Who came up with the idea to combine classical music and comedy? We don’t usually associate professional musicians with frivolity…
BC: We’ve been playing classical music all our lives and I guess we’ve grown bored with being serious.
WM: Not bored with classical music itself, of course, because music isn’t boring, but we were tired of our situations, with full-time jobs as conductors and so on…
JK: I can answer this question because I come from a different background. Entertainment has been my life. Since my university days I have worked for hours, for years in light entertainment TV. Of course, I’ve been to see philharmonic performances a couple of times, but sleeping there is very uncomfortable. (laughter). I lost my faith in opera when a 160-kilo 50-year-old lady walked on stage and sang: “I am young, I am 16…”. I found this a little bit hard to believe. Then I met these guys with their excellent sense of humor and outstanding musical ability. They were laid back and truly willing to break down the barriers between ordinary people and classical music. I decided to talk them into setting up a partnership, but truth be told they didn’t need much encouragement. My experience in advertising came in handy. Our market research uncovered how often classical music is played in the background of adverts because audiences seem to have it encoded in their genes. They don’t know where they know it from, they have no idea if it is Beethoven or Grieg, they have it in their in genes, transferred from one generation onto the other. I shared this thought first with Waldek then with Benek and – bingo! They thought exactly the same and we agreed to smash down this wall. I’ll let them say how they did the smashing…
WM: Bernard with his head.
BC: And Waldek with his belly.
WM: And seriously… when it comes to me – I always wanted to do this. I wandered around in classical music for some time, I recorded over 40 albums, I played with chamber orchestras in Poland. Loads of stuff. I played music from baroque to contemporary. And constantly I felt there was a glass wall between me and audience. I felt that they didn’t know much about my real abilities and I couldn’t show them everything while playing a Beethoven concert. I am not saying you have to make comedy from music, but I wanted to try something new.
BC: I, by contrast, worked for 25 years as a musician and instrumentalist in the National Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and professionally I accomplished more or less everything I could. And I still had 20 years left until retirement. I was a bit terrified at the prospect and that’s why I dived into this project, so that I could still have new and interesting experiences.
How does the creative process work in the Philharmonic of Wit? Do you have brainstorming sessions or do you usually work separately?
WM: Good question. I guess we start together, then think about it on our own, then get back together again and then go separately again. Or one of us is driving his car and suddenly has to make a phone call because he is in his creative zone. Or one of us wakes up one of the others at 3am to say he has come up with a brilliant idea – and the other one tells him that his idea is still rubbish.
JK: It always begins with people. We start with casting. Once we have the people we want we are aware of their capabilities and characters. When you get to know the artist, for example with Anita and Marcin, you think of their talent and then you work with that, creating the most crazy scenarios, counterpoints. If it wasn’t for Anita and Marta, there wouldn’t be a bit called Titanic that is based on a role switch. Here one talent is chasing the other. Every idea starts in your head, but the people around us help to shape it. This is how it is. Seriously, we meet from time to time in a mansion in Radziejowice. We meet three times a year and we give each other homework. We share ideas, jokes, musical stories, and this is how we spend next three days. Afterwards, we meet for another session, for another three days at a time.
WM: We have a huge room with a piano. We rehearse, we pound, and we try new things. We play, then we go our separate ways and each of us starts working individually.
JK: Benek is in charge of musical arrangements; I struggle with the comedy, working it over and over. Then Waldek throws everything away, adds one terrible word or a genius one or he thinks of a brilliant twist of action. So, to sum it up – first the idea in our heads, then the people. From them we get the inspiration. When you meet someone like Anita who has a fantastic voice, sings perfectly, is flexible, smart, brilliant, it would be a waste not to use it all. When you have such musicians it is almost impossible not to take advantage of their talents. You have to build counterpoints when, for example, you see a row of beautiful female violinists and a bald male one. It is crying out for a gag! Of course, it might not occur to anyone else, but it would to us.
WM: A normal human being wouldn’t think of it. You have to be twisted.
This is how it is. Everyone’s attention is focused mainly on girls.
WM: Some people don’t get it when we poke fun at sexism. One of the critics didn’t get that we are genuinely mocking sexism, because, quite simply, we are not sexist.
JK: We present the skills and talents of each of our girls. They all are laid back and they laugh at those quasi-sexist jokes along with us. But you asked about the creative process: in essence we flesh out a sketch and keep working on it until it is ready, close to perfection. From beginning to end, it takes about a year or two.
Who has the final say?
JK: The audience. Generally, the decision about our repertoire is up to me. My colleagues sometimes agree with me, sometimes they don’t. Then we test it out on the audience. And we have our target audience. It is middle and higher class, knowledgeable – and the youth too. We trust our audience, even if we get punched in the face when something is not working – we feel it immediately and we seek solutions. We have made hundreds of mistakes.
Like for example?
JK: In order to keep my mind open, I purge my memory of everything that has gone wrong.
WM: Nevertheless, it is there, in the notes. When we die someone will have a lot of fun.
JK: Loads of things don’t work out; loads of things that seem very implausible suddenly explode and blossom. We were a bit apprehensive of things such as combining opera with hardcore, violent rap. But Marta’s performance went off fantastically well, and other things succeeded spectacularly, too. We tried a sketch based on the musical film Cabaret – making it harsh, right-wing, fascist. It was a mistake; it didn’t work – only a very limited section of our audience would understand where we were coming from. Sometimes we wander outside of our comfort zone. There are plenty of examples of sketches that we just throw away. We throw them away or we cut them, rewrite them. Waldemar changes the text, searching for the words that gain most reaction, and when everything else is more or less figured out, we start rehearsing with sound and light. Lighting plays an important dramatic role here. Good lighting is crucial to the show. The whole process takes usually a year or two.
WM: And then everything ends up in the trash.
JK: We came to Edinburgh with a fully fledged show that hasn’t changed much musically, although it has grown shorter. We altered the commentary, cutting bits here and adding bits there.
WM: The Edinburgh show was more or less one fifth of our repertoire. In Poland our concert usually lasts two and a half hours.
Where do you find all these fantastic musicians, those people you seem to enjoy working with so much?
WM: There was a casting and over 300 people came. Then we chose a smaller group that we wanted to audition for us and picked the musicians we liked the most. About 40 people went through auditions, several from them stayed.
JK: Nine young people, half of the ensemble. We wanted to hire some fresh, young blood and I can say, with a clear conscious, that they are the best of the best in Poland.
This is The Philharmonic of Wit’s first time at the Fringe Festival. How does it feel to perform in front of the Edinburgh audience?
WM: It’s not only our first time at the Fringe, it’s our first time abroad! And we are starting at such a bizarre festival. The Fringe is the weirdest festival I’ve ever been to. Mainly, because of its size – it is a little bit over the top. The programme is overwhelming and there are way too many shows to see them all. Today I met someone who had gone to six performances in a row!
JK: It is great that the Fringe exists, but… I have done over a dozen art festivals, of course not as big as the Fringe, but I can honestly say that this festival could use some selection. Something that would make the Fringe stand out. Because there are so many to choose from, so many good shows, bad shows and even horrible shows, people feel confused by it. I personally feel confused. How we are supposed to react? We are trying to stand out as a show. Normally, a couple of thousand people come to our concerts and we knew that was not going to happen in Edinburgh. But with each performance we reach out to 100, maybe 150 people. I find it amazing that we can attract a foreign audience who don’t know a thing about us. No one knows us here! When came here; we were a complete enigma, a blank page.
Did you count on the interest of Polish or foreign viewers?
WM: We would like to conquer the world in a field where no other Polish act has ever succeeded – apart from Wioletta Villas who performed in Las Vegas in the 60s.
JK: We want to take over the world. We hope that the Polish diaspora around the world will be proud of us and want to watch us perform. We don’t want to play the victim card, or attempt to cash in on the uprising, we don’t want to be crucified. We want to entertain the whole world. We would like Poles, who are sometimes depressed and tired, to be proud of us, to brag about us and invite people to our shows, like they do here with their Scottish, British, American or French friends.
WM: That is why we perform in English and other languages. We are happy to see so many Poles at our shows, but we want to gather an international crowd.
Is there a difference between Polish and foreign audiences’ reaction to your shows?
Everyone: No! There’s not!
What about the Polish sense of humour? Does it sometimes get lost in translation?
JK: No, the reaction is the same. People react in exactly in the same places, the same things cause outbursts of enthusiasm. People laugh at the same things.
Pangea: Does it mean that we have a global sense of humour. Or have you discovered a recipe for a universal type of joke?
JK: We can’t rule that out.
WM: A month ago we made a presentation to a big group of Chinese professionals, festival organizers, which finished with a standing ovation. And we had been warned that it might end up with a complete silence.
JK: Waldek, maybe we really have discovered something. Some kind of international code.
Music and humour is a perfect combination, isn’t it?
JK: When I wrote a joke about Benek going to Amsterdam to ski, exactly… you are laughing. Putting together Benek and the obvious symbolism of Amsterdam, and adding skiing there… I hadn’t thought of it as an international joke, but it appears to be one.
Have your Fringe shows confirmed that you want to keep on trying to perform in front of a foreign audience?
JK: Not only try, but actually do it!
WM: We will be controversial, I am certain of that. But the controversy will help us to move ahead. Because if we aren’t extra-ordinary, it means that anyone else can do the same. What would be the problem with starting an orchestra in Scotland or England to play nice tunes? There wouldn’t be a problem. What marks us out is our ability to find an element of surprise, come up with jokes, to tease with word games… In my opinion, the Fringe festival audience is harder to please than others. More demanding. Here, people choose to come to see specific shows, there are no random viewers. The competition is really tough.
JK: At first, we were a bit depressed because there were a couple of different shows taking place alongside us in the EICC building. One day, we sat down and started watching people coming in and at the risk of sounding absurd – we thought we suddenly had our largest audience ever.
WM: Today I met a man who was really surprised by our show – that there is no bullshit; everything is thought through to the tiniest detail. We have a real live orchestra, real instruments and each of them is well-presented. We deliver a real product, no cut-backs.
What are your musical plans for the immediate future?
JK: We hope to gain more and more fans; in the meantime we are working on TV shows for autumn and winter. We want to come back to Poland and wait as our foreign careers develop. We would like to go on a UK tour next year, that’s why we are collecting reviews and opinions here. Maybe we will be able to visit other countries as well. For certain, we will perform in China. We trust that thanks to the Fringe we are becoming more recognizable because we are no longer defined only by our nationality. We have gained valuable exposure here.
Going back to the topic of your controversial character. Where do you draw a line in order not to become kitschy, caricatured – simply not to take it too far?
JK: The question is what do you find kitschy?
WM: Kitsch is almost the same thing as art. The difference lies in material that you are using. Something made of wood can be art, the same thing made of plastic – kitsch.
JK: For me kitschy are one-dimensional banal things. When something doesn’t have a solid foundation it is kitsch.
So your method to avoid tackiness is encouraging your audience to think and expect a double meaning? One of the critics wrote: “music snobs, beware, avoid this show!”
WM: Yes, but “snobs” sums it up! Another critic, perhaps a music snob, got offended by couple of things because he found us immoral! We don’t follow a set of rules that would limit us to one certain approach to the music of Puccini. We believe that Puccini’s work will protect itself, we won’t harm it. If one truly loves his music, then one will only smile, but won’t be offended or threatened because he or she has already a mature taste. We welcome with open arms people with refined taste, but we would prefer to avoid music snobs.
JK: And we like to think we broaden people’s horizons. Some people who come to our shows do not listen regularly to classical music but they leave having fallen in love with our particular type of sound, which is different from what surrounds them constantly – on the radio, on TV, wherever they go. They discover that there is another world. We simply want to reach in to their souls and make them happy. We want it to be fun. We want it to be cool. To be life-affirming.
Photo © Pangea Magazine
