Bir Miftuħ Festival - Exquisite entertainment

I can hardly think of a more pleasant way of being entertained on a cool summer evening than to be couched in the uniquely welcoming ambience of the Church of Santa Marija of Bir Miftuħ listening to exquisite music performed to perfection by the Wiener Solisten Quartett in the penultimate concert held in this year's edition of the festival.

Practically four centuries of music for string quartet were represented in a recital of just over an hour. The pieces selected had one thing in common - they were all very well known and in addition oozing with popular appeal but still sounded remarkably fresh. Wolfgang Gollner, Adrian Roman (violins), Endre Guran (viola) and Klaus Steinberger (cello) galloped through the items in the programme which have stood the test of time, sampling an aperitif which whet our appetites for more - perhaps another time. The dominant contributing factor to success was, apart from the obviously keen sense of musicianship on the part of the performers, the warm personality of Wolfgang Gollner, who not only dynamically led the quartet in his role as first violinist but also charmingly had something brief to say about each composition and obviously enjoyed every minute of it.

Pachelbel's Canon in D Major, the only canon in the composer's output, still remains one of the most beautiful in the string repertoire, served as an opener to the programme. The same can be said for the following item, Air on a G String, by Pachelbel's younger and much more famous contemporary, J.S. Bach. Its long-pianissimo drawn-out phrases reflected the balance between the performers whose sense of rapport was more than evident not only here but seemed to grow as the pieces unfolded.

Another favourite came in the form of the first movement, allegro non molto, of Vivaldi's Concerto No. 4 from the Four Seasons - Winter which was hallmarked by dynamic tension. Mozart's Quartet No. 4 in C Major k.157, the only quartet that evening to be played in its entirety, accentuated a balanced sense of teamwork and a range of expression which characterised the Quartet.

Two pieces from the works of Haydn, the founder of the classical string quartet, namely the serenade from Quartet Opus 3 No. 5 and allegro moderato from Quartet Opus 64 No. 5 - The Lark came next.

The serenade from the fifth quartet in F Major has become popular apart from the rest of the work: marked andante cantabile the courtly melody in the first violin is beautifully accompanied by plucked strings.

A further development in the evolution of the string quartet was immediately apparent in the dramatic allegro from Schubert's Quartet in E Flat Major Opus 125 No. 1. Then came one of the most beautiful movements ever to be composed for string quartet - the second movement, lento, from Dvorak's Quartet in F Major Opus 96 The American, characterised by a haunting theme which gradually grows in momentum, in which the first violin excelled.

A complete change of style came with the Wiener Walzer by Josef Lanner, the father of the Viennese waltz and yet again with an arrangement specially written for the Quartett, the Intermezzo Sinfonico from Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana.

The quartet's versatility served it well in the ease with which it interpreted music from all four centuries and in consequently diverse styles. No recital with Austrian connections could possibly be complete without the inclusion of a Strauss waltz, reserved for a very welcome encore, soon to be followed by another - this time a humorous skit on Haydn.