Avi Avital, Alessia Tondo, Between Worlds Ensemble

The George Enescu International Festival goes on

And here it was again–a concert for midnight wanderers; and in it, Avi Avital, the one and only, unmistakably Israeli, who among other things played Song of the Birds, that Catalan melody whose opening line is identical to the beginning of Hatikva. The hall was on its feet, swooning with devotion, and after a couple of exquisite encores rushed into the foyer to buy Avi’s albums. Soon he joined them, signing copies in the middle of the crowd.

The album they bought most was the new one, Song of the Birds, named not only as a nod to Casals, but above all after the ancient Catalan folk tune itself. Pablo Casals, they say, performed it at every concert, considering it a symbol of peace and hope. And indeed, the birds in it sing divinely.

                                        Photo by Alex Damian

And the birds sang for us too: Avi Avital appeared at the Enescu Festival with the phenomenal musicians of his Between Worlds Ensemble. Cellist Jakob Nirenberg left a special imprint, though every player was outstanding. Joining them was Alessia Tondo, a siren-like singer from Apulia, Italy. In her voice I thought I heard shades of cante jondo and fado–though in fact it was pizzica, a branch of the tarantella, a ritual song of Salento bound to dance and a healing trance. Its roots reach back to the tradition of curing women “bitten by the tarantula”: the venom believed to trigger a special state of mind, treatable only by dancing to hypnotic rhythms, and sometimes by singing. In essence, it is ecstatic musical therapy, akin to fado and cante jondo in its raw sincerity, its intimacy with fate, suffering, and trance. Beyond pizzica, Apulia also harbors a rich tradition of canti salentini–drawn-out, often improvised songs, lyrical cries close in spirit to cante jondo. So perhaps I hadn’t imagined it after all.

                                       Photos by Alex Damian

She sang as if casting spells, while the audience clapped, stamped, almost danced along: a husky yet warm voice where one could hear incantation, lament, ecstasy, pain, and archaic energy.

But at the center of it all, of course, stood Avi Avital, the mandolin genius for whom every gesture is tied to feeling, meaning, mood. The nuances go without saying; so too the shifts from vigorous, rhythmically alive dances to moments of silence, intimacy, near-whisper. These contrasts make every note resonate more deeply. And in every piece–which all fall under the wide umbrella of world music–one could recognize cultural roots, folk character, yet everything sounded fresh, immediate, contemporary. A kind of archaeology of sonic fossils, revived into today’s music.

Avital is famed for his refined, intricate, and intellectually daring transcriptions and arrangements, which allow the mandolin to shine even within dense contrapuntal textures. Remarkably, the evening began in the classical realm–with Emanuele Barbella’s D major Mandolin Concerto, and even the Serenade and Tarantella from Stravinsky’s Italian Suite (oh, how good that was). It continued with Giovanni Sollima’s Trip to Italy, where baroque gestures collide with post-minimalism and electronics. And of course, there was a tarantella, how could there not be. Also a traditional Sicilian virrinedda (with Avi inviting us to try our hand at Sicilian dialect), and the famous Avi's Song, performed at breakneck speed.

                                         Photo by Alex Damian

For more than two decades Avi Avital has been reimagining both the past and future of his instrument. “Here is a musician who recognizes no limits except those of good taste, and whose artistry persuades listeners to follow him anywhere,” wrote Gramophone.
Go ahead, try to argue.

And of course, Song of the Birds is itself a metaphor for music: for birds do not sing in order to be understood–they sing so the world does not collapse into silence.