Concert
Music by Karl Fiorini and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
MPO, dir. Roberto Beltrán Zavála
Manoel Theatre

The annual International String Orchestra has developed into a series of events featuring different genres. Concluding this year’s ninth edition was a highly enjoyable concert featuring the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Marcelline Agius.

The festival’s artistic director, Karl Fiorini, is also one of our most active composers and he regaled the audience with the world premiere of his Symphony No. 1.

I found it rather puzzling that Fiorini provided just the tempo indications of his new work and not a single explanatory note. So it was left to the listener to guess at several things as to what was behind this work. I had to delve into this matter when we met during the interval.

The composer said that he did this on purpose, because he did not want to condition the listener by his own comments on the work.

The piece was born, germinated, some time last summer and in due course was scored. The music was presented to the MPO just a few weeks before the premiere and rehearsed two or three times.

The amazing thing is that the orchestra and its highly dynamic director came up with a thoroughly well-finished job.

I found it rather puzzling that Fiorini provided just the tempo indications of his new work and not a single explanatory note

It is a far from easy work; yet, the orchestra navigated safely through its many intricacies, its perilous shoals of tempo changes, vastly different moods and textural contrasts.

The symphony’s seven sections were performed without a break save for a few seconds’ pause between some of them.

The atmosphere in the opening agitato produced a sense of restlessness that could hardly be contained, with several explosive episodes rushing headlong in different directions with very few brakes along the way. It was akin to a longish voyage, treading in the dark but with a decisively cautious step.

On the other hand, nothing could be more different in the ensuing lento dominated by an eerie atmosphere greatly accentuated by very high writing for the strings.

Very dominant was a three-note figure introduced by the flute, taken up by other woodwinds and, eventually by brass and strings, which added to a sense of mystery.

By contrast, the presto leggerissimo provided not just mystery but also an element of menace.

An even slower lento, marked molto lento, was a rare oasis of serenity, with figures gently rising and falling.

Elements clearly and, at times, not so clearly discernible – so well woven they were in the scoring – surfaced with new ideas in the rest of the work which went from a very terse and tense secco, to a relatively brief canon and finale that brilliantly rounded off the work.

It is obvious that a deeper and more illuminating appreciation of Fiorini’s undoubted achievement necessitates more hearings of this symphony.

It has also been the MPO’s achievement and Roberto Beltrán Zavála’s direction in having risen so well to the task.

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