Music
Musicians from France, Scotland and Malta
Aula Mgr Giuseppe Farrugia;
Il-Ħaġar – Heart of Gozo
The Victoria International Arts Festival marches on, with three of many concerts under review here.
The first of these, held at the Aula Mgr Giuseppe Farrugia, was an exciting oboe and piano recital and, quite definitely, a local rarity. It featured oboist Marika Lombardi and pianist Nathalie Dang from France. This well-knit and mutually highly supportive duo delivered very fine playing. The oboist gave a great display of idiomatic versatility and shifted from style to style, covering greatly varying works.
The first of them was Antonio Vivaldi’s four-movement Sonata in C minor with a concluding very brief andante and allegro. Robert Schumann’s Three Romances Op. 94 were a singular exercise in charm and warmth, while the duo voiced one of the 86-year-old Camille Saint-Saëns’s last laughs in his brilliant and superbly crafted Sonata in D Major, Op. 166.
Moving closer to our day, there was the performance of Francis Poulenc’s unusual Oboe Sonata. Normally, his three-movement sonatas have sparkling outer ones with a more reflective and contrasting slow middle movement. In this version, he gets serious with the opening mournful Élégie and resorts to a scherzo which still has emotional links with the opening movement.
The oboist gave a great display of idiomatic versatility and shifted from style to style, covering greatly varying works
The concluding Déploration was expertly projected in its varying shifts of mood and rhythm by both performers which also included some significantly telling contributions by the piano.
Concluding, the two performed Edmund Rubbra’s Sonata in C minor Op. 100. This British composer’s music is rarely heard here too and the duo’s rendering of this sonata reminded one that Rubbra deserves to be better known. Here was work which allowed for sharing of thematic material, a smooth interaction between the performers and whose clarity in delivery enhanced the various facets of the work. The mood was very well etched in the gently-paced Elegy. The oboe sang so well the melody which opens the concluding Presto; it juggled back and forth and took on various manifestations leading to an exciting finale.
Maurice Ravel’s Pièce en forme de habanera was a much-appreciated encore.
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The Royal Conservatoire Brass from Edinburgh performing on the rooftop of Il-Ħaġar – Heart of Gozo museum.The Royal Conservatoire Brass from Edinburgh performed the following evening on the rooftop of Il-Ħaġar – Heart of Gozo museum.
Parts of the programme were directed by the very communicative John Logan. Benjamin Britten’s firm and resolute Fanfare for St Edmundsbury opened the evening, followed by a version for three trombones of Anton Bruckner’s motet Locus Iste. It was followed by a rather sparkling Allegro assai from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2.
An arrangement of Frans Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody proved to be quite dazzling. No direction was needed for the rather amusing John and Clint, a trombone duet by Fredrik Högberg satirising a Wild West gunfight between two egocentric desperadoes.
The young performers, many of whom are now playing with leading UK orchestras, performed without direction the difficult Michael Nyman piece For John Cage with its frequent tempo changes and which had a suspended and indeterminate finish.
Andrew McLean was horn soloist in the lovely Misty, after which Logan was at the helm again in Duke Ellington’s popular Caravan and Soul Bossa Nova, which featured Calum Tonner and his ostinato triangle.
The prevailing mood favoured no less than three encores. Trumpets On Tour to Gozo (arr. Logan) featured solo virtuoso trumpeter Ben Hirons, followed by Greg Beatty’s The Haven and the lively Canario by Gaspar Sanz.
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Gisèle Grima and Erika Gialanzè in a four-hand piano recital.Two days later, back at the Aula Mgr Giuseppe Farrugia, there was a strong Maltese element in a four-hands piano recital by Gisèle Grima and Erika Gialanzè.
This very well-matched and mutually complementary duo began with Franz Schubert’s great Fantasy in F minor, D. 940. At their best in the more lyrical sections of this rather sad virtual swan song, the two musicians increasingly gave an excellent account of themselves in all sections of the continuous four-section journey.
No matter its various facets, among which are some very assertive episodes, that warm, sad tragic song’s reappearance gives it its unifying thread.
Alex Vella Gregory introduced the work he specially wrote for the duo, Irkejjen (neighbourhoods), and to which they gave its premiere. Some of Valletta’s neighbourhoods inspired the composer. Nix Mangiare ably evokes the bustle of that erstwhile very busy place and the plaintive, wailing beggars. The tempo in Pjazza Reġina is a minuet depicting a more genteel atmosphere; in midsection, it reminds one of flying pests, namely cooing and cackling pigeons. Returning to the opening mood, there is a sudden terminal quotation of the first six notes of the God Save the Queen.
Il-Biċċerija (Abattoir) evokes a rundown area in which the music is almost like a requiem for the many creatures slaughtered there. Turmoil and a sweeping energy dominate Id-Dijuballi, reminiscent of some frequently occurring fracas which resolves itself as if nothing had ever happened and life goes on. The duo performed this work with gusto and relished its very note.
They also handled very well the 16 Waltzes Op. 39 by Johannes Brahms. Different, interrelated and planned most interestingly, they all have their own character, with No. 15 in A Flat Major remaining the most charming.