A night to forget at the Manoel Theatre

The breathtakingly perceptive and perspicacious Bernard Levin, who used to write a wonderful column for The Times in England, once opined that "We are all scared to criticise these days".

I believe he was, and still is, right. If we continue to accept therefore as de rigueur the appalling standards of execution exhibited in the inaugural concert given on Saturday night at the Manoel Theatre, we shall not get very far.

I have never heard Beethoven's Emperor Concerto played with such an array of wrong notes by the soloist. This was not a Saturday matinée, nor was it a third-rate school orchestra, nor was it even a rehearsal, but a fully-fledged, weekend concert, for which members of the public were expected to pay full price. It was in utter shambles by Stefan Cassar. At precisely that point in the first movement when Beethoven explicitly requests no cadenza to be inserted, Mr Cassar still introduced spurious and wholly unwarranted diminuendos. For those of us who know the work well, the interpretation told us nothing new, nor uncovered some new facet, nor explored any of the profundities of the work, particularly in the glorious Adagio, whose mysterious and haunting metamorphosis into the exquisite finale simply went for nought and almost passed by unnoticed. The surging scales at the end which finish the work came as a relief, not from the screwy tension that had just ensued, but from the musical crucifixion we had just witnessed.

The "Great" Schubert symphony in the second half fared even worse. While the woodwind, percussion and brass acquitted themselves well and executed their respective parts with aplomb (I thought the woodwind chording was superb), the strings were less happy. But then, that's hardly surprising, given the excessive gesticulations of Brian Schembri. Insecure intonation in the upper ranges, slurred hairpin turns, even concluding a simple trill together was difficult given the histrionics happening before their very eyes. The second movement, a simple dance with a Viennese lilt, simply got slower and slower, finishing almost as a funereal dirge.

Mr Schembri seemed more interested in displaying his baton technique to the audience than guiding his players through a difficult work. At that stage in that crazy last movement, when we reached those extraordinary hammer blows, Mr Schembri changed hands with the baton to shake his fist at the band, was for me the nadir. The polite, unenthusiastic applause was hardly indicative of a meritorious gesture. The whole symphony should create an absolute paroxysm of sheer delight, not raise a smirk! And Mr Schembri continued to shake those wonderful glistening curls of his!

Now where is Michael Laus?