Concert
Cosmos Wind Ensemble

The first of the series of concerts of the Bir Miftuħ Festival featured the Cosmos Wind Ensemble. This well-knit ensemble of very accomplished performers, colleagues and friends consists of Rebecca Hall (flute and piccolo), John Mcdonough (oboe and cor anglais), Godfrey Mifsud (clarinet) and Ulrike Buhlmann (bassoon).

Ms Hall, in her inimitably charming and witty way introduced the chosen works through which, she said, ran a common thread.

This was either to bring out the character of each instrument, or to depict characters and situations through the music these characters inspired.

There was no doubt about the germinating seed of opera and a generous dose of bel canto in the youthful Rossini’s six sonatas for strings, later arranged as quartets for wind instruments.

I find them delightful in both versions (sometimes even the line-up for wind varies) and this evening’s opening work was no less striking for its simple elegance and the flair with which it was put across.

Mr McDonough played the cor anglais throughout the work which in its opening allegro revealed a marked predominance of the flute with the bassoon coming a close second. Later all instruments had the opportunity to have their say as in the all too brief andante which sounded lie a charming arietta. The concluding playful allegretto showed a marked predominance of the flute, clarinet and bassoon by which time, the ensemble retaining that balance and textural cohesion established very early on.

Albert Garzia has written a series of musical portraits of various Maltese characters, especially for the Cosmos Ensemble. Ms Hall said she hoped the composer would bring more such characters to life, then together with her colleagues got down to project some of them in three Maltese portraits. The Fishmonger is scored for oboe, bassoon and clarinet and is a vivid picture of a fisherman selling his catch on the street, with of course a clear reference to his street cries advertising the fish he is hawking. An almost ostinato rhythm gives the work a certain vivacious drive.

The Farmer and The Bus Driver are scored for all four musicians but for cor anglais rather than oboe and they could not be more contrasting. The almost plodding tempo of The Farmer projected very well the weariness and harsh toil which is/was the traditional farmer’s lot. The Bus Driver was as brash as brash could be, an amusingly witty but not too unkind barb launched at a section of local society the gradual disappearance of which could evoke conflicting and contradictory feelings.

With nothing at all brash about it but plain simple elegance and taste, the concert continued with Mozart’s Divertimento in B flat (the flute kept quiet here), and with that easy adaptation to completely different idiom and style the evening continued with the Quartet by Jean Françaix.

This neo-classic work bubbled with energy, drive and wit to match the enthusiasm with which it was introduced and the obvious delight and fun of the musicians in performing and projecting it to the audience. In Curtis’s Klezmer Wedding there is much resorting to different Jewish traditions and the work increased in energy and colour as it went along in an infectiously rhythmic whorl, even more accentuated with the piccolo’s high pitch replacing the flute. The sole encore conceded was Gershwin’s dreamy Summertime.