The next place to go was Tunisia, a completely different country with its own old traditional culture, views, and atmosphere. It is an Arabic-speaking country where they use music for entertainment and for religious purposes as well. They have completely different traditional instruments, which are in different tune from the Western classical ones. They play and sing their music with the intention to reach a trance. They believe that in that condition it is possible to heal anything that troubles you and to become happy.
I had an engagement in Tunis 3 years ago: I played a recital in the Conservatoire de Musique. Somebody asked me to listen to one student and to give her a lesson. She played Bach-Busoni “The Chaconne” for me, and I will never forget it. It wasn’t the best performance, to be honest. She took one pedal for several lines or even for pages; she did not show any knowledge of rhythm, harmonization of themes, fingering or structure. Despite all that mess, she felt the general character and tried to create some picture. We spent two hours trying to put together the first couple of pages. And after that lesson she cried for two hours at my shoulder saying that nobody ever told her these things. I was very moved and upset after that and hoped to go back there and help more students.
Luckily life gave me a chance to do it.
Despite the fact that it was a conservatory where students get professional musical education, most of the teachers themselves have no idea what music is about . They have a very low professional level, and real talents have no chance to grow, as they don’t get the basic education. They all seem to have hunger for information and even if they really want to know and to study they don’t know where to get it from and how to do it.
It’s a North African country where people`s mentality is totally different from what we are used to. During the summer I had a conversation with the director of conservatory, and he was absolutely happy to accommodate us and provide students, hall and some advertisements. He did not need any information about us, any posters, biographies or anything for the moment. He just asked to call him one month before we were planning to come and confirm our arrival. But he did not need any information about us one month before either. We were worried that events were not going to happen at all and I called an acquaintance of mine there asking if it was ok. She told me not to worry, that as soon as we arrived they would organize everything the day before, and it would be fine.
As you know, there was a revolution in Tunisia in January 2011. People have chosen the Islamic Party after the first democratic elections. Most women began to wear Hijab, which they never had done before. Why did it happen? They were afraid their husbands would lose a job, they did not know what to do with the democracy, and they were happy to restrict themselves. It is all about lack of information and fear for material things.
We were invited to play in the Russian Cultural Centre in Tunis, where the concert was planned in advance for the 2nd of November. Tog ether with Vitaly, we played our chamber music program, and it went really well. Again, we heard how happy they were to attend the professional recital and how poor the cultural life was there.
03/11/2011
Today was Vitaly`s master-class, and the same situation as in Beslan happened: there were not a lot of saxophone players around there. Some of them came from Suss, which is 100km away from the capital. But there they have one of the most famous teachers. Some of the students were complete beginners with a great desire to play this instrument. They did not really know how to produce the sound, how to hold the instrument, etc, etc. The most valuable thing was that after the lessons they were so inspired that they came to Vitaly the next day too, and he taught them two days instead of one.
We played a duo recital that day, and oddly enough, in spite of the fact that they did not do any posters, it was a full house. They did not read any advertisement on walls, as we were told later. It was all verbal culture, and they perceived everything only that way.
04/11/2011
Now it was my turn to give a master-class and to play a solo recital. I had five students. Most of them played Chopin Nocturnes and Liszt rhapsodies. The first two were studying with the Head of Keyboard and… they did not know a thing. They did not know how to sit near the piano, what was the right hand posture, how to create the beautiful sound, who was Chopin, what the Nocturne genre was like, how to use the pedal, etc, etc. And the biggest problem was that they did not really understand that playing the instrument requires some effort, that it takes time to work on the piece, to achieve some decent result, that one needs a clear understanding of what you want to create in that music. They were used to doing a slapdash work and did not care about the quality. It was extremely difficult to explain to them that if they really wanted to play the piano they needed clear understanding of how it should sound in the ideal performance and pull themselves up to it.
The other three were studying with the Turkish teacher who had been taught in Germany for many years, and they were much better. They did want to know things, they were trying hard, and it was a great pleasure to work with them. It was possible to talk about characters, acoustic hearing, contrasts, and the structure of the piece.
As I understood later, the solo recital went very successful. But it was not easy to play there at all. Constant walking in the auditorium, whispering, talking, clapping between movements and other noises were really disturbing. It happened not because they were not interested, but because they did not know how to listen to the music.