Flute and piano in a cool mood - review

Versatility is one of the attributes any musician could master and muster. This is very much the case with the popular husband and wife duo Silvio Zammit and Ramona Zammit Formosa. Barocco Cultural Events presented another well-attended recital in their latest Friday evening concert series. The mood was 20th century and began with a piece by Debussy, The Golliwog's Cakewalk. Although he lived only up to 1918 Debussy's music revolutionised western music from well before that with traces of his new approach "infiltrating" even relatively "simple" works like the piano suite Children's Corner from which the first item on the programme was taken.

It was a pleasure to see how the duo really got into the feel of the music they performed and ably carried the audience with them. Next, also in an arrangement by Mr Zammit, from the original for piano, were Gershwin's contrasting Three Preludes. Leaping forward over 50 years, they proceeded to perform Hellewell's Jazz Rock Sonata. If in the previous works the piano was more or less in an accompanying role, this sonata has both instruments in an equal partnership with some intricately difficult work requiring considerable technique. Both had virtuoso cadenzas to perform followed by a particularly nice, lyrical passage.

This very approachable work, which is a fusion of jazz, rock and classical idioms went down very well with the audience and put them in the mood for more, which came, after a brief interval, with Joplin's Original Rag (all right, it was composed in 1899) and the jaunty The Entertainer. Heath's Out of the Blue, composed in the early 1980s is a free-style work inspired by music of Mikes Davis and John Coltraine in three movements alternating in slow/fast tempi. It came across as a very intense work in certain parts, especially just before the final diminuendo. Concluding was De Angelis's Sky Flowers. A work from the early 1990s it is very melodious while obviously influenced by jazz. At times both instruments gave vent to some very expressive playing with the lovely theme soaring high and then engaging in some accented dynamics which provided further colour.

It was quite amazing: while enjoying this work I mused how wonderful it would be to hear as an encore Morricone's Gabriel's Oboe in an arrangement for this duo. They had it up their sleeve and did perform it as an encore. This was, of course, in an arrangement by Mr Zammit.