Katona Twins - hungarian way to go
Listening to those gyus is real pleasure. The curse of guitar is lack of relaxation. One can put the hands to piano and let them rest there freely, feel the gravitation and let It to drive the music. But on guitar there is always some extent of itchyness present. Those fast fingers of guitar-players are'nt usually making convincing music. Allthough one can use left hand's gravity to help It's fingers to pull the strings down. Picking hand (the right one for fight-handers) is trying to lay on strings, but It can't use the full gravity of hand, never. Katona Twins have managed to find the relaxivity and using the power of gravitation on guitar.
I wasn't able to visit the Katona Twins concert, but was participating in local academy gathering, where they speaked about their views to guitar and life. Being in their level means obviously lot of hard and real work with instrument. There is obviously not much time left for philosophy and thinking about It. I'm not sure whether It's for good to think about and construct the theorys about everything instead of doing the thing itself. It's a kind of cheap conceptualism, in which the thinkers can be easily accused.
The twins have quit a same look and therefore I can't say about whether Zoltán or Peter spoke. There was amount of certain amount chitchat about average new composition price in England ect.
What I remember as important thing is, that Twins told about impossibility of exhaustive explaining the sound making method on guitar. It's obviously more question about feel rather the angel of fingers or nails.
Katona twins encouraged guitarists to find new contacts and to be active by himself. Not waiting for occasional offerings. Musician must send His CDs to everywhere and knock to every door he see in his way.
I sent my personal letter to them, to which the twins replied kindly
Q:
> 1. How is "twins" in hungarian? Have you tried to use
> your hungarian nature and benefit from being stranger
> to western world?
A:
1 Twins means "ikrek" in Hungarian.
Comment: Hungarian original would be "Katona ikrek" or "ikrek Katona". Maybe its too exotic, indeed. I'm not sure whether introduce myself as "Allar Õunapuu" or "Allar". The first one has It's exotic charm. For europeans, as far as I have got It, the exotic issues are very welcome.
Q:
> 2. How do the twins manage to play in syncro even
> after long pauses marked with fermata? Are the
> longered pauses precisely preconstructed or is there
> some inner telepathy between you two?
A:
2 After a fermata there has to be one person, who shows when to start
again.
Comment: The witness of the concert told me, that Twins can communicate in very discrete way.
Q:
> 3. And from the second question there arises the
> third: How much are your concerts improvisional? I
> don't mean using different notes like in jazz, but
> using slightly different tempos, different breathing
> pauses and accents. How strongly is the music
> preconstructed and do you leave some aspects free to
> play with in concrete circumstances (I do believe,
> that music made in rainy days differs from music made
> in sunny ones)?
A:
3. To play well in an ensemble you have to agree on the interpretation, but it does not mean that we always play the same way.
Q:
> 4. Are you using recording as rehearsal vehicle? Do
> you see recording yourself often as positive or
> negative thing?
4 Recording yourself is a very good idea as you hear things more objectively from outside.
Comment: Katone Twins had busy time, concert in every day. There is no arguing about over-recording or formal approach to music connected to recording (one may just to play clean and forgets about music while recording), I have gone even to theory, that one should not learn the music-theory nor notation too early. Those thoretical vehicles are alienating musician from music's real nature.
For my pleasure Katona Twins declared, that they play by hart. This is obviously prequisite for nice music made by hart.
With best wishes to ikrek-twins,
Allar 19.11.2005, Tallinn
