Concert
Shostakovich and Bartok
Bar-to-Bar Piano Quintet
Neptune Courtyard, The Palace, Valletta

Despite this concert being in the open, the air was pretty hot and oppressive, but the consolation was a beautiful performance by some of the best musicians we have. The string players are seasoned performers and all are members of the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra.

Two of them, Italo-Albanian violinist Klara Nazaj and Hungarian cellist Akos Kertesz, have been among us for a number of years and are well entrenched in the local music scene. Violinist Marcelline Agius, leader of the MPO, and viola player Nadia Debono, its principal viola, are two formidable local performers and in this particular formation this quartet teams up with pianist Joanne Camilleri, founder of the Bar-to-Bar Piano Quintet and one of the leading pianists of her generation.

The programme featured two very different piano quintets by two great composers, starting with the Shostakovich in G minor, Op. 57 (1940). The performers were very mindful of the contrasting natures of the various movements, like the rather grand projection of the opening prelude and its sort of corollary, the fugue that is the second movement. It was evident too that piano and strings were able to make the best of the multi-faceted textural aspects both individually as well as combined as a quartet within the quintet and then also with the piano.

Perhaps it was in the rollicking scherzo that the music was best projected, perforce contrasting with the previous, more staid, movements. Unusually for a piano quintet, Shostakovich allows the piano very little prominence except in the scherzo. The contrasts with the scherzo’s surrounding movements continued in the rather reflective intermezzo. The finely-balanced way the music was performed continued when the cloud was lifted and the work went on to a bright finale, with just a brief throwback to the previous mood before its definite conclusion.

While somehow most of Shostakovich’s music is always pretty recognisable, those familiar with the bulk of Bartok but not so with his early Piano Quintet (1903-4) find it hard to associate it with him. It is also probable that together with the Shostakovich this was the first performance by a local ensemble.

Bartok’s only piano quintet was pretty successful. The writing for the instruments is indeed richer and therefore the music stood out more, as if there were a sudden change in the acoustics which inevitably were sometimes affected by noise extraneous to the venue. In this work one liked listening to the warmth emanating from the music as it harkened back to the Romantic influences to which the young Bartok had been exposed. Still, his voice was already making itself felt.

Both the vivace and the immediately-following scherzo were performed with great verve and balance. More romantic touches marked the very-warmly-felt adagio, and there was great fun in the concluding poco a poco più vivace which in real fact kept building up the tension and receding only to start all over again, tantalisingly offering a climax but attacking the sense yet again until the final and exciting conclusion.