Dimitris
Sgouros: Portrait of a Genius
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Dimitris
Sgouros: Portrait of a Genius Ankara is preparing once more to host a special guest from Greece, a musical prodigy, -- Dimitris Sgouros. The world-renowned pianist will perform a piano recital at Bilkent Concert Hall on April 30 as a part of 18th Ankara Music Festival.
The world-renowned pianist Dimitris Sgouros performed at the opening of Bilkent's new amphitheater, Odeon a year ago to nearly 4,000 people.
Sgouros came to Ankara a few days before the concert. The Turkish Daily News had the chance to catch the piano virtuoso prior to his concert and ask him a few questions in person.
Story begins at six Sgouros was born in Athens in 1969. To those interested, his exact birthday is Aug. 30, a Virgo. The story of his genius unfolds. Sgouros began playing the piano at the age of six, and gave his first concert at seven. At the age of 12, he graduated from the Athens Conservatory with diplomas as both a pianist and piano teacher, winning the first prize and a gold medal. In 1982, when only 12 years old, he played Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto no. 3, one of the most difficult pieces for piano, at every musician's dream venue, Carnegie Hall in New York, with the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich. He was wildly applauded, and his performance that evening was called one of the most impressive musical debuts of the century. "The boy is a miracle of nature, a musical phenomenon sent by God," said Rostropovich.
Sgouros continued his brilliant studies at the Royal Academy of London and later at the University of Maryland in the United States. He graduated from both institutions with the highest marks ever awarded. Besides his unusual musical talents, the artist is fluent in six languages and graduated with honors from Athens University's mathematics faculty.
Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, China, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Spain are only some of the countries where he has dazzled the music world. He has performed for the royal families of Britain and Sweden and played under the baton of names like Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein, Yemil Tabakov, Kurt Masur, Yevgeni Svetlanov and now Gurer Aykal. Since March 1988, three "Sgouros Festivals" have been instituted, in Hamburg, Ljubljana and Singapore.
Performing in the capital city
Is it the first time Sgouros visited Turkey? To this question, Sgouros got excited and talked about how much he enjoyed his previous visits of more than a decade ago to Istanbul in 1989 and 1990, when he performed at the Istanbul Music Festival. This time, however, he was excited as he was to play in the capital city for the first time, at the opening of a very special amphitheater, and with maestro Gurer Aykal. He also mentioned that he became very good friends with Aykal and his son Kerem.
Another Turkish musician Sgouros is on very good terms with is conductor Cem Mansur, with whom he played Beethoven's 4th and 5th symphonies in Oxford, England, and Palermo, Italy. Although he hasn't yet listened to Turkish piano prodigy Fazil Say, Sgouros appreciates famous Turkish pianists Gulsum Onay and Idil Biret.
Sgouros began his musical life when he was only a child, at the age of six. Would he encourage a similar life for his son, for instance, knowing the pros and cons of leading a life filled with music from childhood? He says that, first of all, his child has to like classical music. And eventually if he chose to follow a similar path to that of his father, Sgouros would make sure that his son knows that many sacrifices, particularly of one's private life, are needed. He compared his devotion to music to the devotion needed in a medical career. He also added his son would be left to make his own choices.
We know that when only 12 years old, Sgouros played
Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto no. 3 at Carnegie Hall in New York. You might know
of another musical genius, David Helfgott from Scott Hicks' famous movie
"Shine," and his special admiration of Rachmaninov as well. We asked him whether
he identifies with the great Russian musician, who also started playing the
piano when only four years old and travelled throughout
the world, performing in different countries and remaining peerless
during this time. He maintains that Rachmaninov has special significance for him
as he also played music in major cities like Washington D.C. and London from 12
years of age. But he mentions that composers from Germanic countries are very
important to him as well, namely Brahms, Schumann and Beethoven.
Sgouros agrees that it is fair to say he has played with almost every orchestra in Europe, the United States and Japan. He has also played in almost every place in the Germanic countries. As a special anecdote, he mentions how his relationship between conductor Rostropovich began and how he came to be Sgouros' surrogate father. When he played at Carnegie Hall with the National Symphony Orchestra, under Rostropovich's conduction, the maestro had a 100 percent belief in him and arranged a concert with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The amazing thing was that Sgouros could choose any conductor he wanted, and it was Rostropovich whom he decided to perform with.
He has played all over the world and still travels continuously to perform in the world's major cities. He was educated in Greece, England and the United States. But where does he actually reside? His home is definitely Athens. Greek mythology, classical Greek literature and literature in general are his other interests. Does he only listen to classical music? Although not very fond of pop music, Sgouros likes listening to folk and ethnic music.
Sgouros has about 50 piano concertos in his repertoire, including the complete works of Chopin, Liszt and Beethoven. He has won awards for composing, although he prefers not to listen to his award-winning compositions of more than a decade back. When asked about the distinction between a composer and a performer, Sgouros says, "Of course, we are not superior to composers, but our job isn't easy either." He muses, "What would the composers do without us?" excluding Liszt from his remark on composers.
When asked his opinions on the ever-critical relationship between Turkey and Greece, he wisely says that he does not want to repeat what politicians are currently saying about peace and harmony between the two countries. He says that art has a unique language of its own and he wants to send his message through his music. But he can't help mentioning his deep sorrow for the earthquakes that shook Turkey after Aug. 17 last year and that he is always ready to perform for UNICEF.
Musician Claudio Abbado said of Sgouros, "A Sgouros comes along once every 100 years." And Ankara had its fair share of this genius, a shooting star from Greece. Let's hope to see Dimitris Sgouros back soon.
Sgouros concert in Oxford University (where he pursued studies in post-graduate mathematics)
Contemporary American philosopher Charles Taylor said two of the main discoveries of modernity were affectionate and conjugal love, and daily life. In the twentieth Istanbul Movie Festival, Marcel Carne's Hotel du Nord (North Hotel), and Federico Fellini's Otto e Mezzo (Eight and a Half) bear witness to the truth of this statement.
Amos Gitai's Kippur sends the unmistakable message that love, in its versatility and tenderness, creates the world anew, in stark contrast to the vanity of war. In Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte (The Night), a writer confirms his newly discovered penchant for money and young women during a long party only to find later that only his wife is indispensable.
Bertolucci's Strategia del Ragno (Spider's Strategy) and L'ultimo tango a Parigi (Last Tango in Paris) are more high-pitched than the other movies and truly tragic, with either death or depression marking the end. They are perhaps the oldest in inspiration, resembling Greek drama in their pathos, at once poignant and subdued.
The movies recall that in life and in movies, everything is tentative, with the verities of one day not necessarily corresponding to the next. It is by not prejudging the future that artistic liberty is gained. The audience feels that ambiguity is in the nature of things, and so much for the better.
Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris displays a self-enclosed eroticism where the body, loved or abused, and the character of its bearer are forever intersecting to create a complicated web of emotions.
It seems in retrospect quite clear that it influenced a series of films on the theme of Lolita, "an American in Paris," the tango, the rendezvous, the loner and the criminal, vice and passion, and rather unexpectedly, innocence.
Paul (Marlon Brando), an American who apparently pursued a Frenchwoman to Paris to marry her and ends up losing her in a suicide, and who expects nothing anymore from his life, including the operation of his sleazy hotel, has an encounter with Jeanne (Maria Schneider), a 20-year old strongly attached to her childhood memories among which her military father outshines the rest, and whose boyfriend is so enamored with her that he wants to shoot a movie about her life.
After a series of inexplicable coincidences, Paul and Jeanne accidentally meet in an apartment which both of them intend to rent, and rather unexpectedly, they start making love.
With no formal agreement, they begin to meet regularly in this apartment. His lovemaking is a strange combination of brutality and affection, whereas she acts very innocent, self-indulgent and happy. The only thing in their relationship by way of rules is that they shall never know each other's names, presumably to keep the relation impersonal and distant.
Perhaps one of the most poignant scenes is where Paul reminisces about his distant childhood in America. He talks about his brutal father who was an alcoholic, and his "poetic" mother who shared her husband's addiction. He narrates how he was given the duty of milking the cow twice a day, which, he says, he in fact enjoyed, but then recalls with faded rebellion that one evening his father forced him to go about his "duty" when a baseball game was due and he had a date with a favorite girl, with the upshot that he attended the event with dirty shoes covered with dung, a lasting shame.
An almost wistful expression appears on Paul's face in this scene enhanced by the reflection of a soft light filtering into the room, defying his professed brutality; the man is transformed for a short time, a miracle to recur at the end of the movie only to turn sour. And it is of course very characteristic that he then tells Jeanne that it was all a lie.
Paul, nonetheless, falls in love with the girl, leading to an unexpected end for a life that so dissipated, hardened and ingrained with sarcasm that it almost promises to end in vanity and accident. His death is instead tragic.
One of Bertolucci's first movies, Spider's Strategy has a slowness to it that makes you feel like you are moving underwater. A renowned antifascist turns out to have been a traitor to his cause. The final revelation about the hero, who has turned into an idol with an aura of honesty in his delicate face, is slow and drawn out.
Athos Magnani's son, bearing the same name as him (Guilio Brogi), comes to his native town to investigate his father's murder. He first talks with his lover Draifa, who gives him information about Athos' friends and foes. He finds out that his father had three comrades, and a fascist was widely suspected of being the murderer. The son talks with his friends, one of whom is a sausage producer and who gives him a detailed description of his craft in his warehouse, in a scene where the dense strings of meat hanging from the low ceiling overshadow the characters, creating a sense of satiation, sensuousness and emptiness.
Time hangs still in this small Italian town, and it seems like the memory of the undisclosed murder makes the air even thicker with a combination of edginess and indifference. Athos talks with the fascist, and although the man says, "I hated your father's guts," his doubts converge rather on the trio of his father's friends.
The men bring him to a river side one day, and afraid that they will attack him, Athos runs away. But all of this to find out that the men had actually been the actors in the play initiated by his father, who, after having informed on the antifascists and turned traitor, asked his friends shoot him in the theater in order to regain his exalted status as a hero.
Magnani is shot while watching a play, and the murder itself proceeds in a very theatrical manner. As with Julius Ceaser before his death, someone gives Athos a letter just before the play to admonish him of his impending death, and the letter is found sealed in his pocket after his death. A few other aspects to his murder are similarly contrived, and together with the oddity of imagining his father immediately surrendering to his best friends come to shoot him, Athos figures out that his father is the propagator.
The son does not tell anyone else the truth he has discovered, and leaves town on the next train. The aura of heaviness and standstill is most pronounced in this scene where Athos seems to become entangled in a dense web of unkempt shrubbery at the deserted train station, symbolizing the persistence of the mystery for the masses who will dumbly continue to adore and eulogize him.
In this movie Bertolucci shows the emperor naked, but the son who finds out the truth conceals it, making him accomplice to this travesty of purity and valor.
In Michelangelo Antonioni's The Night, author Giovanni Pontano (Marcello Mastroianni) and his wife Lidia (Jeanne Moreau) go to hospital to visit their dying publisher friend Tomaso. Giovanni's weakness for women is revealed very quickly, as he cannot resist the advances of a distraught girl standing in the corridor beckoning him into her room, and after some resistance, responds to her kiss.
Lidia, who combines the traits of a child and woman in her face and demeanor, spends the whole day touring Rome, mostly the poorer neighborhoods and also the plot that belongs to the couple which they have neglected. Her gait is slow and unruffled, a mixture of deliberation and loitering. She witnesses a fight in a deserted alley between two ruffians, and to the surprise of all, she intervenes and stops the bloody confrontation. It is only in the evening that she phones her husband, who fell asleep in his study waiting for his wife.
The night starts off with an unusual activity for them. Lidia dresses up, and she wants to go to a club, so they do, but the acrobatics of the black dancer leaves her unimpressed. Not so her husband, who watches the show with curiosity and admiration. Afterwards, they take off for a party at the house of a wealthy industrialist, whose "pat intellectual," in the words of his wife, is Giovanni.
It is a drawn-out night, creating the impact of lasting much longer than the ten or so hours in which it would have taken. It is a revealing night, particularly of Giovanni's desire for another woman, less serious than his intelligent wife, and he believes to have found her in the mercurial daughter of his host. His newfound penchant for money also finds an opportunity for expression.
Lidia, on the contrary, is unable to respond to the advances of a man whom she actually likes, she sees Giovanni kissing the host's daughter, and finds out that Tomaso died in hospital. She is shattered, but "not jealous", as she says, and feels that she and her husband are at the end of the road.
"I don't love you anymore," she says, "and neither do you love me." Nonetheless, Giovanni does not want to leave her, and they make love on the grassy terrain of the villa. The movie ends in an open-ended manner, for while Lidia's assessments sound correct, the last scene seems to suggest otherwise -- perhaps that love can break down but can also be mended.
In The Night, an all-night party in its very flippancy serves to bring to mind forgotten devotion. Events serve as carbon paper to reveal the true nature of emotions, giving the movie a unique profundity.
Federico Fellini's most autobiographical movie, Eight and a Half, describes the attempt of a very suave movie director Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) to shoot a movie that almost one on one corresponds to his own dissipated life, indecision, love affairs, lies and surprising attachment to his wife (Anouk Aimee).
We find, in this movie, human figures and facial expressions exaggerated to absurdity, a pattern characteristic of Fellini. The close-up shots of faces in particular are revealing. They go right to the soul of the person through exaggeration, bold lines, through making overblown and grotesque. Eight and a Half reflects closely the cinematographic life of Fellini, whose admiration for classical beauty gave him a keener eye for its parodies.
Guido Anselmi has a muse (Claudia Cardinale), who is his saviour whenever he is in trouble. Yet as his project gets progressively more fantastic, autobiographical and frivolous at once, he is deserted by the muse, his wife, his honest friend and his wife's best friend, the last one recommending that he alone can make a decision, and that will be enough: To shoot the movie or not?
He can of course not give up on this film that reflects his life and convictions, partly due to his egotism but admittedly because he also believes in the movie. Guido's only regret is having lied to his wife about his love affairs. So he tells her that he will do the movie but will no longer act to her as in the past.
Guido will from now on act as he is, and implores her to accept him in this way. She says "I cannot promise, but I will try," an ending similar to Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut." Life will show, but we will try. Even if he cannot get the better of the flirt in him, Guido will at least not lie to his life -- and perhaps this will make a difference.
"Life is a feast," says Guido somewhere to the end of the movie, suggesting that when that truth is revealed, sense freely takes over, and sensuality is perhaps to what the famous meaning of life boils down.
The end is rather homely for a movie with aspirations to comprehensiveness, truth, and the meaning of life. The least affected gestures are also the most veritable, it seems to say.
A movie shot in 1938... Not only black-and-white, but also with a homely look unavailable in today's glitzy movie industry. ... In addition to this, Marcel Carne's Hotel du Nord is never melodramatic.
The media industry, in particular in tabloid form, has succeeded in gaining popularity through a crude manipulation of feelings. Hotel du Nord, shot almost sixty years ago, shows what tack the movie industry could have taken if it had not surrendered to show business.
Depicting the subdued and unnoticed pathos of ordinary people, the film brings to mind the realism for which current British cinema is famous.
The movie focuses on a young girl who makes a suicide pact with her lover only to be shot by him and deserted, and a man who had been involved in shady businesses in his youth and is now trying to cover up. Renee (Arletty) cannot forget his convicted lover, and so she refuses Edmond's offer to flee together to another land and start anew. The man is hurt but accepts her choice without much ado, and allows his old foe, who is lurking in his hotel room, to take revenge and murder him (he even hands him the gun). In the meantime, Renee joins her former lover after he serves his sentence.
High drama is intertwined with ordinary events throughout this endearingly homespun movie.
Kippur takes place in Golan Heights, which carries none of the signs of having domesticated the desert for which Israelis are proud. There is first a shot of empty streets with only several people walking, and then a long scene of lovemaking where the couple lie on a surface covered with paint of different colors, and touch and caress one another as they smear paint on their bodies.
In an abrupt turn, we are shown two men driving to the front to join their military regiment. They cannot find what they are looking for, but they join up with a helicopter rescue team and they aid the team of a doctor and a group of other officers.
After this point the movie, for the most part, shows scenes of wounded people, mutilated limbs, the alluvium silt not allowing rescuers to walk, the field hospital, a helicopter crash where most of the team members are wounded, and so it goes, like a documentary on the ravages of war on the body and the psyche.
The movie ends with a love scene paralleling the first, with the man being one of the lieutenants who joined the rescue mission.
A definitely antimilitarist movie, Amos Gitai's 2000 Kippur takes care not to take side with the warring parties, except for a brief comment at the beginning by the lieutenant that "the Arabs are craftier than we imagined," for "they attacked right on the day of Kippur."
Kippur, a silent lament to the war dead, abstains from making grand comments on justice, heroism or enmity. It seeks to make a point on everything else by stressing the mere violence involved, and lets the audience draw the conclusions.
It is interesting to compare Kippur with Steven Spielberg's famous war movie, which also brought "the war home" through very realistic shooting. But unlike Spielberg, Gitai does not and will not exalt anything about war.
Nagisa Oshima's Gohatto (Taboo) has an interesting take on the famed hierarchy and discipline of the Japanese Shogunate, but with an unfortunately simplistic ending.
Reflecting the discontents of lust and love in a military regiment in the Japanese Shogunate, this movie goes very well until the end, when evil emerges through such stark symbols that all persuasiveness vanishes.
The movie is shot beautifully, the silhouettes of people and objects rendered with the accuracy and grace of a Japanese etching. The boy Sozaburo Kano (Takeshi Kitano), whom more than one person falls in love with only to find their doom, has a striking but coy beauty, an object of lust and temptation. He is first courted by one of his peers, then an elderly and wan-faced officer accosts him and makes him his object of desire, and is killed by Sozaburo. Lust and love find themselves enmeshed with politics as higher level officers' intentions on the young man create cracks in military discipline.
At the end of numerous episodes, the beautiful boy turns into a monster, killing his faithful lover through force and guile. This ending is inappropriately grotesque, lending Taboo the touch of an American Halloween horror movie.