Kemal BELEVI (b.1954)
Guitar Duos
Cyprian Rhapsody No. 1 (2011/2017) [3:55]
Suite Chypre (2011/2017) [11:50]
Vals. No.1 (1999/2017) [3:24]
Cyprian Rhapsody No. 2 (2006/2017) [5:35]
Vals No. 2. (1985/2017) [5:39]
Turkish Suite (1999) [6:17]
Romance (1997/2018) [5:26]
Cyprian Rhapsody No. 3 (2012/2018) [7:00]
Three Fragments (1997) [4:44]
Cyprian Rhapsody No. 4 (2006/2018) [8:33]
Duo Tandem
rec. 2019, Holy Trinity Church, Kensington, London
First recordings except Rhapsodies 1 & 2, Fragments
NAXOS 8.574081 [62:56]
Kemal Belevi is a Turkish Cypriot born in the old town of Nicosia, the last of seven children of a musical family. He began to learn the guitar at the age of 11 and in his mid-teens he played pop and rock material in a band with two older brothers. He moved to London in 1972. At the age of 18, in his uncle’s house in London, he saw a TV programme featuring Julian Bream and John Williams and was hypnotized by it – it was the first time he had experienced (or even seen) the classical guitar. Between 1974 and 1977 he studied at Southgate College in London, taking his O & A Levels, while learning to play classical guitar and supporting himself through various jobs, such as working in a drycleaners and joining a Greek friend to play in restaurants. In 1977, when applying to train as a music teacher at the London College of Music, he was auditioned by no less a figure than William Lloyd Webber. When he finished playing, Lloyd Webber asked him whether he really wanted to be a teacher and he replied “No, I would rather be a performer”. “Good”, said Lloyd Webber “because that is what you should be”. Lloyd Webber arranged for him to be given a place on the performer’s course. A further audition won him a scholarship from Haringey Council to support his studies. (I have taken some of these details from a feature on Belevi published in the Cyprus Mail in May of this year). From 1976 to 1979 he studied guitar with David Russell, and also took composition classes with David McBride. In 1981/2 he was awarded a Fellowship at the London College of Music, which enabled him to devote himself to honing his skills as a performer. It was in 1985 that he began to compose for the guitar. He has also written music both for chamber groups and orchestra. According to the Naxos biographical note, he has now written five guitar concertos.
This enjoyable new album is titled Guitar Duos, but by no means all of the music was originally written for two guitars. The Cyprian Rhapsodies were written for orchestra and Suite Chypre came into existence as a work for violin and guitar; the two waltzes and Romance were written as works for solo guitar. All are here played in duo arrangements made by Belevi himself. As an experienced guitarist – he has given concerts worldwide, and taught many masterclasses – Belevi’s understanding of the guitar is such that the pieces arranged for guitar duo sound as assured and appropriate as those (Turkish Suite and Three Fragments) originally conceived for two guitars.
Belevi’s music draws on influences from Turkey and Greece and he has obviously listened to Arab music too – or perhaps it is simply that his writing brings out the North African and Middle Eastern elements implicit in both Greek and Turkish music. The result has a decidedly Mediterranean atmosphere. If there was any chance of having a Mediterranean holiday this year, I would certainly load this disc onto my mp3 player. Not that it is music only suitable for being listened to in situ, as it were, or that it is mere ‘travelogue’ music. It is much more than that and has already proved itself to be rewarding listening in a wet, windy, and unseasonably cold Wales. Its particular attraction resides, for me, in the way in which Belevi respects the traditional idioms he draws on, while extending them in a modern manner.
Throughout, the playing of Duo Tandem is excellent and idiomatic – the duo is made up of Necati Emirzade (like Belevi, a Turkish Cypriot based in London) and the Chicagoan Mark Anderson, who teaches at Millikin University and elsewhere). Emirzade and Anderson formed Duo Tandem in 2012, when both were studying at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Two previous albums, Sans Paroles (Soundset, 2012) and Watching the World Go By (Duo Tandem, 2018) have attracted a good deal of praise from lovers of the classical guitar. This third album, on Naxos – with its superior distribution network – will, one hopes, gain wider attention for them. My only reservation is that the recorded sound – perhaps due to the ecclesiastical location – is a little lacking in warmth and intimacy.
Among the compositions I found particularly attractive were the Cyprian Rhapsodies Nos.2, 3 and 4, the Suite Chypre, Turkish Suite and Three Fragments. Cyprian Rhapsody No.2, in 4/4, has a charming ‘pizzicato’ opening, and develops a strong sense of dance, sometimes emphasized by fingers drumming on the instruments. A slow middle section has its own kind of eloquence before the opening theme returns; the writing right through the piece makes attractive use of the interplay between the two instrumentalists. This is not a piece I would, without its title, have thought of as especially Cypriot or ‘’Mediterranean’ in nature – it is simply a work well-made (remade?) for guitar duo. To my ears, at least, Cyprian Rhapsody No.3 has more of a Greek or Cypriot atmosphere and, where No. 2 returns to its beginning as it closes, No.3 builds through its 7 minutes to a forceful climax. In No.4 the textures are yet more elaborate – as Graham Wade writes in his booklet notes, it “often sounds, in orchestral sonorities, more akin to a guitar quartet than a duo”. It is happier and more extrovert than Nos. 2 and 3. It makes for an upbeat conclusion to the album, if one chooses to listen to the disc straight though. Suite Chypre is, currently, my favourite piece on this disc. Wade’s booklet notes tell us that “it was written when the composer visited the Île de Ré guitar festival in France in July 2001 [after] hearing a guitar ensemble enhanced by a cello”. It has three movements. The first, ‘Lapta’, remembers a village in the Kyrenia mountains a little way from the north coast of Cyprus. The second, ‘Elegie’, was written in memory of Belevi’s mother who died, at the age of only 41, in 1959, while the third movement, ‘Çiftetelli, is named after one of the most famous of Turkish dances, a dance in 2/4, which is nowadays found in both Greece and Turkey; some scholars have suggested that it is related to the Ancient Greek dance known as ‘cordax’. The three movements, from the first piece, evocative of both mountain and sea, through the sense of loss in the second to the robustly rhythmic dance in the last movement, make Suite Chypre a richly varied piece. I’d love to hear the original version of Suite Chypre for cello and guitar, just out of curiosity, not because I assume it to be better than this elegant and idiomatic arrangement for guitar duo. Belevi’s Turkish Suite, one of the works written (rather than arranged) for guitar duo is also in three movements: ‘Danza’, ‘Song’ and ‘Hicaz’. It was written in 1999, while Belevi was living in Istanbul. ‘Danza’ has a certain stateliness in its rhythms – it would have been interesting to hear this material developed further. ‘Song’, written for a girlfriend, is appropriately romantic. Both of these movements are essentially ‘western’ in manner. ‘Hicaz’, on the other hand, is far more Turkish; its title is one of the popular makams (modes) of Turkish classical music, often used as a basis for improvisation. The attractive Turkish ‘flavour’ of this piece adds further justification to the title Belevi gives to this suite. The Three Fragments were, like the Turkish Suite, written for guitar duo and written in Istanbul. Calling them simply ‘three fragments’ perhaps make them seem more casual and unconnected than they actually are. They seem, in fact, to form another ‘suite’ in three movements – a suite with a pleasing symmetry. Fragments 1 and 3 have a certain playfulness and share some musical material, whereas Fragment 2 is more sober – at times, indeed, almost solemn. The result is a nicely balanced suite (the three ‘fragments’ are roughly equal in length) even if the composer doesn’t choose to give it that title.
This is the music of a Turkish Cypriot who has chosen not to let his art get caught up in (trapped by?) the nationalistic/political schism which has led to the partition of Cyprus in recent decades. He has chosen, rather, to give expression to both the Greek and Turkish dimensions of the island’s culture, to, as it were, the eternal Cyprus, the island on whose coast Aphrodite was born. This is music which breathes the air and light of the Mediterranean, (the classical guitar music of Spain is part of the background from which Belevi’s music emerges), rather as Lorca’s poetry and some paintings by Matisse do, or a glass of organic Tsangarides wine from Paphos does. The interplay of traditional idioms and a modern sensibility in Belevi’s music gives it a distinct tang which it owes to the combination of its insistent rhythms, its eloquent melodies and its passages of reflection. This album (which contains several recording premieres) should appeal to anyone who doesn’t insist on music written on a large scale, or on music that seeks to scale the heavens.
Glyn Pursglove
