Mozartfest 2006 in Valletta

On Friday morning I met Dr Anton Tabone of Renaissance Cultural Foundation, Malta. We met at St James Cavalier, one of the venues where Mozartfest 2006 is being held over a a month. The 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth inspired Renaissance Cultural Foundation to come up with this interesting programme of activities dominated if not exclusively by a commemoration of the great Salzburger. Some of this is being done in a very innovative way.

"We are a non-profit making foundation, the main aim of which is to promote culture reaching as wide a public as possible," said Dr Tabone, whose enthusiasm in this field is leaving a mark in Malta's cultural life. "I work hand in hand with my fellow trustees within RCF, namely Amabile Zammit, Mro Alan Chircop, well-known as conductor and concert organizor and Dr Hans-Juergen Nagel, musicologist and conductor, former artistic director of Bonn's Beethoven Festival and Days for Contemporary Music now resident in Malta."

Asking him to enlarge upon RCF's wide-ranging activities, he underlined several aspects of their agenda. Developing artists' potential is one of them. "We do this by providing international opportunities and events which bring together nations and cultures together, said Dr Tabone. We promote different forms of art and culture in Malta and abroad. Encouragement of music and the arts is prominent, and apart form the subsequent international cultural exchanges, the central emphasis is to be placed on the promotion of innovative programmes and projects within that context."

Being a non-profit-making entity and yet promoting high-level artistic activities involving equally high-level participants would certainly lead to the RCF ending up in the red. "We are fortunate in having the support of various sponsors without whom it would have been impossible to put on this celebration," Dr Tabone said.

I noticed the rightly predominant Teutonic factor in this. Both the German and Austrian Embassies are involved as are Lufthansa, BAWAG Malta Bank Ltd, Galerie Patrick Ebensperger, Werkstadt Graz, Castille Hotel, Xerox, Euromed and of course the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts. "Perhaps," Dr Tabone said, "we could note with pride and satisfaction that we managed to obtain considerable funding from the EU's Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranan Foundation, without whom we would have certainly finished deeply in the red."

Of all the activities of Mozartfest 2006, the most innovative is the exhibition Eight Positions of Mozart. Open daily from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. until October 29, it was officially opened by Dr Francis Zammit Dimech, Minister of Tourism and Culture, at St James Cavalier last Friday evening.

Unconventional display

In the morning I had met two people responsible for the mounting of the exhibition which was originally opened in Graz earlier this year, on January 27, the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. It was then taken to Salzburg and Malta is the first foreign country in which this exhibition is on display. It includes videos, sculptures, installations, Internet, paintings, photographs and posters by artists from Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

These are Irene Andessner, Joachim Baur, Stefanie Erjautz, Julius Deutschbauer/Gerhard Spring, Markus Hanakam, Roswitha Schuller, Alfred Fresch, Irmin Blum and Josef Taucher.

One is not to expect the conventional sort of display commemorating a composer such as Mozart. There are no letters, no music scores, no personal effects or even paintings or copies thereof. There is, however, a puppet representing the composer as an adolescent when he was little short of the low physical stature he managed to reach in adulthood.

One of the persons behind the exhibition, Barbara B. Edlinger, explained how this display does not set out to continue along the lines generally perceived of Mozart. "We wanted to make him accessible and to reach out in ways other than in his music. The simple fact for example that transport in the form of ships named after him have been launched. He may be one of the most performed composers but to some he became somewhat familiar through music he wrote and which advertising agencies used in the promotion of certain products in every day use.

"The composer's name is synonymous with the famous Mozartkugeln, the spherical marzipan-filled chocolate. Some products could lead to him simply because they have been named and marketed under names with a musical connotation, such as a musical note or a movement. A kind of rock on display has been named mozartite and it is quite rare. It is juxtaposed with the far more common goethite with which it shares a basic structural formation. One of the posters shows a man asking what time it is and his companion tells him it is 17' 56", which is of course the year of his birth."

Dr Joachim Baur planned the layout of the display in an unusual way, explaining how he wanted to integrate the name of Mozart with the actual architectural surroundings at St James's Cavalier. The first part of the display is within a space formed by the letter M, while the centrally located circular lift is the O. Quite close to the latter another section shaped like a Z. DrBaur then left the building and close to the entrance and on to the street he drew the letter A. I presumed that when the flow of traffic eased and almost vanished completely, the remaining R and T, forming ART would be chalked lout into the street.

"Art, the last half of Mozart's name, would here form a link between the general public and the exhibition inside," said Mrs Edlinger. Just like the chalked letters leading to the display, she wishes, if possible that the public would also chalk in their perception of Mozart. Controversy still reigns as to which of the many portraits purporting to be Mozart's come closest to what he really looked like. The fact is that nobody really knows what he looked like. It is for this reason that the actress Irene Andessner has posed as Mozart, wearing powdered wig and clothes he would have worn. She put herself in a state of mind when posing for some photographs, that she was convincing herself that she was Mozart. Andressner also ordered a chocolate sphere with marzipan her face being used as a trademark on these specially ordered Kugeln.

Master classes

Apart from the purely entertaining aspect of such activities, Mozartfest 2006 also caters for helping and promoting young musicians' artistic education and abilities. Master classes are being held both at St James Cavalier and at the Malta Society of Arts, Valletta, between October 9 and 14. They will be conducted by Thomas E. Bauer (voice), Gottfried Schneider (violin), Siegfried Mauser (piano), Irmela Bossler (flute) and Diethelm Kuehn (clarinet).

On October 10, at 8 p.m., at St James Cavalier, there will be a panel discussion and seminar on the theme "Who is afraid of Mozart?" It will deal with problems of performance, practice and interpretation. It will be conducted by Professor Revers of Salzburg with the participation of guest professors. On the following day and always at the same venue and same time, Professor Revers will deliver a lecture on "Mozart Images through the 18th-2lst centuries".

The music side of the Mozartfest gathers momentum on October 13 at 8 p.m. at the Casino Maltese, Valletta, with a Mozart and Schubert Lieder evening featuring soprano Amelie Sandmann, baritone Thomas E. Bauer with pianists Siegfried Mauser and Uta Hilscher. Tickets at Lm3. The following day, October 14, at 5 p.m. at St James Cavalier, the participants in the master classes will be in concert.

The Manoel Theatre will be the venue of a concert of Mozart music on October 14 at 7 p.m. Chamber music will be performed and this is within the Notte Bianca event organised by the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts. Reservations: tel. 2124-6389, fax 2123-7340; e-mail bookings@teatrumanoel.com.mt

The four performers are Gottfried Schneider (violin), Siegfried Mauser (piano), Irmela Bossler (flute) and Diethelm Kuehn (clarinet).

Finally, on October 20 and 21 at 7.30 p.m. at the Manoel Theatre there will be a puppet performance of Le Nozze di Figaro. This is a true fusion of cultures because the internationally renowned Milan Sladek Mime Theatre presents a production inspired by two cultural traditions: the Italian Commedia dell'Arte and the Japanese Bunraku puppet theatre. Tickets from Lm4 to Lm12, e-mail: bookings@ teatrumanoel.com.mt. Website: www.manoeltheatre.com

There will also be a matinee performance on Monday, October 21 at 10 a.m. at St James Cavalier. For further information, call Renaissance Cultural Foundation, Malta on 2122-8836 and 7953-7925, e-mail: rcfmalta@maltanet.net. Website: www.rcfmalta.com