Weird Things Found on Google Earth: Shipbreaking in Bangladesh

I love Google Earth. I can spend unlimited amounts of time just exploring odd regions of the earth I've never visited or familiar places from unfamiliar perspectives. The aerial imagery makes me feel like a spy investigating the machinations of some foreign power.

Inspired by this article in the Spiegel today (there is a far less informative English version with a different set of photos here), I decided to take a peek at Bangladesh today and, as expected, found this:



What you see above is probably one of the least known facets of globalization. The screen capture above shows a stretch of beach along the northwest side of Chittagong which, apparently, for the past 35 years, at least, has been the world's primary site for the dismantling of large oceangoing vessels, including oil tankers. You can see various beached large cargo vessels in different states of dismantling. Some are still largely intact, while of others only one segment of the hull is left if anything is even recognizable at all. Most are bulk carriers and container ships. The long ship just below the estuary of the little stream in the middle is an oil tanker. Along the beach to the right, parts and pieces of scrap metal are cut down and sorted for reuse.

Here is a closeup of one segment of the above showing some freighters reduced to mere skeletons:



Due to the global economic downturn and the resulting drastic reduction in cargo shipping traffic has brought an unexpected boom in business to places like Chittagong. Apparently, the overwhelming majority of the world's decommissioned large vessels is dismantled in one of three places: Chittagong, Alang in India, and Ganida in Pakistan. Google Earth shows similar scenes in the latter two, but since their imagery for these places is nearly five years old, their beaches are not nearly as crowded with vessels deemed redundant after the market collapse as in Chittagong, for which Google furnishes images as recent as last November.

The occasion for the above article is a meager attempt last week by the International Marine Organization to ratify a treaty that would regulate the ship-wrecking industry. Even if its provisions were put in place quickly (which will not be the case), the treaty has hardly any bite. While dismantling large ships is a major source of steel for countries like Bangladesh, which is poor in ore and coal, and while the industry generates directly or indirectly more than 125,000 jobs in Chittagong alone, the practice of "beaching" large ships for onsite dismantling in poor countries with little or no regulation - much less enforcement - is an environmental and occupational catastrophe. Hardly any of the aspects that make it a catastrophe are addressed by the treaty.

Asbestos, arsenic, PCBs, mercury, lead, dioxins, and an assortment of other hazardous materials are leaked and washed into the sea during the dismantling, or even burned off. Workers labor without even a modicum of what would be considered adequate workplace safety precautions in OECD countries, no hardhats or anything, and are usually blissfully unaware of the toxicity of the materials with which they come in contact. Wikipedia notes that "an average of one worker a day dies from falls and other accidents while others are expected to succumb to future cancers." This for an average salary of three Euros a day.

There are some images of weirdly staggering post-apocalyptic beauty in the above-linked article, under this link here, and here. Apparently, there is also an award-winning documentary about "shipbreaking" in Alang. Syeda Rizwana Hassan, a lawyer in Bangladesh, was awarded one of this year's Goldman Environmental Prizes for her legal activism against this horrendously dangerous operation (watch the video at the site, too).

Musical Backlog

I know, I know. I've been a bad blogger. No updates in ages and in the meanwhile I keep going to concerts without telling my faithful readers (how many are there? like, five?) about what I've seen and heard. So, herewith a few abridged notes on my last few months of concertgoing, in reverse chronological order.

May 7, April 21 & 28; Shostakovich, Brahms and Bruckner with Haitink

Bernard Haitink closed his Spring '09 residency with a hodgepodge program featuring Steven Stucky's arrangement of Purcell's Funeral Music for Queen Mary, Britten's early orchestral song cycle Les Illuminations and Shostakovich's 15th symphony. Ian Bostridge, who could pass for a tall person in Holland, delivered a masterful account of Britten's Les Illuminations. What a voice! The Shostakovich once again confirmed the special artistic relationship between the CSO and the Dutch maestro. Sadly, a significant number of seats in the hall were empty. Just back from a tour to Carnegie, Haitink and the CSO presented a superbly played, expansive, but not over-the-top interpretation of the 15th. Some consider this work structurally odd. It is actually my favorite of Shostakovich's symphonies. While Haitink's objectivity and emotional restraint paid great dividends in clarifying the first three movements, I was not quite convinced with the fourth which didn't quite hang together as a whole.

At age eighty, Bernard Haitink defies the truism that conductors with advanced age adopt more expansive tempi, the resulting interpretive extremes to be retroactively justified by appeals to mysticism or other pseudo-intellectual theories. No, good old Bernie would have none of that! He sticks to the same youthful brash tempi he favored in his younger years, the contrast between age and interpretation heightened in the last weeks by the fact that the maestro walked onto the stage using a cane and had to sit on a stool for the duration of the performance due to a pinched nerve in his back.

And what a joy it is to hear Brahms not as the ever brooding old fart but as a passionate romantic! The Brahms program (April 28th) was a strange one-off, 1st symphony being substituted for the Schubert 9th with an otherwise identical first half of the same program that was presented the preceding weekend. With the CSO operating on only one rehearsal, the Brahms certainly wasn't quite up to the level these forces could have produced at their best. Some lack of articulation in the strings and a somewhat rough 4th movement horn solo did not, however, on the whole mar an otherwise fascinating interpretation. For all his prowess in Mahler and Bruckner, to me Haitink is at his most interesting in Brahms. He gives such transparent performances of these scores, yet without ever sacrificing richness of color, line or dramatic arc. There is always something new to discover with Haitink in Brahms.

The first half featured a rare gem: Webern's early post-romantic tone poem Im Sommerwind. The mere mention of the name Webern must have accounted for the empty seats here and there even though this is not a typical twelve-tone serialist work of the composer. Mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn completed the first half with her rendition of Mahler's Rückert Lieder. Fine as her phrasing and diction are, Stotijn sometimes lacks the sheer vocal richness to fill a hall the size of Orchestra Hall. Or alternatively, the orchestral accompaniment should have been reined in to a more chamber-like atmosphere, so as not to drown out the soloist in the louder passages.

Another week earlier, Haitink and the CSO presented one of the Dutchman's favorite warhorses, Bruckner's 8th symphony. Superstar chef Thomas Keller once explained his preference for serving several small courses with the diminishing returns on large dishes that overstay their welcome and deaden the palate: "I want you to say 'God, I wish I had just one more bite of that.' And then the next course comes". The same could be the maxim of Haitink's approach to Bruckner. Just when you think you would like to revel in the moment and smell the flowers a bit longer, Haitink sweeps you further along his grand journey through Brucknerian symphonic structure. Marvellous ensemble work in this one by the CSO.

March 7: Boulez does Janacek

When this season's program was announced a year ago, Boulez conducting Janacek's Sinfonietta immediately stood out as a 'must-hear' for me. And sure enough, augmented by additional leading trumpet players from around the country, the CSO delivered an unforgettable rendition of this unique work. Sadly, a good 20% of the seats in the hall were empty for what in my mind was possibly the best and most interesting concert of the season so far. I mean, when do you otherwise ever get to hear twelve trumpets and two bass trumpets of this caliber on stage together? Boulez takes an openly modernist perspective on Janacek, understating the fragments of nationalist folklore for the sake of an emphasis on the rhythmic and harmonic idiosyncracies of this bold work. I thought the performance could have used just a tad bit more edge, but when it is being played this well, who's to complain?

The rest of the program consisted of Szymanowski's Violin Concerto (played with total conviction by Frank-Peter Zimmermann), as well as Stravinsky's Pulcinella in its rarely performed complete ballet version with song. A tight, reduced CSO ensemble accompanied mezzo-soprano Roxana Constantinescu, tenor Nicholas Phan, and bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen. Of the three otherwise convincing vocalists, only Phan deserves a demerit for largely forcing and pushing instead of singing.

March 1: Hilary Hahn Gives Solo Recital

There is probably nothing in the present violin world quite as mesmerizing as Hilary Hahn's unbelievably clean double stops and sensationally economical bowing technique. What better opportunity than to hear this marvel in a program of Ysaye, Brahms, Ives and Bartok. What seemed like an odd mix of a program in retrospect made a lot of sense. A menu of Ysaye and a reverse chronological selection of three of Ives's violin sonatas was strategically interrupted by Brahms's familiar Hungarian Dances in Joseph Joachim's arrangements, and finished off with Szekely's arrangement of Bartok's Romanian folk dances. The variety maintained attention and allowed the audience to appreciate the more demanding Ives pieces with relatively fresh ears.

Hahn has certainly gained an accompanist of formidable technical prowess and sheer power in Valentina Lisitsa. But despite the technical fireworks (which certainly worked in this repertoire) I did at times miss her previous accompanist Natalie Zhu's ability to match Hahn not only in timing and phrasing but also in color and expression. Maybe after some more time on the concert circuit the new duo will reach the same level of mindreading familiarity as the old one.

Februrary 22: Evgeny Kissin

Evgeny Kissin displayed his usual superhuman manual dexterity and sonority control at this year's edition of his annual visits to Chicago in a program of Prokofiev and Chopin. Whenever a Russian pianist plays Prokofiev with this level of technical refinement, sheer power and interpretive authority, there are always the inevitable comparisons with Sviatoslav Richter. I find them inappropriate. Not because Kissin doesn't rise to the level of Richter - quite to the contrary - but because interpretively Kissin is very much his own man. This was a modern Prokofiev of a kind that Richter never would have played quite that way. Kissin's uncanny ability to control multiple voices allowed revealing glimpses into Prokofiev's art without, however, losing track of the narrative arc. Kissin's tendency of "Prokofiev-izing" his Chopin may not be to everyone's taste - there was indeed one vociferous 'boo' at the end of the second half, which may have been to blame for the pianist's decision to give *only* three encores - but there is no denying his artistry.

February 19: 8bb & Hilliard do Hardtke

I know I have been somewhat unfair to the Harris Theater in persistently complaining about the acoustics of a space that had to be a compromise for many purposes. What the Harris Theater does well, however, is to provide innovative groups carte blanche to experiment and present innovative programs, as is always the case with eighth blackbird. And given that they play with electronic amplification, the acoustics don't matter anyway. Indeed, their February 19th performance had by far the best sound balancing of any of their performances I have heard so far.

eighth blackbird usually does a very good job at exposing their audiences to a good sample of the variety of music being written today. I am not sure that single-composer programs like their latest Harris Theater outing really further their or their composers' causes, however. In the case of a program with three large Hardtke works one quickly starts to wonder whether the composer has really used his editorial energies judiciously or whether he has perhaps occasionally exhausted an idiom too much. While Meanwhile is a relatively tightly structured and engaging work (and has clearly become a familiar repertoire piece for 8bb), the Trio could have used quite a bit of condensing and clipping. Moments of interest overstayed their welcome more often than they managed to carry that interest level over to the next segment, and the piano seemed too dominant. Likewise, setting random texts from archaeological fragments to music, context be damned, is an absolutely brilliant idea that has a lot of potential. But while individual segments of Tituli are indeed wonderful, as a whole the work seemed too undifferentiated. Texts of very different character received very similar musical treatment. In terms of performers, one could have hardly chosen a better vocal ensemble to perform this work than the Hilliard Ensemble. Too bad that Tituli did not utilize all members of 8bb as well.