The first of these two recitals of the International Spring Festival at the Manoel Theatre in Valletta was a rare local opportunity to hear the viola da gamba, here played by Olivia Gurthez together with harpsichordist Sophie Charpentier.
The programme was dubbed ‘The Bach family and its times’. The programme included two works by C.P.E. Bach, and one by J.S. Bach, and the Prelude, Allemande and Chaconne from a suite by Louis Marchand. This was a good choice, and the three movements were performed in Charpentier’s typically elegant and poised manner. She impressed the audience.
The recital remained dominated by the Bachs, with the evening’s only solo work for viola da gamba by Carl Friedrich Abel.
There was no indication of movements and tempi in a work which came in an initially slow movement followed by a faster one.
It had obvious touches identifying it as a work of a master of the instrument, replete with a lot of double-stopping and happily finding a worthy interpreter.
The recital began with Handel’s Sonata in C. It served as an eye-opener as to the fine rapport between the two musicians and also a chance to attune one’s ear to the viola da gamba.
The two sonatas by C.P.E. Bach differed in that the three-movement one in G minor gave the harpsichord a more equal role with the viola da gamba and was marked by a very dark-hued larghetto highly contrasting with the opening Allegro Moderato and even more with the concluding Allegro Assai.
In the Sonata in C the harpsichord was in a continuo role, with its opening Andante of a very lyrical nature and certainly not outdone by the concluding Arioso which followed the Allegretto.
The recital’s concluding work was J.S. Bach’s four-movement Sonata in C, BWV 1027. The sonata’s texture is one where with two upper parts supported by a bass part. The two instruments share the introduction of themes in different movements, and overall, the sonata showed how well the performers’ interplay was kept up, with the two upper parts proceeding in imitative entries in its latter half.
• The closing Spring Festival concert concluded with the Elixir Piano Quartet consisting of Katrine Sélo, piano; Magalie Piccin, violin; Marine Gandon, viola and Michaël Tafforeau.
The heaviest onus in such a formation always lies on the pianist’s shoulders and Sélo bore the burden simply brilliantly.
It is then up to the genius of a composer that while allowing it prominence does not turn this into a suffocating one, and gives the other three performers plenty of scope in the sharing and interplay of themes and in producing the ideal combination of texture.
It would be madness to begrudge Mahler his symphonies and lieder, but I wish he had written more exquisite chamber music like the isolated single movement for piano quartet he wrote aged 16.
This came across in a passionately fluent rendering when Elixir opened the recital with it. At one point there was a discernible flaw in the violin’s intonation, something which resurfaced a few times in the opening allegro and concluding Rondo of Mozart’s pioneering Piano Quartet in G minor, K. 478.
Cohesion was best in the central Andante and the piano, with support and interplay with the other instruments, had a jolly rollicking time in the outer movements in contrast to its tender tone in the Andante.
Schumann’s great Piano Quartet in E flat, Op. 47 proved to be a fitting conclusion, a superb rendering all along, especially the Andante Cantabile, where all instruments had their great say in an endless lyrical flow.