The Sound of Suite Music

Our beautiful churches are providing the perfect setting for some of this year’s Malta Arts Festival concerts. Alex Vella Gregory speaks to Italian cellist Enrico Dindo about the Bach recital with which he will open the festival in two weeks’ time.

For Enrico Dindo, music was not a choice. His mother was a mezzo-soprano, his father a tenor, his elder sister a violist and his younger brother played the French horn. The only real choice was which instrument to pursue.

That fateful day came one day when his parents had tenor Giuseppe Ferrari over for lunch. On seeing the young boy’s hands, he decided he should be a cellist. From then on there was no turning back.

Since then he has pursued a brilliant career as a soloist and chamber musician, and worked with some of the world’s best orchestras and ensembles. His fondest memories revolve around his tutor Antonio Janigro, and the great Mstislav Rostropovich.

“I studied with Rostropovich for a few years after I won the Rostropovich Cello Competition in Paris. He is a most extraordinary man, and I have learned a lot from him not only on a musical level, but also on a human one.”

For Dindo, music and life have reached a perfect synthesis in his life.

“I am very lucky that my passion has also become my profession. There is not a day or even a moment when I am not in touch with music.”

Dindo is a regular guest at the Malta Arts Festival, and has built a very close rapport with Malta.

“It is very rare for me to be able to convey great emotions in a place which gives me great emotions. Malta is a rare opportunity where I can do what I want in a place I like.”

This year he will complete the cycle of Bach’s Suites for Cello with a performance of Suites 2, 4, and 6. These works hold a special place in every cellist’s heart, and Dindo is no exception. So sacred does he hold these works, that he avoids repeating them often.

However, the word ‘sacred’ puts him on his guard.

“Bach’s music, especially the Cello Suites, is very spiritual, but not in the religious sense. It is a very personal type of spirituality, and every time you play the suites you discover where you are not only musically but also spiritually.”

Like last year, he will perform the suites in a church (this time the parish church of St Laurence in Vittoriosa). This is not done for religious reasons, but for purely technical ones. Since a cello can only perform a note at a time for most of the time, Bach wrote his music in such a way that the harmonic and polyphonic aspects of the music are implied.

“Churches have a lot of reverberation which allows me to play around with the music. Using the natural echoes of the space I can bring out the implied harmonies and create multiple melodic lines out of what is essentially a single melodic line.”

But all this talk about the technicalities of music becomes almost trivial when compared to what Italian musicians – indeed, Italians in general – have to face at this difficult time. The ravages of the earthquake in Emilia have left an already politically unstable country in disarray.

“Nothing I can say will add or take away anything to the current state of affairs. Certainly, it is not what we needed at this time!”

Enrico Dindo Plays Bach Cello Suites 2, 4 & 6 will be held on July 1 at 7.30 p.m. at St Lawrence church, Vittoriosa. Entrance is free but those interested are requested to collect their tickets from the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts offices, Casa Gaspe, Republic Street, Valletta, between 9 a.m. and 12.30 p.m., Monday to Friday. For more information visit www.maltaartsfestival.org.