Concert for Afghanistan

When violinist Enrico Alvares decided to put on a concert to help Afghan refugees, the ISM was quick to offer support. Clare Stevens finds out what was involved

Above: Clare Stevens Photo: Bruce Childs

Left (from top): Enrico Alvares Photo: Simon John Owen Alina Ibragimova Photo: Eva Vermandel Nicholas Daniel Photo: Eric Richmond David Murphy Photo: Edward White Nobody can fail to be moved by the harrowing news reports that have come out of Afghanistan since the Taliban took control of the country last summer. But while most of us feel powerless to help the suffering Afghan people other than perhaps by dropping coins in a collecting tin or donating to an online appeal, a few individuals have resolved to take action that will make more of an impact on the situation.

Among them are violinists Enrico Alvares and his wife Stephanie Waite, organisers of the Concert for Afghanistan that took place in October 2021 at St James’s Church, Piccadilly in central London.

‘My wife saw the heart-rending images of people clinging to the undercarriages of the last planes taking off from Kabul Airport in August when the Afghan capital was evacuated, and her immediate instinct was to want to help these poor people,’ explains Alvares, ‘so we decided to put on a fundraising performance.’

This is the third charity concert Alvares has organised in 20-odd years. The first was in 1999 for victims of the conflict in the former Republic of Yugoslavia. ‘I was a member of the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields at the time and we had spent two fabulous weeks playing Mozart piano concertos with Murray Perahia, completely focused as usual on what we were doing,’ he recalls. ‘I was totally unaware of what was going on in Kosovo until I picked up someone’s discarded newspaper on a Metropolitan Line train at Finchley and read all about the war and the humanitarian crisis.’

The contrast between the exhilaration Alvares had felt in his work with the orchestra and the horror of the situation in Kosovo filled him with guilt and a passionate desire to do something to help. He had never put on a concert from scratch before, but it turned out that he had a talent for it. The concert sold out and in 2015 Alvares organised a similar event to help victims of the Nepal Earthquake. For the two previous events he worked with the Disasters Emergency Committee; the Concert for Afghanistan was a collaboration with the International Rescue Committee, which has been working in the country since 1988.

‘My wife had never done anything like this before, so I had to ask her before we embarked upon it whether she was prepared for the amount of work that is involved. In many ways it is simple – you start by deciding which soloists you want and establishing some dates when they are free, then choosing and booking the venue, then you “reverse engineer” everything from that; but it is very, very hard work.

‘But it is work that musicians are good at; we often don’t realise how many transferable skills we build up through our years of training and performing. For the Afghanistan concert we had nine weeks to prepare, which felt like luxury compared to the Nepal concert, which we put on in just three weeks.’

The pair’s first call was to oboist Nicholas Daniel, a close friend since he and Alvares attended the Purcell School together. ‘I’ve been so lucky that he has always been my oboist of choice, because he is such a fantastic player, there is just nobody like him, and he has such a big heart; he was involved in both the previous concerts, and he gives so much of himself to the project. I knew we had to include the Marcello Oboe Concerto in D minor, because Nick plays it like nobody else, especially that beautiful slow movement.

‘Then we invited the violinist Alina Ibragimova, whom I’ve known for a long time because my first wife was an accompanist at the Menuhin School, where she studied; I would have liked to have included another Menuhin School alumna, Nicola Benedetti, as well, so that they could have played the Bach double violin concerto together, but Nicky had too many other commitments at the time, so instead we asked Alina and Nick to play the Bach concerto for violin and oboe in C minor, BWV 1060, and of course it was exquisite.’

The other musical linchpins were composer Debbie Wiseman, who arranged an orchestral version of her anthem To Help specially for the concert; flautist Wissam Boustany, who played Mozart’s concerto in G major K313; and conductor David Murphy, who chose Mozart’s exuberant 40th symphony to conclude the evening. The orchestra comprised principal players from the major London-based ensembles – everyone,

From left: Concert for Afghanistan poster Debbie Wiseman Photo: Michael Leckie Wissam Boustany Photo: Sophie Carr of course, giving their services free of charge. The programme was chosen with this in mind, explains Alvares, observing that the repertoire has to be fairly familiar so that it needs little rehearsal. ‘Another guiding principle for events like this is that it should be beautiful music that will appeal to a varied audience; it is by touching their hearts through performances that they enjoy and respond to emotionally that you unlock their wallets.’

St James’s, Piccadilly, was a perfect venue as the church not only has a strong musical tradition but has for decades been a centre for mission to refugees and asylum-seekers, the homeless and those who feel excluded from society, for whatever reason. As well as offering practical help and hospitality, it is a centre for discussion and debate and has hosted two thought-provoking installations by war artist Arabella Dorman, highlighting the plight of refugees from Afghanistan and Syria and the parallels between their contemporary tragedies and the Christmas story of a displaced family, the infant Jesus and his parents. With Flight in 2015 Dorman suspended an inflatable boat and sand-spattered lifejackets retrieved from the beaches of the Greek island of Lesbos above the nave; two years later a similar display, Suspended, was made of numerous items of clothing, discarded by migrants when they were given dry garments.

The church funds its outreach work helping people in crisis by charging external clients to use its facilities, so the venue hire fee, with a substantial charity discount, was one of the few costs of the Concert for Afghanistan. This was underwritten by the ISM. ‘I emailed Deborah Annetts early one morning, asking for her assistance,’ says Alvares, ‘and almost immediately I received a reply saying that ISM would be happy to sponsor the hire of St James’s. I really want to pay tribute to Deborah and thank the ISM for that, because it made such a difference to the concert being able to go ahead. In all, because of people’s generosity, we managed to put on this major event for just £2,000.

‘The other person to whom I want to pay particular tribute is a young woman, Alicia Bradshaw, without whom the concert quite simply wouldn’t have happened,’ he adds. ‘She was just staggering, a real powerhouse; she worked so, so hard on all the details, organising the drinks, the food, the publication of our beautiful programme book and so much more, coordinating all the resources provided by our sponsors.’

A masterstroke was enlisting the broadcaster John Suchet as presenter; best known now as host of a show on Classic FM and author of several books on music including a biography of Beethoven, he also has personal experience of the situation in Afghanistan from his years as a war correspondent for television news. This enabled him to bridge the gap between the glamorous musical performance in the West End of London and the desperate situation of the people of Afghanistan very skilfully, with the assistance of guest contributors such as Mirwaiss Sidiqi, founder of the Afghanistan Music Research Centre; Dr Ahmad Sarmast, founder and director of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM); and Dr Katherine Schofield, senior lecturer in South Asian Music and History at King’s College, London, who is lead coordinator of the Campaign to Protect Afghanistan’s Musicians.

Since the concert took place, there have been an increasing number of news reports about the complete collapse of Afghanistan’s economy and the humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding in the country, with predictions of famine and starvation for millions of people. Obviously the relief work by the International Rescue Committee will prioritise that terrible situation. But as the story of the Taliban’s takeover emerged last summer, musicians will have been forcibly struck by the images of instruments being smashed in schools and other institutions, and by the fate of performers, teachers and members of ensembles such as the National Symphony Orchestra, the Afghan Youth Orchestra, and Zohra, the Afghan Women’s Orchestra, which had become a powerful symbol of emancipation.

Asked by Suchet what it is about music that particularly upsets the Taliban, Schofield succinctly explained: ‘It’s basically about control. All of us know and understand the influence of music on our emotions, and especially live music, so in their view the risk is that music might distract from God or from one’s worldly duties … it doesn’t matter whether it is Western music or Afghan music, performed by men or by women; they view all music as morally corrupting

and musicians as morally degenerate and the way to control that is to silence them.’

The effect of the pandemic has provided us with a tiny glimpse of what a world without music might feel like; for many of the audience the Concert for Afghanistan was the first live performance they had attended for many months, which increased its impact.

Nicholas Daniel says the players too were very aware of this. ‘We are going through the extreme of getting back on stage, refinding our nerve and our performance muscles, and audiences are experiencing the visceral emotion of live vibrating sound again, with a new appreciation of what it means. I’m quite sure that without the pandemic this concert would have had a very different feel.

‘It would always have had the same motivation, however,’ he adds. ‘When such a drastic situation is all over the world headlines and is so deeply upsetting and affecting, especially for women and girls, and we all feel so utterly frustrated and distressed, it’s so hard to imagine how just playing can help – but it does. Being part of the Concert for Afghanistan, and a performance with the Britten Sinfonia in the same week when we played music linked to the Amazon, surrounded by photos by the great Sebastião Salgado, reminded me vividly of the power of simply performing music, and its ability to help those in need or distress.

‘The whole format of this concert, the presentations that informed the event and added hugely to the gravitas, its global reach via the internet, the amazing amount of money we raised, and the act of everyone on stage and behind it giving their time, craft, attention and love made it deeply satisfying for those of us who took part.’

On the night the Concert for Afghanistan raised £33,000, and the appeal is still open via the link below. A glimmer of light is that Dr Ahmad Sarmast is planning to build a new music school in Portugal, on the model of ANIM; and Enrico Alvares is keen both to help anyone who wants to put on a similar fundraising concert and to find new ways of supporting the IRC Afghanistan Appeal. Contact him via his website or look out for announcements about how you can get involved.

enricoalvares.com

The International Rescue Committee is providing food, cash and other aid in Afghanistan itself and helping to resettle Afghans who have arrived in countries such as the US, Mexico and Uganda. Find out more about their work here: rescue-uk.org/country/afghanistan

The Concert for Afghanistan can be found on the International Rescue Committee UK’s YouTube Channel: youtube.com/watch?v=Fm9QjeJprJ4/

Donations to the appeal are encouraged and can be made here: help.rescue-uk.org/ concert-for-afghanistan

Above (from left): St James, Piccadilly Photo: Amanda Slater The Suspended installation at St James’s Piccadilly Photo: Arabella Dorman A refugee family in Afghanistan Photo: Arabella Dorman

The ISM’s response to the Afghanistan situation The world has watched on in horror as the Taliban takes control of Afghanistan once more. Many immediately feared that the Taliban would ban music, as they did in 1996. Sadly, those fears came true shortly after the Taliban seized power in the country. The ISM wrote to the UK’s foreign secretary to ask the government to ensure safe passage for musicians under threat in the country following the tragic news that popular folk singer, Fawad Andarabi had been killed. We also joined other campaigning efforts and supported industry wide letters asking for support. We were then invited to support the ‘Concert for Afghanistan’, with proceeds going to the International Rescue Committee, and we took the opportunity as it shows the music community at its generous, caring best. The concert’s proceeds will make a real difference to civilians in the country.