50 strong, sparkling years into her professional career at the epicentre of the western classical music world in Vienna, you would never expect to find Marialena Fernandes playing her heart out by the roadside in Siolim. Nonetheless, that’s where this wonderfully elegant pianist chose to be on Wednesday evening earlier this week. Fighting hard against noise from incessant traffic, she – and others - brought beautiful music to this highly unlikely setting, under the gaze of what must surely be the only life-sized statue of Ludwig von Beethoven anywhere outside Europe.
There are so many singularities involved
here, that we must pause to understand them. This concert in Gaunsavaddo was
the first post-pandemic Noite de Beethoven, organized by the brave little
Friends of Beethoven collective which constituted itself in 2007. The location
is because of the idiosyncratic monument, which was unveiled in 1976, and bears
this dedication: “The statue of the great master has been presented to Lydia
Leopoldina Sousa Pinto, born in Rio de Janeiro South America and was unveiled
by Eugenia Ignatievna Sousa Pinto (nee Napolova).” The original Siolkar patron,
Manuel Sousa Pinto – who spent his own life mostly in Brazil – added this
quirky coda: “Like every Goan, Ludwig was born with a fiddle in his hand. Thank
God he is now here, quite at home in my beloved Goa.”
Beethoven in Siolim is not that strange if
you consider the cultural history of this part of Goa, now on the verge of
obliteration by the tsunami of concrete being forced upon Gaunsavaddo, and
pretty much every village across the length and breadth of India’s smallest
state. What is being lost – literally blasted apart – is no less than who we
are: an outward-looking people who have embraced the world for what is great in
it, whether Beethoven or the Beatles. Siolim is also the home of India’s pop
icon Remo, the one-of-a-kind trumpeter/novelist Reginald Fernandes (who wrote
hundreds of Konkani romanses while performing all over the country), and
the hugely famous Joaozinho Carvalho of the legendary Johnson & His Jolly
Boys.
There were very many traffic sounds intervening at Wednesday’s
concert, which is par for the course in the post-pandemic Bardez bedlam, as the
whole of North Goa is under relentless pressure from newly moneyed urbanites
fleeing the rest of India. And yet, onstage, there was an unmistakable flicker
of the old, familiar, gracious cosmopolitanism. New mother Kim Costa gave an
assured performance in German, and Sonia Shirsat – as usual - blew us all away
with truly gorgeous fados. Unfortunately, personal commitments compelled me to
miss half the programme, but I was lucky to be there when Marialena Fernandes
got up to talk about Austria and India and her way of bringing them together,
and belonging to both.
“I call her Mariavienna,” says ever-smiling artist Alexyz
Fernandes, the quietly formidable force behind the Friends of Beethoven. He
told me the pianist was his classmate at St. Xavier’s College in Bombay in the
late 1960s: “She was a prodigy. Her mother Hetty Fernandes was a popular music
teacher, and Marialena imbibed her passion for music in her mother’s womb. In
our college years, she was a pulsating live wire. Vibrant, vivacious, a
gorgeous gal bursting with energy in all the college culture clubs. Her forte
was obviously music, in which she was a shining star in her own right, in the
rich Xavier’s tradition and history that has launched many international
musicians. both in the western and eastern genre. There was simply no doubt
that she would one day achieve the iconic pedestal status with which she is now
acclaimed.”
With pride in the accomplishments of his dear friend of so many
decades, Alexyz recounted how “soon after her graduation Marialena won a
scholarship to Germany via a competition promoted by the Max Mueller Institute
in Bombay, for which she had played the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. From
Germany she moved to Vienna at the invitation of her music professor, where she
lives in the awesome ambience of music she was born to play.” While that was
happening – and so many other classmates also migrated abroad to seek better
opportunities – there were others who were moved by another kind of idealism.
This is the tight-knit band of Claude and Norma Alvares, and Alexyz himself,
who chose to commit to the grassroots, and left the big city for almost
unimaginably somnolent Goa in the early 1970s. Just look at what they have
accomplished for all of us in the intervening years – so much good, such
benefit to environment, culture and society.
In this regard, there may be no more unassuming powerhouse
anywhere than Alexyz. This gentle and supremely gentlemanly artist has produced
an historic body of work, while incalculably enriching his community in small
and very big ways that have never been properly recognized. Staying rooted to
his ancestral Siolim, he lit the spark to rejuvenate the traditional Sao Joao
boat parade – now one of the biggest attractions in Goa’s cultural calendar –
and also founded the outstanding Festival of Plants and Flowers that still runs
strong 28 years later. In any other respectable and respectful state in India,
he would long ago have been awarded at least the Padma Shri. But alas, that is
not us.
Marialena
Fernandes says that “Alex always had a capacity to listen, then to reflect in
silence, and in his own time apply his conceptual plan to action, either in the
form of drawing, writing or elsewhere. There are three great attributes to his
personality; he is unpretentious, genuine and authentic. Alex and Claude were
my friends and still are, though we meet only occasionally, but somehow that
doesn’t disturb our connection. Thanks to trust, even time plays a minor role,
we just continue with whatever and whenever. What binds us is the fact that we
feel accepted and respected by each other. Really, it is not even possible to
express through words, what this friendship means to me.”