Concert tribute to Carmelo Pace

Last Tuesday's celebration concert at the Manoel Theatre to commemorate Carmelo Pace's birth centenary was indeed a pleasure to attend and hear. I have nothing but praise for the Mdina Cathedral Museum committee, under its dedicated chairman Mgr Professor Vincent Borg, for having undertaken its organisation and give a merited tribute to Pace, one of Malta's major composers.

At least, where public authorities have shirked their national duty, a private institution has stepped in to fill a conspicuous void. Well done.

The choice of pieces performed was apposite and attractive. Your readers might like to know that it included the first piano concerto to be composed by a Maltese. Indeed Pace's oeuvre contains many 'firsts', for he probed much deeper into the possibilities of musical expression than composers before him and did this not to be the first to do so, but because what he wanted to say could only be expressed in the specific musical form he adopted.

He can be also be credited with composing the first symphony, the first variations on a theme and the first clarinet concerto, besides many 'firsts' in both chamber and vocal music. In doing this, he sensibly enriched and extended Maltese musical frontiers in forms for which he found no indigenous tradition.