Soprano Miriam Gauci was joined by the choir in singing Albert Hay Malotte’s The Lord’s Prayer. Photo: Pauline Camilleri

Concert
Miriam Gauci, soprano;
The Goldberg Ensemble MaltaMalta Philharmonic Orchestra/leader Marcelline Agius;
Director: Michael Laus
St John’s Co-Cathedral

The aim of this annual concert in that ever-splendid artistic and spiritual paradise is to support the philanthropic activities of the Maltese Association of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

This year it was under the patronage of Minister of Education Evarist Bartolo, who was deputising for the Prime Minister. Many benefit from these activities and are the happier for it.

This concert also enabled Miriam Gauci to make very, very happy the audience filling the Co-Cathedral. I must say that as so many others, I was looking forward to hearing again that superb voice which had been missed for far too long. Without going into the whys and wherefores of the four years or so of that lull, one had to ask oneself and wonder how it was going to be. Asit so happened, there was nothing to worry about.

The orchestra, with Michel Laus directing from the harpsichord, launched into the opening George Frideric Handel piece, the Overture followed by Trio and Courante from the lesser-known oratorio Theodora.

Then came the long-awaited gorgeous voice: fresh, youthful, as clear as ever, with crystalline limpidity and expression which endowed the two extracts from Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater with genuine pathos and drama, first in Cujus animam and later in Vidit suum with its pianissimo yet very clear and well-sustained, plaintive, gasping phrases on Dum emisit spiritum. In the same composer’s Salve Regina there was an often brisker pace in this hymn of praise projected with warmth and reverence.

The Goldberg Ensemble sang Antonio Vivaldi’s Credo in style and later had another piece all their own in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Offertorium pro festo Sancti Joannis Baptitsa: Inter natus Mulierum. K. 72/74f.

The latter work was most appropriate given the venue and the fact that a few days later the feast of the birth of St John the Baptist would be celebrated. It is the Order’s most important celebration.

Prior to this, Gauci, while still within the baroque idiom adapted herself to the style of Handel Angels ever bright and fair from Theodora. This was projected with the proper conviction in a beautiful flow of superbly sung music. Later she sang another quite rare Mozart piece, a Tantum Ergo, K. 142.

The soprano sang the two stanzas at the end of each the choir sang their responses and later directly interacted with the soloist before ending in a joyous Amen.

Different in style was César Franck’s famous Panis Angelicus, here in an arrangement by Maestro Laus who gave the French horn something nice ‘to say’.

This was a very, very lovely piece which when sung and handled like this never loses its charm and magic. The climaxes were fine and well-sustained by all as was the case with the concluding piece, Albert Hay Malotte’s Our Father in which Gauci used her forte well-sustained and powerful, clear, warm and still tinged with disarming sweetness.

The audience was with her all the way, the intensity of the applause increased with every piece so it is not surprise that it ended in a spontaneous standing ovation.

Good work all along: with such a powerful husband-and-wife team, well-trained choir and tip-top Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, it could not be otherwise.