Interview by Benjamin Zander with Kerry Candaele
Beethoven 9 filming
Kerry Candaele is a filmmaker who recently filmed Ben Zander in South Africa. The following is an interview with Kerry Candaele.
What is your project about?
I’ve been traveling across the globe, tracking the impact of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on individuals 184 years after the premiere in 1824. But to say the film I am doing is about the Ninth Symphony is to diminish the art in a way. Rather, I might well have said that I’m following the impact of one of the greatest gifts to human beings, period. As long as there are humans with ears to listen, Beethoven’s Ninth will be one of our greatest treasures.
But to be more specific, I’ve have been to China where the students at Tienanmen in 1989 broadcast the Ninth over makeshift loudspeakers as the troops came in to crush them. I have been to Chile where women sang the Himno a la alegria (a song based on the Ninth) in the streets throughout Chile, even singing the Ode To Joy over the walls of prisons where people were being tortured for resisting the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
I have followed the Ninth to Japan where hundreds of orchestras perform the Ninth (the Daiku as they call it) each December, often with choral ensembles of five or ten thousand people.
And now I have been to South Africa, a continent I had never had the opportunity to visit, where Maestro Ben Zander led the Cape Town in one of the most invigorating and exciting renderings of the Ninth I have ever heard. In fact, although I admit I am no musicologist and no expert on these matters, I think the Ninth in Capetown under the baton of Mr. Zander should demand a much wider audience. He conducted the most grand piece of music in the most grand kind of way, with tempi that can only be described as rightly Beethovian.
What is it about the Ninth that has led you to pursue this?
As I have intimated, my love of music comes not from the classical repertoire, but from more contemporary and popular forms of musical expression: namely, rock n roll. But the Ninth touched me deeply in a way that no other music has, and especially the third movement, which represents to me all that is beautiful, glorious, nuanced, serene and profound within western musical culture. And I woudn’t even want to limit the significance of this music to a specific geography. For as I have found in my travels, from China to Chile, from Japan to Great Britain, from South Africa to the United States, this music is universal in its appeal. The Ninth contains multitudes, and is no more the possession of the “West” than Buddhism is limited to the “East.” This kind of music breaks through all artificial barriers, and that is perhaps why it appeals to me most.
What was it about Ben that led you to ask him to participate? Well, when I saw Ben Zander speak on the subject of music and passion I thought just how right he is. Classical music, he pointed out, is not alien to us, but, really, part of our DNA, that we need only–to revise a phrase of Timothy Leary–Tune in, Turn on, and Drop in to an experience that can change our lives. Ben pointed out, and he and Roz Zander keep pointing out, that we can easily loose touch with the deepest parts of our beings. I’m sorry, this sounds too abstract. Rather, if we open up to the sounds of music, to its rhythms and melody, and simply follow the music, it will take us on a journey to places we have never been before. Ben asks us, I think, to make a bet on the best of classical music, to not fold our cards before they are even dealt. He asks us to stay at this sumptuous table that has been laid before us, prepared over hundreds of years. He guarantees that if we follow the music, the bet will pay off. And I think, from watching him, it’s easy to believe that he is exactly spot on. The bet he asks us to make will be paid several times over.
Did you have expectations for what it would be like to take part in a Ben Zander interpretation of the Ninth?
I had no expectations about a Ben Zander Ninth. I only knew that the effort would be full-throttle, that Ben would put his heart and soul into the performance. It’s all there in the speaking and relating to people. His heart and soul are in it, whether it’s a talk before schoolchildren or CEOs from the fortune 500. If those two things are in place, heart and soul, it’s hard to imagine a bad performance from Ben, be it the Ninth or anything else.
What did Ben create that was unique?
The unique aspect of Ben’s rendering of the Ninth is the tempi. I have heard the Ninth performed more times than I can count. Ben returns to what he and others maintain is the intended tempi of Beethoven when he put pen to paper over the years he was writing his final Symphony. It’s a stepped-up tempi, and when heard in person and performed well is daemonic. The term shouldn’t be taken to be pejorative if we understand that the daemon seduces or possess human beings in a most ecstatic fashion. The performances in Capetown were ecstatic, propulsive, the Ninth captured with the kind of power and empathy for Beethoven’s intentions that seem to fit his temprement.
You are a certain type of expert on this piece of music - did Ben’s interpretation teach you anything new? Are there any notable elements of your experience that you might like to tell?
The chorus for the two performances of the Ninth in Capetown were multi-racial, and quite a good group of singers it was. But the symbolism of that picture, of people of all backgrounds coming together to celebrate the Ninth’s universal call to connection across all borders, well, in South Africa, that was a sight to behold. I’ll never forget the experience. I hope to pass it on in the film.
Leave a Reply