I have mixed feelings about open-air performance spaces.

While we are blessed with six months of good weather when performances can take place in the great outdoors, like Girgenti Palace, or semi-outdoors Arts Festival concerts at the Palace courtyard in Valletta, they vary a huge amount with regard to both ambience and acoustic.

While I had asked why we had to be cooped up at the MCC for the two Malta Philharmonic Orchestra concerts when both were amplified is a mystery, especially when the programmes of both concerts would have admirably suited a grandiose outdoor space like Mdina’s St Paul’s Square or even a barge on Grand Harbour; if they can do it in Bregenz, it can be done anywhere.

This is why I find that the piano creation of yet another outdoor space that fulfils none of the aspirations and needs of the Maltese cultural world to be so absurd. We are short of indoor spaces notoutdoor ones.

Be that as it may, I find the ambience of Vilhena Palace unsurpassed. It is the only edifice in Malta of its type; a Parisianmaison particulier which even has balconies on the side reminiscent of the Manoel Theatre, which was also built to order by this splendiferous Portuguese prince and grandmaster much for our enjoyment.

One, however, must remember that both buildings date back to the first half of the 18th century and have their limitations. The greatest drawback at the theatre is its size.

Many times, performances there remind me of forcibly stuffing elephants in Mini-Minors but in Vilhena Palace the drawback can be remedied every easily, as it is simply lack of control of what goes on in that short stretch of street from the gate itself to the Benedictine monastery.

I attended the concert organised by Cliff Zammit Stevens entitled Libretti in the Silent City in a city that was anything but silent. The noise in the road was terrible; a veritable cacophony of discordant sound I found so off-putting that I had to leave half way.

Not that I did not enjoy the performances themselves; far from it, but seriously, if the palace isto be ever used for this purpose again, the street outside mustbe cordoned off and people for a mere couple of hours shoulduse the other two entrances; unless, of course, revving gcars and bawling babies punctuated with the odd wolf whistle can be strictly controlled, which I doubt.

Zammit Stevens’s voice is growing; developing into what I can see as delightful Don Ottavio. I feel his voice is as polished and honed as is required to carry off a great Mozart role like that, but I do not think he should attempt the heroic tenor roles; at least not yet, ashis voice should be nurturedcarefully.

It is a delight to listen to; well controlled with a great sense of dynamics and excellent taste in the pieces he chooses to sing despite the fact that I found the two Schubert lieder he chose to be a bit too melancholy and infused with a little vibrato overdose. His Lalo though, was outstandingly lovely and the piece was admirably suited to his voice but Verdi? No, not yet.

This concert was a sort of Cliff and Friends and Azerbaijani soprano Seljan Nasibli a fellow student of Zammit Stevensperformed Torroba’s La Petenera; a delicate fin de siècle piece which, although at times a trifle too retrained, could not disguise the fact that like Zammit Stevens this is a splendid voice in the making with some electrifying top note potential which one day will bring houses crashing down.

The greatest revelation though was pianist Nicholas McCarthy, described as a ‘left-hand pianist’ whose performance of Scriabin’s Prelude and Nocturne Op 9 1894, which of course predates the Wittgenstein pieces by almost three decades, was a splendid experience; apart from the obvious dazzle in technique which sadly not all of us could see; the flailing left hand racing up and down the keyboard frenetically and the prodigious pedalling; the most important aspect of it all was that the end result was sheer poetry.

This is not fully developedScriabin; unmistakable like Vers La Flamme or the two terrifying final sonatas; the Black and the White Masses, but still reminiscent of Chopin; already speaking with a different voice but similar sentiment.

There is, in fact, a modest repertoire of piano music for the left hand; mostly studies by Bach, Chopin, Brahms and a number of other composers, but undoubtedly the greatest and most famous is Ravel’s concerto composed for Paul Wittgenstein 1887-1961, who had lost his right arm in the trenches of World War I.

The Scriabin, of course, is a bravura piece, much more than a mere study, and showed that such a piece can be intensely musical besides being a vehicle to show off technical bravura, which is probably how or why what followed after World War I; concertos by Britten, Korngold and Prokofiev to name but three are so sublime.

I was impressed by the unflagging dependability of the piano accompanist Marcelle Zahra, whose performance, although always overshadowed by the voice, showed great promise.

I look forward to listening to what she has to say as a soloist in the near future.