The 4th International Spring Orchestra Festival has kicked off at the Manoel Theatre with a delightful orchestral concert by the Rotterdam Ensemble under the baton of Roberto Beltran.
Following hot on the heels of the lovely production of Handel’s Alcina by the Austrian Daphne Music Vienna team of enthusiastic 20 somethings, this ensemble, wherein the average age of the musicians cannot be more than 25, has gone from strength to strength in the past four years and plays with a precision but above all a joie de vivre that charmed the audience to bits. I
find it so wonderful to see these young people attain such exacting degrees of excellence, an excellence that may be born of innate talent but demands rigorous discipline and dedication to attain. It makes me very happy and very sad at the same time.
Although we have our fair share of young people who are active in the Arts including music I am dismayed by the fact that it seems impossible to pull a commensurate audience of young people to appreciate the efforts and achievements of their contemporaries. Where practically all over the civilized world young people throng the concert halls here in Malta, we, the audience, are an ageing population. Is it because the image projected by that gem of a Manoel Theatre is elitist? Is it because the seats are too expensive? I sometimes wonder.
I strongly feel that it is our general educational system that relegates the Arts to the back burner and practically regards it as a caprice to be indulged on rare occasions that is responsible for this tragic indifference. I had penned an article about Systems of Knowledge some time ago which drew an interesting plethora of comments including a letter from a 19 year old, Jonathan Polidano, informing us that Mozart and Beethoven are has-beens and that the culture of the past is a dead letter.
I was so shaken and upset and could, had I known who it was, quite happily strangled the teacher or teachers who provoked this attitude. Since then Jonathan has become a Facebook friend and has somewhat changed his opinion after I persuaded him to watch Amadeus before relegating poor Mozart to the dustbin. I live in hope.
When I appeared on Bondi Plus a few weeks ago I told Lou Bondi, besides Malta and his wife, that it was my dearest wish that everyone in Malta should start not only attending but enjoying orchestral concerts. Lou’s reaction was a spontaneous “Dream on!” However because I am a stubborn creature besides an optimist , I will never stop dreaming and will never stop trying to persuade the powers that are and that will be that our future is bound up, completely, utterly and totally with being cultural ambassadors for our country. This poses the question “should we take Culture to the people?” I emphatically believe that we should.
The summer arts festival for instance should utilise our Malta Philharmonic to the full and with the cooperation of our band clubs put up concerts in village squares of music that people know and love. Who can resist the opening bars of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto no 1 or the infectious tune’s of Dvorak’s New World Symphony? Maybe in that way next year the average age of the audience for the 5th International Spring Orchestra Festival will reduce by a couple of decades. Nothing could make me happier.
Do not however think that this relatively sparse middle aged audience was blasé or jaded in any way. They could not have been more appreciative and enthusiastic and with very good reason. The standard was dizzyingly high. Last Monday’s concert consisted of dances; Camille Saint-Saens’s eclectic Suite op 49 with its sarabande and gavotte, Claude Debussy’s ethereal Danse Sacree and Danse Profane and the utterly magnificent Dances of Galanta by Zoltan Kodaly. This concert could easily have been on Mezzo Channel. It was in fact a terrible shame that it wasn’t filmed. Such was the excellence of the performance that it was only the fact that most of the boxes were gaping black holes that marred it from being a visual feast besides an aural one.
The Saint-Saens Suite is a delicately scored composition by a great master ; a delightful fusion of 18th century baroque which although steeped in 19th century romanticism somehow anticipates Prokofiev’s electrifying Classical Symphony. The Romance was especially lovely with its lazily meandering melodic lines flowing gently like a scintillating stream through a spring meadow…………….!
Debussy’s Danses pour Harpe et Orchestre a Cordes was like a dream. Jaike Bakker’s performance on harp was perfection itself while the two dances set as one continual rhapsodic episode were simply wonderful to experience especially when that gorgeous lilting waltz introduces the Danse Profane. Another Saint-Saens piece that most of us know as a violin and piano piece, Introduction and Rondeau Capriccioso for violin and orchestra, written for virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate in 1859, was full of violinist wizardry but also, which is rare in a “show-off” piece such as this, full of heart-warmingly infectious melody.
Benjamin Chavrier who is part of the Rotterdam Ensemble’s string section seemed a trifle overwhelmed by the explosion of applause he received but he deserved every moment of it and more.
Kodaly‘s Dances of Galanta are great fun. Full of exuberant romantic melody and vividly coloured orchestration they cannot fail to charm and elate any audience especially when played with such polished smoothness and deft elegance that was highlighted by Roberto Beltran’s tangible exuberance and expressiveness.
Beltran has passion and even more importantly, style. His strong, warm rapport with the ensemble is plain to see and the results are inevitably commensurately excellent.
(The Sunday Times)