Sunday, April 6, 2025
7:00 PM
On WCRB In Concert with Celebrity Series of Boston, Egyptian Australian musicians Joseph and James Tawadros join the Australian Chamber Orchestra for a fascinating journey through Vivaldi's cosmopolitan Venice in "The Four Seasons."
Australian Chamber Orchestra
Richard Tognetti, Artistic Director, violin
Joseph Tawadros, oud
James Tawadros, riqq and bendir
Mehmed VI VAHIDEDDIN Nihavend Taksîm
Antonio VIVALDI Recitativo from Violin Concerto in D Major, RV208 "Il Grosso Mogul"
Joseph TAWADROS Kindred Spirits
VIVALDI "Spring" from The Four Seasons
TAWADROS Permission to Evaporate
VIVALDI "Summer" from The Four Seasons
TAWADROS Eye of the Beholder
TAWADROS Give or Take
Tanburi ANGELI Makām-i-Rehavi Çember-i-Koca (Ottoman March)
VIVALDI "Autumn" from The Four Seasons
TAWADROS Point of Departure
VIVALDI "Winter" from The Four Seasons, "Allegro con molto"
TAWADROS Existence
VIVALDI "Winter" from The Four Seasons, "Largo" and "Allegro"
TAWADROS Constantinople
This concert was recorded on October 18, 2024 at Jordan Hall.
Learn more about the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
Check out the rest of the Celebrity Series of Boston's 2024-2025 season.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson interviews Richard Tognetti and Joseph Tawadros on the inspirations behind this program, the sound world of Vivaldi's time, and the connections between Baroque and Arabic music. Listen with the audio player below, and read the transcript underneath:
TRANSCRIPT:
Edyn-Mae Stevenson I'm Edyn-Mae Stevenson from WCRB, and I am here with Richard Tognetti, who is the Artistic Director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and also Joseph Tawadros, who is a composer and oud player for tonight. Thank you both so much for being here.
Joseph Tawadros Thanks for having us.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson What was the idea for this program? What was the idea that you guys came up with, and how did it become what we're going to hear tonight?
Richard Tognetti Well, we first started performing together back in the...
Joseph Tawadros Good old days, 20 years ago.
Richard Tognetti 2001. And Joseph was a teenager.
Joseph Tawadros Yeah I was.
Richard Tognetti And it was a bringing together of different cultures, elements, musics, and it still is! We're essentially a Western orchestra playing diatonic music, and Joseph's traditions are from North Africa being Egypt, and with it, that extraordinarily heady, powerful music. Back in 2006, we had a program called "The Travelers," which was a mélange, wasn't it? It was a different bunch of musics put together. This particular program is inspired by an imaginary sound world that must have existed in Vivaldi's time. Books have been written, lectures have been given about the visual arts and the influence of Islamic cultures flowing into and out of the Venetian culture flowing out of Venice. But little is known about the music. I mean, Vivaldi did write an opera inspired by, and we've got a movement in this program from "Il Grosso Mogul," which is based on the mogul of India. But there's scant other things of what the streets of Venice sounded like. But we do know that all those people were there selling spices, playing instruments, you know, wearing their clothes that weren't European. And the Europeans were really fascinated by this. In Mozart's time, he was fascinated by the in quotation marks, the "exotic" musics that came out of other parts of the world, especially the Ottomans. And so with Joseph's genius—Yes, let me use that word.
Joseph Tawadros Aw, thanks man. No, no, no...
Richard Tognetti It it felt organic, biodynamic, mixing this music. And in fact, when I first met Joseph and asked what his influences were, he mentioned Vivaldi.
Joseph Tawadros Yeah. I was always interested in Baroque music. I mean, I've always been interested in Western music, of course, being brought up in Australia, but coming from an Egyptian household, you know, I had that mixture of always being brought up with Arabic music and having that sound in my ear. And family members played music as well. So I was brought up on Arabic music, but I had a thirst also for Western music and going to school and going to music class and hearing all these other different types of music. But I was really drawn to the music of the Baroque. I found it was closest to the Middle East. And so, of course, they can be apples and oranges sometimes, but it's about finding the similarities between the music and what works.
Joseph Tawadros With the "Four Seasons," not everything works having the oud in it. So some of it works extremely well, for instance, you know it has that minor feel. It has all the correct ornamentation, everything you want that is alive in Arabic music is also alive in [Vivaldi's] "Summer" as well. So we tend to have things like that, and look for just picking our moments and adding spices, basically. Spicing what is already a very, very strong violin concerto, really. It's a very, very beautiful showcase of the violin, but also having that programmatic side to it as well, that storytelling, which is very part of the Middle East. So there are those parallels. But in that sense, it's about creating a sound world which isn't cliched, and we don't want it to be two separate things. We want to meet in the middle. And with the addition of my brother James Tawadros on percussion as well, playing "riqq," which is the Egyptian tambourine, it adds a very, very interesting groove. It almost doesn't feel foreign at all.
Richard Tognetti No, no. Well, to us it doesn't. [Tognetti and Tawadros laugh]
Joseph Tawadros There must have been percussion going on, you know?
Richard Tognetti But how about the way the "Taksîm" in the first piece, which is a sort of improvization that we're playing, featuring cello—
Joseph Tawadros It's not been written down.
Richard Tognetti But the way it goes into the Vivaldi "Il Grosso Mogul," it feels like it's born of the same DNA, doesn't it?
Joseph Tawadros Yeah. I mean, that's the thing with segueing. And we are segueing a lot of the pieces, they kind of go in together and you don't ever feel that it's foreign to us on stage. But I think the audience feels that as well. And I think hopefully we've come together with a program that people are really enjoying. And the music's very energetic, I think that's the other thing. When you have music that is alive with energy, I think the audience feels that way. We're having fun on stage, and I think the audience sees that and reacts to that and feels that as well. And I think that's always a very important element of the performance when the audience is included.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson Joseph, I would love if you could give us a quick introduction to your instrument, because it seems to be one of the centerpieces of this performance. What is the oud?
Joseph Tawadros I'll give a rough history of the oud. There's said to be an ancient Egyptian prototype. I tend to say that as well, because I'm Egyptian background. We like to own everything, but [Tognetti chuckles] let's start with the ancient Egyptian prototype of an instrument called "nefer"—Besides mathematics and all that other stuff that we own, you know? [Tawadros chuckles] I'll check in the oud as well. So "nefer" is actually a hieroglyphic letter which you can see on some of the temples, which looks actually like the oud. So in Nefertiti, if you look in her name, there is a symbol which looks like the oud. So there's a hieroglyph.
That's taken by the Persians and turned into an instrument called "barbat," which is a similar looking oud, but it has a skin covering, actually, and four sets of strings. That's then said to be taken by the Arabs and turned into the modern day oud, also with four strings. And this Persian player goes to Andalusia by the name of Ziryab, very famous in the ninth century. Arabs are in Spain and the oud is taken to Europe and then eventually becomes the lute. And the word lute comes from [the Arabic word] "al-ʿūd." So that's the etymology of the word. And then the lute becomes a guitar, so it's a very historically significant instrument. A lot of evolution on the way. But the modern day oud is usually five double strings.
Richard Tognetti And Joseph's cousin instrument is sitting right behind him.
Joseph Tawadros Oh yeah, exactly. You see the theorbo there. He's just there to make me 3D, basically, [Tawadros chuckles] to the audience.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson I think that your instrument falls quite naturally into the overall sound of the chamber orchestra, really—
Richard Tognetti I know, every chamber orchestra should have one. [Stevenson laughs]
Joseph Tawadros Yeah, I've been pushing for that for years! But that's, you know, here we are.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson You know, you said in your composer notes... You sort of had an interesting thing to say about how you relate to this instrument as well, your relationship to this instrument. And I was hoping you could tell us a little bit more about that.
Joseph Tawadros Well, I mean, I like the strength of emotion, really. Like, that's I think the important thing that kind of connects us. It doesn't matter which region you're from. Playing the oud, playing traditional music on the oud, is an uphill battle, in a way, of trying to help people understand the emotional value associated with it. So when I turned to being a composer and composing music and being brought up in Australia, it's about composing to emotions, really. It's not just about composing to regions or catering for a certain region of the world. I think the oud has something to say. And it's kind of evident in this program where after a while, you just realize it's just another instrument. It's as prominent as the guitar or the violin, and just as important—and one that can say something within a Western ensemble and not sound foreign either. So that's what I like about this program. And of course, with the arrangements that Richard did of some of my pieces as well, it's a modern arrangement of a very, very old instrument. It's an inclusion of this, this beautiful—I love the instrument, and so I have to say, I'm very passionate about it. It's a beautiful instrument, it's a magical instrument.
Richard Tognetti I mean, listening to having him on stage every night is a wonderful thing. But it's not just a modern arrangement because we did listen to these fantastic, Egyptian pieces—
Joseph Tawadros Yeah, but the difference is, I mean, there's this... You've got the strength of harmony with Richard's arrangements, you've got the polyphonic lines, whereas in Middle Eastern ensembles, they play in unison. You can be in any octave you want, you're playing in unison, even if there's a singer, you're playing the line that the singer's singing—
Richard Tognetti Which you do sometimes in "The Four Seasons."
Joseph Tawadros Yeah, we're doubling the unison. [Tognetti and Tawadros chuckle] Yeah, exactly. So I think it gives that Middle Eastern sound. And, you know, people love a melody and people love the strength of melody. When you can give it to them, people walk out of the concert hall humming tunes and never seeing the harmony or the texture, really. [Tawadros chuckles]
Edyn-Mae Stevenson Well, that leads me right into my next question, which is that there's music on this program going obviously all the way back to the 15th, 16th century, but then your own compositions. And I was wondering how both of you feel about how these modern compositions that you've written fit into the overall picture of this program?
Richard Tognetti Well, in a way, we've answered that in the context of Joseph's history. So it's not like he's just got this ancient instrument and he's making new sounds. What always attracted me to Joseph's playing was that, sure, he's contextualizing in a modern world this ancient music. I mean, you feel like it goes far back and further than the Baroque era. That's the starting point. In the arrangements, as Joseph says, I bring a sense of Western diatonic harmony to bear on the music, which is perhaps a foreign body, but it adds different colors, if you like. But it's true to Vivaldi's contest of harmony and invention that he describes in his own "Four Seasons." And so that's always at the forefront of when we both set down to arrange these two. And so Joseph would come to me with a beautifully worked out structure that was monodic. And then I'd play him certain things say, "Well, how does this fit?" And he said, "Well, it breaks the music, you know, breaks the spell." So there is something true. Is that correct to say that that's true to the integrity of Joseph's heritage?
Joseph Tawadros Yeah. I think again, it comes down to the strength of melody and not messing around with that too much. It's the same with the Vivaldi. So not messing around with it too much. It's there, and that's just about coloring and adding more, and coloring something that's that's working already.
Richard Tognetti And as Joe says, we have this unique sound of the riqq, the tambourine. So we've got the drum and then the cymbals.
Joseph Tawadros The riqq is a very prominent and very important instrument. When we say tambourine, it is basically a skin covered tambourine with five sets of symbols on the side. But it's not played by banging it against your leg or, you know, Linda McCartney-style. It's almost like a hand-held drum kit. And James is an absolute master of it. And you hear in "Give or Take," just before that tune, he does have a solo and sets up the rhythm for that. So that's something to listen out for. But having the orchestra pumping and just working very well together and [Tawadros chuckles] 25 years under the belt, working together, it really does make things easier and makes us all resonate together when we play.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson Well, I can't wait to hear it. Thank you both so much.
Richard Tognetti Thank you, thank you.
Joseph Tawadros Thank you. Cheers.