Mísia to sing Chopin
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
We have already become accustomed to juxtaposing Chopin with jazz, but not with fado – or at least not yet. Now, an innovative project – Our Chopin Affair – is being prepared by the famous Portuguese singer Mísia.
She has been compared to the legendary singer of the fado, Amália Rodrigues. Flowing in her veins is Portuguese and Catalan blood, she lives in Paris, and sings in many languages. She took her original name from Misia Godebska, a Polish-French protectoress of artists, daughter of the painter Cyprian Godebski. Susana Maria Alfonso de Aguiar – the artist’s true name – was born in Portugal, and brought up in Spanish metropolises under the eye of her Catalan mother, a cabaret artist. Possibly the fact that she grew up far from the circles of fado orthodoxy left her open to a variety of music genres and led her to reach for pop and jazz covers. Now, inspired by the organisers of the Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival, she has taken to Fryderyk Chopin’s songs on the 200th anniversary of his birth.
Piotr Iwicki: Every visit you make to Poland stimulates plenty of positive emotions.
Mísia: let me refer to a sudden impression that often flashes in my mind’s eye: it has fallen so deeply into my heart. You would never guess, but it was sunflowers. A host of golden sunflowers on the stage during my first concert in Poland. I was also captivated by the spontaneity of the audience, with whom I managed to establish a very good rapport.
Where do you see the reasons for the constantly increasing popularity of fado in the world?
The music business, much like life, gallops along without pausing for breath, and people need to stop, take a moment’s reflection with the bliss of its pensive, vacant, ethereal, and romantic state of limbo, Fado provides that perfect antidote to our daily hustle and bustle.
Do you believe that the popularity of this music is connected to the great interest in world and ethno music?
No, not really, because fado is the music of the city: sounds coming from the bars, cafés; better and poorer districts.
Fado is said to need sadness, pain, and tears.
There are some who believe that this is not only a music genre but also a lifestyle. But it does not have to be sad. Fado is a depth, as it touches the most tender strains of human passions, and you cannot pass over such questions quickly, on the run, as they require focus and reflection.
In Warsaw, we will hear your special programme based on the music of Fryderyk Chopin – Our Chopin Affair.
These are not going to be Chopin’s works, but music composed by my Argentinean collaborator, the pianist Daniel Shvetz, on the themes taken from your great composer, and inspired by the climate of his works. I sense a similar feeling in his music, in a few compositions, to what is in fado: for example the Reverie (Dumka). it could have been an original composition in the Portuguese style. [Laughs.] I feel in his notes also loneliness, possibly yearning for the homeland.
Chopin à la fado, is it not?
Absolutely not. We will not play “pure” fado. There is no fado without the Portuguese guitar, and in the band I’m going to sing Chopin with, there will be none. Only the piano (Daniel Shvetz), electric guitar (Claudio Romano), violin (Luis Cunha) and audio art (Nives Widauer). We are trying to create a beautiful, atmospheric fusion: everything that can be translated from the musical Chopin into the language of fado without losing the bathos and emotional affectation.
When I talk about your Chopin project, I am often asked the question: how is she going to sing it in Polish?
If you listen to my records, you know that I’m not afraid to sing in other languages. Japanese, Turkish, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese. Why not Polish then? I know it is difficult, but I am not going to learn the grammar but to sing in that language. Some of the themes will be complemented with Portuguese and French poems.
Interview Piotr Iwicki
Sunday, 28th March, 8 p.m., Kongresowa Hall