Redjeb Jordania on the left and Vakhtang Jordania on the right
Redjeb Jordania Conversation Part 1
With Dana Paul Perna
DPP: You told me you studied with Carl Orff and Karl Amadeus Hartmann. I thought that was interesting. They're interesting figures, but to have known them, most people don't know anything about them. There's very little documentation on them, and one German documentary on Orff did not paint him in the best light. Hartmann is always described as being just crazy. Do you have any personal reflections on these men?
RJ: Hartmann, I took classes with him for one year, two semesters. And Orff, I took from at the Hochshule fur Musik, he was teaching composition — I was taking orchestration classes so I did not study much with Orff. He gave about 5 or 6 master classes which I did attend.
So, Hartmann I knew much better. I saw him twice a week. He had a particular hatred of Dvorak.
DPP: I don't get that phobia, but Dvorak? Did you ever ask him why?
RJ: Nope — but, upon reflection there was a program because of the American (radio) network in Germany at that time — that was 1957 or like that. Everyday, but everyday they played the 'New World' Symphony. Everyday, you know?
DPP: Just the “Going Home” part — the second movement, or the whole thing?
RJ: THE WHOLE THING! EVERYDAY!!! I think the reason — we have to show the Germans we are worthy enough. So I even came to not stand it, or any other Dvorak for that matter. I didn't want to hear him.
DPP: I think I would, too, let alone I have to teach that piece every semester. I may want to mention this story to my students. Normally, when people talk about that particular Dvorak work, they don't talk about the truth of the piece. He wrote the piece because it was a job!!!
RJ: It was a job!!!
DPP: He was teaching. The New York Philharmonic asked him for a work.
RJ: He took some American Negro spirituals, which they were called in them times -
DPP: and tunes of Native Americans —
RJ: he transformed those elements into something Slovak —
DPP: and that's actually what Maazel said last year (e.g. 2004) when he did it. They asked him why are your tempos fast? He said “Well, Dvorak was Slovak.” He wasn't American. He was a Slav visiting America, saying "“this is how a Czech would approach these tempos.”
I could see why it would have driven Hartmann mad.
RJ: Yeah. Apart from that Hartmann was pretty good in the theory, with diagrams and —
DPP: did he do Schenkerian analysis?
RJ: No, no, no, no, no, no........
DPP: Oh, he just did his own diagrams.
RJ: He did! His own diagrams. Did Schenkerian analysis exist already?
DPP: Oh?, I think so?
RJ: Schenkerian came a little later.
DPP: Oh. OK.
RJ: We didn't talk about, he had his own diagrams. They were very useful but the consensus with my schoolmates, after the fact, was, after all, we didn't learn all that much. Unfortunately, I must say, I missed a lot because he talked a lot but my German is very poor. When I got there, I spoke no German, so I learned it all on the spot - so I missed a lot.
DPP: Did he look at any of your works independently, like, did you bring him a score you were working on?
RJ: No, I didn't show him anything at that time. Even though I had, incidentally, a few pieces played by the Bavarian Radio Orchestra. One was a ballet, which was recorded, a "Serenade........."
DPP: Did he attend the concerts or hear them?
RJ: No, it was for a dance company. I did mention it to him, he said “Oh, very interesting.”
One more thing about Hartmann. I learned about this later, we didn't know it at the time, but he refused to do anything during the NAZI period. He quit his job. Nothing of his was being played during that time. It's only later that I heard that he was the person who stayed in Germany but refused to do anything.
DPP: Now I am sure that that would have affected him. When did you write your Concerto Classico for Percussion and Symphonic Winds in D major? Is it a fairly new piece....
RJ: No, the concerto was written — I have a stamp from the French Royalty Society concert from 1954. At the time, I was not quite satisfied with the concerto so, basically, I put it aside. I wrote some more on it but it was only when I dug it out of my draws in 1995,'96, something like that. Then I looked at it and think, ah, this looks like something promising. Might as well do some work on it.
Probably, the first part was written at a time it was orchestrated for something very impractical, so I decided to re-orchestrate it for something more practical — symphonic winds (e.g. just the winds and brass sections of the symphony orchestra; no strings, nor saxophones [as common in a Concert Band].) Should be a little simple, and —
DPP: and very much needed in the repertory; the scoring and the piece itself. Very good —
RJ: Then, my idea of it when starting it was inspired by the Prokofiev Classical Symphony. OK, he did something like that for orchestra, let's see what we can do for percussion which would not be esoteric for percussion at all, but something normally seen in the vein of Prokofiev. That's how it started.
So, what happened, basically, I rewrote the first part about 10%; the second part remained more or less the same; 3rd perhaps 30-40%; the last part was entirely rewritten. So, that came out in 2001, recorded.
Interesting thing about it, I submitted the piece to various percussionists to look at it just, you know, because I'm not a percussionist so — and some of them said “NO, this won't work” — but I said “N O , it will work.” It DID work. The one person who was useful was Evelyn Glennie —
DPP: she's so renowned, one of the few real recital percussion soloists on her instrument in the world. Yeah! Really?
RJ: I showed her only the first part at the time. She gave me many good suggestions which I incorporated.
DPP: Where did you get a chance to meet her?
RJ: I met her and sent it to her. She wrote back “you should do this, do that„ — in detail; things I didn't know. Very practical, so when the percussionist over there (Russia) did it — it was so wonderful. Unfortunately, you have one soloist - you have a question of distance, the instruments are big. You have a 14 timpani, you have to have time to go from one to the other. They were very pleased with, not only the music in general, but, also because what I figured out would work, did work - with some help.
There was only one percussionist in the Netherlands. This “no, no — won't work, this won't work, won't work; Oh, no, no, no....it's unplayable!”
I sent him the recording! It was played. I never heard from him after that.
But, you know, this business of having something played is complicated. I don't know how to do it.
DPP: It's a problem all over the place.
RJ: A few here said “I'll be happy to play it” but I don't know how to do it. Something will happen. Something always happens.
DPP: I remember being told, when I told this person that I wasn't really getting anything played, who said “No, no — don't rush. Your time will come.” And, to some extent, that came true. It just starts and it happens, man.
What other works have you written? The brass quintet you mentioned about but I hadn't started the tape yet.
RJ: Let's see. Brass Quintet. Serenade. Perkiomen Suite for piano which, one of these days want to orchestrate. Perkiomen is a little town in, it sounds Finnish, but not at all. It's a village in Pennsylvania, right next to; my first job in this country was, not in Perkiomen, but in a town right next to it called Collegeville. It's Eastern Pennsylvania. The title of the first part is Clash.
DPP: Is that the Amish country?
RJ: But not the Amish. All these culture are there.
DPP: Like the Quakers or some.....
RJ: Oh, well - there were several. I suppose there were the Schwenks, the Quakers of course, etc.
After Clash comes the second one The Tale of the Bell Tolls because the main theme is one note.
DPP: one note?
RJ: Also, I wanted something that I could play. Very easy.
DPP: OK.
RJ: Then the other one They Came by Night. They came at night with fife and drums then there were no more Indians in Perkiomen; that's 'cause they came to kill the Indians. Then the next generation came. Grandfather from Saxony, from the King of Prussia, Bostonians and to each part of the area.
Then I have one separate piano piece called Snow Flurries. Seven to eight minutes, that's all. I do have a recording of it except, at the last part, somehow a few measures disappeared, just before the coda would be extremely fast. Some occasional pieces. Songs and a set of piano pieces which I call Three Views of the I-Ching with titles like “Dragon in the Clouds”, “Lullaby for a Fearsome Queen”, they very Zen-type; “Joyous of Wind Arousing” &@8212; straight from the I-Ching.
DPP: In regard to some of the ballet work you orchestrated, did you retain any of those materials or did it just kinda get away?
RJ: It kinda went. Perhaps there is still and archive that housed some of it for the ballet companies but I don't know what the materials are.
DPP: For example the piece you had performed by the Bavarian Radio Orchestra?
RJ: It was played on the Bavarian Radio but the ballet company was small.
DPP: When you were you born?
RJ: I was born in 1921 in Paris. My father was the former President of Georgia and was exiled in France. Vakhtang and I are about twenty years apart.
DPP: Well God bless you. You don't act like a man who's 84.
RJ: It was very funny, Vakhtang we have a lot in common. His mother was Russian, my mother was Russian.
TheVakhtang about whom Redjeb was speaking was his cousin, the great Georgian-born conductor Vakhtang Jordania who passed away about six weeks after our conversation.
Here is a profile about him:
Born in the Republic of Georgia on 9 December 1943, Vakhtang Jordania began piano studies at five, studied at the Tbilisi Conservatory and studied symphonic and opera conducting at the Leningrad Conservatory. He won the 1971 Herbert von Karajan Competition, and held appointments with the Leningrad Radio Orchestra, the Saratov Philharmonic and the Kharkov Philharmonic, touring the former USSR and working with David and Igor Oistrakh, Leonid Kogan, Dmitri Shostakovich, Kiril Kondrashin and Emil Gilels.
In 1983 he defected to the USA with his girlfriend at the time, the violinist Viktoria Mullova. He worked as music director of the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera (1985-92) and the Spokane Symphony (1991-3), then freelanced, returning to post-communist Russia. He made several recordings that appear on the labels Angelok 1, XLNT, and Koch International labels.
In 2001 he was honoured with a conducting competition bearing his name, first held in Kharkov, Ukraine; currently being held annually in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Vakhtang Jordania died on Tuesday 4 October 2005 at his home in Broadway, Virginia, USA, aged 62, following a long battle with cancer
DPP: Really, I thought you were Georgian Georgians.
RJ: His mother was a musician. There was a certain resemblance which is really funny because we maybe relatives, but very distantly. We, maybe, eight degrees of separation or something because, the story goes, we all Jordania originate from Italy. At the time, 17th century, they were city states. Three brothers for Genoa arrived at the Court of Georgia. One brother went back to Italy; two of them stayed. One brother went to one province so the dependance from that area are from that guy. One stayed and fell in love with a woman at the Court and was allowed to marry. He was granted a domain with slaves and all the descendants who come from that region are from that guy.
I know about six generations back to 1750 or so. So we decided we are from one of those guys.
DPP: When were you last in Georgia?
RJ: Last year.
DPP: But that wasn't your first time there?
RJ: No, I have been there 10...12...15 times. Something like that.
DPP: When was the first time you went there? Was it just after the fall or.....?
RJ: 1990. Not quite after the fall. I was in Moscow, first.
When I was there you still felt a Soviet presence where people were a bit scared. I could not get a room in Moscow because, when I got a visa, the visa was only for Georgia. You had to specify Moscow before you got there to get a room. As soon as I arrived in Georgia, the feel was so very much different — more open. There was a KGB, but people were more relaxed.
DPP: Has it changed a lot since then?
RJ: In many ways, a change for the worse. For the people it is much harder to live. On the other hand, it became its own Country. When we first arrived, there were no restaurants to speak of, or cafés — you had to eat in your own apartment. But I enjoy it.
You know, now that I'm thinking about it, I had old pieces at some point. I had a set of Georgian Dances played once then a few times —
DPP: but you still have all the music —
RJ: by the way, I trust your opinion. I think it might be very useful to have these for Band instead of orchestra.
DPP: Which one, the Georgian Dances?
RJ: They're very lively; very simple. Bands are very popular, I hear. Not in Europe.
DPP: Well, they're growing in Europe. You'll have a college program at, like, the Royal Northern Academy of Music in Manchester, England and, in London — and they'll have really high level wind ensembles. Wind ensemble meaning that they'll be able to play anything from a Sousa march, which is your standard Band configuration, to a piece like yours, where you don't have any saxophone parts. They'll have other pieces for the saxes to do — that varies the program. Weill's Violin Concerto is scored for violin and orchestral winds. It may not get much play on symphony orchestra concerts, but may on wind ensemble concerts — apart from its rental costs. (That's more the problem with that piece than the piece.) The instrument known as a band has been growing, I would say, remarkably over t he last 20 years — a lot in Scandinavia.
If you think your piece will work, I think it's a good idea, well, then do it. It can be your summer project.
RJ: Hey, listen, I feel as if the summer's just begun. I don't know why, so, why not.
For those readers interested in listening to the concerto alluded to in this interview, the full title of which is Concerto Classico for Percussion and Symphonic Winds in D major, that recording is currently available on the Angelok 1 label # CD-7770 (CDU# 7115062) on a recording entitled The Georgian Composers Collection as performed by Alexei Amosov (Percussion soloist), the wind and brass sections of the Russian Federal Orchestra, Vakhtang Jordania, conducting.
Dana Paul Perna's Conversation with Redjeb Jordania Part 2
