‘...working and working, no matter how talented you are – until you achieve a good performance of the work you are conducting.’ But the major thing I learned from him was the importance of the structure on all levels of the music, the ability to think about music in a rational and logical way.”
Many people are just afraid of contemporary music and prefer listening to old and tried repertoire. Can he explain it?
“I think that many people, either because they are not ready to leave the comfort zone, or because of their inability to face the future, prefer to take refuge in the comfort of a familiar language. This is, in my view, the explanation why baroque music has become so fashionable today. I have nothing against it, but often in the concerts you can hear Baroque music of very low quality. In my concert programs, I try to offer a repertoire of quality, which can help the listener to establish valid points of comparison of these pieces with the works of other composers.”
What are the difficulties which are encountered by music lovers, who are eager to learn more about music composed here and now, yet not knowing how to start?
“Finding himself in front of the unknown, the listener feels like in a labyrinth,” he says. “I think that in order to find your way through it, you should allow to yourself to be guided by your own intuition and sensibility. The other suggestion is to try and find the necessary points by listening the piece of this repertoire once and again, which nowadays, with so many excellent recordings at hand, is not a problem at all.”
But he accentuates that first of all “a music lover needs to have this urge to discover new things as well as a strong spirit of adventure. On the other hand, what seems to me the most difficult thing is to obtain information on the quality of the works. Today, we can find on the Internet all kinds of shallow-minded and messy information. When I was a very young student in Spain, we had sort of a filter that separated the quality from the quantity. We heard talks like: ‘There is a composer in France, who seems to be very good, who is called Pierre Boulez, and there is another in Germany called Stockhausen.’ Later, this helped us to evaluate music by other authors. Bottom line – one should learn by reading the literature specialized in this domain and he will be well guided through this exciting journey.”
Tamayo, who has been involved in the world of contemporary music for several decades, admits that the things have changed.
“What I miss in the recent generations is the research spirit that was characteristic for the generations of composers who began their career after the Second World War,” he says. “But I do not want to be pessimistic: there are also high quality composers of the new generation, who write very interesting music of great beauty.”
The concerts of the Israeli Contemporary Players Ensemble under a baton of Arturo Tamayo with pianist Dimitri Vasilkis as a soloist take place October 13 at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and October 14 at Mishkenot Sha’ananim Music Center in Jerusalem.
The program features: Leon Schidlowsky, “Chamber concerto (world premiere),” Martin Matalon, “Trame IV,” György Ligeti, “Etudes for piano,” and Iannis Xenakis, “Phlegra.”
For reservations: Tel Aviv: (03) 6077070, Jerusalem: (02) 6241041.