The New Choral Singers, one of the best and one of the most popular local choirs, gave a concert, Lights!, at the Hilltop Gardens, Naxxar, in aid of the Malta Community Chest Fund.
It was a smooth and slick progression from work to work and one felt an increasing enthusiasm in the singing as well as the audience’s involvement and attention.
Summer open-air performances in Malta are either plagued by comparatively still warm evenings or cool windy ones and always with fireworks banging away from some direction.
This evening happened to be rather cool and windy and, of course, better than the heat. The fireworks were few really and not all that close.
The programme was mainly a light one, hence the title chosen for the presentation. It ranged from opera to musi-cals which have become classics in their own right.
The charismatic pianist/organist/director Wayne Marshall, a renowned musician of international fame who needs no introduction to local music lovers, presented each work and at one point gave a marvellous example of his great keyboard versatility when he improvised on themes from Bernstein’s West Side Story. It was simply brilliant and was received with loud acclaim. It is a pity that this evening the piano at his disposition and that of the other pianists was not of the best.
The programme was mainly a light one, hence the title chosen for the presentation
By that point the choir had sang, among others, Greg Pliska’s arrangement of the chorus Let us Join in Celebration from Smetana’s The Bartered Bride.
After this frisky introduction came the lovely serenity of Goodall’s The Lord is My Shepherd (Psalm 230), a medley from Abba’s iconic Mamma Mia (arr. Gary Fry). Difficult as it was to choose which of the pieces performed were best, I found Mancini’s Moon River (arr. Anita Kerr) and Lloyd Webber’s Love Changes Everything (arr. Ed Lojeski) had something special about them. The mood changed with every piece… some were sheer fun like N.H. Brown’s Singin’ in the Rain (arr. Mac Huff) or with some reflection like Rodgers and Hammerstein’s You’ll Never Walk Alone from Carousel (arr. William Stickles) and Bock’s Sunrise Sunset from Fiddler on the Roof (arr. Arthur Harris)
The latter was not the only excerpt from that musical. One of bass Albert Buttigieg’s two solos was, in fact, a splendid rendering of If I Were a Rich Man. This deservingly popular and versatile singer deserved all the warm plaudits he received. The same had been the case when earlier on he sang the swaggering Toreador’s Song from Bizet’s Carmen with the backing of the chorus whose parts were arranged by Shirley Helleur, resident conductor/pianist of the New Choral Singers.
There was another operatic excerpt, the immortal Va pensiero from Verdi’s Nabucco which was nigh perfect - balanced and cohesive, expressive just that the final note was cut a bit too short.
Concluding the concert was Cy Coleman’s really lovely piece, The Rhythm of Life from Sweet Charity (arr. Richard Barnes). This had added punch in that the piano accompaniment was a richer one as it was for four hands.
Another pianist collaborated with the NCS and this is Irina Fedchenko-Carbonaro. The three pianists shared the job of accompanying the choir. Marshall sometimes directed from the piano or from the podium with one of the ladies at the instrument.