Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.08.2014, Blaðsíða 38

38 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 13 — 2014MUSIC
The BBC Proms is a series of concerts held
in this legendary hall in west London, and
the festival is widely considered one of
the more important events in the classical
music calendar. This makes tonight’s
excitement all the more understandable,
as the ISO will be appearing on this fabled
stage for the first time. One of the ISO’s
group, however, appears considerably
more stoic about it all, casually awaiting
stage-time as the others rush around.
This would be the ISO’s departing chief
conductor and musical director, Ilan
Volkov—a veteran of the event, tonight
being his thirteenth consecutive Proms.
Ilan is leaving on a high note, with
tonight's gathering, the most prestigious
the orchestra’s ever been a part of,
doubling as the swan song of his three-
year tenure with the ISO. Tonight’s
programme consists of two 20th century
Icelandic pieces, Beethoven’s 5th, and a
Schumann piano concerto.
“I’m quite flexible with putting new
music next to old workhorses,” Ilan tells
me when I ask him about juxtaposing
such famous pieces with others that have
never been played in this hall. “Besides, an
orchestra doesn’t only want to play new
music. If you’re at the Proms for the first
time you want to show off other facets of
what you are capable of, rather than just
play Icelandic pieces,” he finishes, before
running onstage to commence tonight’s
concert.
Is Iceland culture?
The Reykjavík Grapevine first interviewed
the 38-year-old Israeli maestro a few
months into his stint at the ISO (“Lighting
A Fire Under The Orchestra,” Issue 02,
2012), and in that interview he spoke
about what he hoped to achieve in his
new post. When I catch up with him a
few days after the Proms concert, I thus
kick things off by taking stock of his
achievements over the last three years.
“When you come into a job like this you
invariably face various issues,” he begins.
He’s clearly in a more contemplative
mindset than he was when we first spoke
somewhere in the depths of Royal Albert
Hall. “I did have a lot of freedom with the
repertoire for the first couple of years,
but financial constraints meant that we
had to be a bit more careful with the
programming in the final one.”
“My strategy may have backfired a
bit, but I’m happy I pushed through,” he
tells me. “As I wasn’t sure how long I’d
stay with the orchestra, and seeing as we
were moving into Harpa, I wanted to start
straight away with Tectonics [an annual
modern music festival he launched
with the ISO] and a more contemporary
programme of 20th century classics and
so on. I’m happy I did that. I did however
face quite a lot of issues that had nothing
to do with me, so those weren’t easy.”
“I don’t think the orchestra’s been
particularly happy for many years,” he
continues when I ask him to elaborate on
the aforementioned issues. “I think they
feel they don’t have enough support for
what they do from the government. This
is obviously a bigger issue during these
difficult times in Iceland, but what Iceland
needs to ask itself is, how important is
art and why do we have an orchestra?
If its function is to inspire, comfort and
educate, it needs strong and consistent
support. I can’t really expect a lot of
things if the situation is less than ideal.”
The reflective and quite sombre
tone he’s taken leads me to wonder out
loud whether it’s actually feasible to run
such a large-scale orchestra in such a
small country.
“Of course it’s feasible,” Ilan
responds. “The issue isn’t about money,
it’s simply whether we think culture is
important or not? Do we want it as a
tourist thing, a stamp that says ‘Iceland
Is Culture,’ or do we really want to make it
the best that it can be?”
Ilan is of the opinion that this
particular problem isn’t unique to the
orchestra, nor even Iceland. “Music
in general can be a huge influence in
society, and as such should be strongly
supported by society, rather than be
an added bonus that gets cut at every
available opportunity,” he continues,
“but even in places that have supported
their arts very successfully it’s always the
responsibility of the management and the
conductor to be looking to make things
better. The point isn’t to reign supreme
in a status quo, as that’s not how you
develop an arts organization. In that
sense I’m very proud of what I’ve done
with the orchestra. We managed to go to
Washington and now the Proms, where
we played four Icelandic pieces, and we
worked with a lot of Icelandic composers
and performers at Tectonics, so I feel we
managed to achieve a lot.”
Torchbearers of musical
experimentation?
Tectonics is certainly one of the more
controversial aspects of Ilan’s tenure with
the ISO. It’s a festival he curates and runs
in a partnership with the orchestra and
Harpa. The festival celebrates musical
experimentation and improvisation, and
at the same time gives the orchestra
an opportunity to work in often highly
unorthodox ways with a wide range of
composers. Now in its third year, it has
so far featured works by such modern
powerhouse composers as John Cage,
Alvin Lucier and Christian Wolff, as well
as performances by self-proclaimed
crypto-conceptual science fiction anti-
band Asparagus Piss Raindrop, and
the post-apocalyptic electro lunatics of
Ghostigital.
“Orchestras don’t normally stage
festivals, so it was a big challenge in
every aspect,” Ilan says, and seeing as a
festival like this can hardly be considered
everybody’s cup of tea, it’s impressive
to learn that not only is he scheduled to
curate the festival again in Harpa in 2015
and 2016, but he has now expanded and
is curating Tectonics festivals in Glasgow,
Tel Aviv, Adelaide and New York.
“There’s a variety of facets to
this festival,” he tells me when I inquire
about the philosophy of the event. “A
big aspect of it is working with younger
musicians and composers, but we also
work with a few massive legendary
names that people rarely get the chance
to hear performed in such a large-scale
setting. In that sense, the aim is to get
the orchestra to open its doors to many
different musicians and artists—as well
as other audiences—and try to provide
an experience that is quite different from
what people think an orchestra is or what
is does.”
“Although the festival is obviously
The corridors in the basement of the decadent 19th-century masterpiece of architecture that
is London’s Royal Albert Hall are teeming with musicians and hangers-on. The anticipatory
energy is palpable as the Iceland Symphony Orchestra (ISO) gets ready to take the stage as
a part of the BBC Proms.
Photos
Baldur Kristjánsson and Alastair Muir
Words
Árni Árnason
Gourmet Experience
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Ilan Has (not quite)
Left The Building
INTER
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