Albert Storace regrets having been unable to attend each and every event of the Victoria International Arts Festival, the annual Gozitan extravaganza now in its 20th year.

I know I have missed a lot of splendid music-making yet what I have experienced has been equally exciting. That is judging by what I hear here and there, including even from sources which make me regret what I have missed.

I was present for the opening concert at St George’s basilica. It has become customary for a concert featuring the Malta Philharmonic to open (and close) this festival.

The orchestra under the direction of Joseph Vella, the festival’s artistic director, did not fail to turn upon excellent form together with soloist Godfrey Mifsud (clarinet) in the Mozart Concerto. Always promising as a young performer, Godfrey Mifsud has matured into a real poet of the clarinet and gave a thrilling performance.

Then, more than 30 years after it was written for her, soprano Maria Frendo could still give a deeply felt and more mature interpretation to Joseph Vella’s song cycle Seħer, Op. 39 to lyrics by Daniel Massa, the first-ever song cycle in Maltese. I found her breath control pretty amazing, unfailing and with superb intonation. Many extended notes blended well with the music while still discernibly disappearing within it, one of many distinct characteristics of this composition.

One has little to say about Beethoven’s Fifth except that it was simply glorious and exciting and provoked a stand-ing ovation. Could one wish for more?

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It was some days before I went back to Victoria… for a spree of seven consecutive concerts beginning with that given by the Alke String Quartet from Britain in that little gem of a church of St Francis of Assisi. The Sturm und Drang spirit in Beethoven’s quartet in F minor Op. 95 “Serioso” contrasted with the baroque surroundings where it was projected with high concentration in a spirit of combined defiance and despair.

Alke is a young quartet, yet a very accomplished one. It launched into this watershed of a work with utter dedication.

Somehow even more difficult is Leoš Janácek’s Quartet N. 1 (Kreutzer Sonata) with its even more accentuated cries of pain and anguish which came across with very telling nigh unbearable effect. Great playing here and a further proof of the quartet’s versatility came with Webern’s beautifully rendered romantic Langsamer Satz.

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My concert crawl continued next evening with a recital at the basilica of St George by the Anemos Wind Quintet recital. Four of its members are Italian: Marika Lombardi (oboe), Filippo Mazzoli (flute) Nicola Zuccalà (clarinet) and Ivan Calestani (bassoon) with Albin Lebossé (horn) being the only Frenchman. Yet, somehow or other, all have close links with Paris. That two of the works would be French was to be expected and good for them for they went into Milhaud’s Cheminé du Roi René with quite an authentic feel for the work.

Another French work was Ibert’s Trois Pièces Breve – a nice little work which was charmingly performed in the order Allegro, Andante and Poco lento.

Before Ibert, the Allegro and Andante con variazioni from Respighi’s unfinished Quintet in G minor (arr. Filippo Mazzoli) left one tantalised as to how the work could have developed. There was no hint of non-completion in Casella’s Pupazzetti , Op. 27 with evocation of the jerky movements of puppets. Very complete and satisfactory as well as in parts, there was a brilliant tour de force in Five Ancient Hungarian Dances by Ferenc Farkas.

An encore was inevitable and this was the sinfonia to Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia (arr. Joachim Linckelmann) rendered so brilliantly that greedy musical “Olivers” could have begged for more.

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A calm reflective Oblivión arranged for piano, 2 violins and horn was conceded by the Argotti Ensemble after the brilliant conclusion of their recital with music by another Hungarian: the Grande Fantaisie for 2 violins and piano by Károlyi, a work based on Hunyadi László. The violinists were Maria Conrad and Nemanja Ljubinkovic who have always worked in perfect tandem and rapport in every piece in which they were involve.

Argotti Ensemble always excelled in their performances

Pianist Gisèle Grima had a marathon job because she contributed excellently to every work on the programme. This was a varied one in style and idiom and never short of elegant and stylish playing. No wonder the Argotti Ensemble returns every year or almost to the VIAF because they have always excelled in their performances.

This evening’s began with Fasch’s transitional Trio in G for 2 violins and continuo (piano). For the same combination and very different but no less pleasant was Kämmerer’s Ländler which had my feet itching for a waltz and Ames’s Canzonetta, a show-piece highlighting the romantic beauty of the work.

For horn (José García Gutiérrez) and piano, in works which mainly accentuate the beauty and smoothness of tone, there was the Evening Prayer from Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel and later Nielsen’s Canto Serioso with its frequent virtuoso touches. Still more for horn and piano were Glazunov’s Reverie with its very wide-ranging but often very low-toned horn and the lighter but no less charming and well-crafted Romance Op. 67 by Saint-Saëns.

The only work featuring violin, horn and piano was Schroeder’s Momento Capriccioso. The violin part was taken by Maria Conrad (who in real life is Señora María García de Conrad). All this gradual build-up of fine music-making culminated with the Károlyi and the resulting encore as mentioned above.

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Other events of the Victoria International Arts Festival continued with the only lunchtime concert on offer. This was a choral and organ recital at St George’s basilica by the Magdalene College Chapel Choir from Cambridge. Direction of the young 18-strong choir was shared by Jonathan Hellyer Jones, William Bosworth and Polina Sosnina. The latter lady also doubled as organist in J.S. Bach’s Prelude and Fuge in G, BWV 541.

A splendid performance was that of Hellyer Jones who is also an organist. He gave a thrilling performance of the finale from Guilmant’s Sonata N. 1 in D, Op.42.

The choral music varied widely in style and idiom, ranging from Byrd to contemporaries such as our Joseph Vella’s fine Jesu dulcis memoria Op. 79 and John Rutter’s God Be in My Head.

Zest did not lack on the singers’ part. The female section was very smooth and cohesive but the male section not always so because more often than not one individual voice spoilt matters a bit. Blow’s Salvator Mundi, Bruckner’s Ave Maria and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Our Father were among the best overall performances.

Strikingly different in style was Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin with six members of the choir (3+3) in the right transept singing responses to the declamations of the main choir.

Mendelssohn’s long Hear My Prayer included the famous Oh for the Wings of a Dove. Soloists in this work were Caitilin Walsh and Madeleine Ary.

The encore was a chorale, Source of Uncreated Life composed by choir member Peter Ralph.

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The evening concert at Aula Mgr G. Farrugia was the first in a mini-series of five within the festival featuring baroque and early classical music. It featured soprano Valeria La Grotta and pianist Attilio Cantore. It partly proved to be an interesting probe into the operas of our prolific Isouard which reflect his well-merited fame in Paris during a little less of the latter half of his life.

The recital began with Je suis modeste et soumise from Cendrillon, later continuing with J’ai longtemps par courou le monde from Joconde. The last French piece sang by the soprano was Air de Benjamin Ah! Lorsque la mort trop cruelle. There was nothing to fault her voice, musicality, deep interpretation or technique.

However, in these three pieces she never established a kind of eye-contact with the audience and seemed as if she were singing to herself. Could be her French which kept her glued to the score.

It all changed when she sang the Italian pieces which, for the most part, were very difficult coloratura arias like Piccinni’s Sono in mar non veggio sponde (from Nitteti), Sarti’s Vedo l’abbisso orrendo (from Armida e Rinaldo) and concluding with a great show piece: Far l’orror della tempesta from Gretry’s La caravane de Caire.

Pianist Attilio Cantore accompanied the singer in the right supportive manner. He also had a number of solos beginning with five brief sonatas by Cimarosa (Ns. 28,33,48, 59, 42) only discovered in 1924. Turrini’s Sonata in E was his next solo to be followed later by Clementi’s Sonata in B flat, Op 9, N.1.

He ended with J.B. Cramer’s Divertimento in C minor.

Cantore has a decisively sure touch, as robust and as tenderly sensitive when the music calls for it. This he achieved both as accompanist and as soloist.

A lovely encore was conceded with soprano and pianist in Paisiello’s Nel cuor piu’ non mi sento from La Molinara.

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A concert which ended in a standing ovation was that at St George’s basilica presented by Les Jardin Musical (leader Christine Antoine), a French baroque ensemble recently voted the best of its kind in Europe. Their performance proved they fully deserve it.

Nothing beats Vivald’s contribution to the mandolin repertoire

Beginning with the brisk smooth flow of Geminiani’s Concerto for strings Op. 2, N. 2, enter upon the scene mandolin soloist Vincent Beer-Demander who was sometimes literally on his toes performing concertos by various composers for a once very fashionable instrument that later was very neglected. Thanks to musicians such as Beer-Demander and ensemble, one could enjoy truly delightful works such as Barbella’s Concerto in D and two movements each from Paisiello’s in C and Cimarosa’s in G.

However, no matter how well these were rendered, nothing beats Vivald’s contribution to the mandolin repertoire. First Vincent Beer-Demander performed the Concerto in C, RV 425 later sharing the limelight with violinist Christine Antoine in the Concerto in B flat for violin and mandolin all on true form. Beer-Demander’s great musicality and virtuosity conquered all and concluded likewise with a thrilling and best-known of Vivaldi’s works for mandolin: the Concerto in D, RV 93 with its fast exciting outer movements flanking an exquisitely moving largo. A vigorous Tarantella (Anon) followed as an encore.

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Among the Maltese soloists taking part in this year’s festival was Ramona Zammit Formosa who plays several keyboard instruments. Hers at the Aula Mgr G. Farrugia was a harpsichord recital of great musical charm, style and elegance.

Byrd’s The Bella was a veritable carillon of happy sound. Handel’s Suite N. 5 in E “The Harmonious Blacksmith” is overshadowed by its last movement of variations bearing that title.

After the more sedate preceding movements, the last was a tour-de-force of virtuoso playing which never lacked clarity and precision. Peerson’s very programmatic The Fall of the Leaf and The Primrose were full of autumnal and spring-inspired imagery while there was no disputing the elegance of delivery in J.S. Bach’s Suite N. 5 in G, one of the so-called “French” set.

Bach followed in disguise so to say, through his transcription of Marcello’s lovely Concerto in D minor, originally for oboe with its hauntingly beautiful adagio flanked by two vigorous allegro movements.

The rest of the concert was all Rameau: first the amusing La Poule, then the celebratory La Dauphine which was followed by the encore Le Tambourin.