Malta’s leading contemporary composer Joseph Vella conducting the concert.

Concert
Oboe soloist Paolino Tona; Malta Philharmonic Orchestra
Manoel Theatre

The concert was dubbed “400 years of composer-conductors”, when the earliest of the works performed was composed exactly two centuries ago (even if premiered three years later).

The overture to Louis Spohr’s opera Faust started off this very well-attended concert, the penultimate in this season’s series.

With its typical allusions to good and evil, sensuality and the like, the piece served as a reasonably good warming up to an evening that was to culminate in a brand new work by the conductor himself. But before it came to that, there was an interesting and varied journey which took one to Germany and England.

A Suite of Four Movements from Felix Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream was truly dreamy, mostly in the long nocturne. The music really sparkled both in the inter-mezzo and even more so in the lithe scherzo, where elves and sprites could almost be felt and seen fluttering about before it all ended with the splendidly solemn Wedding March.

The world premiere of Joseph Vella’s Concerto for Orchestra Op. 132, like all new works, needs more than one hearing to allow it to sink in properly

The lightness of texture so evident in the Suite was maintained even more so in the lightly-scored, nostalgic and warmly autumnal Oboe Concerto by Richard Strauss.

Paolino Tona’s handling of the solo part was very admirable and mindful of both the reflective parts of the work, which was contrasted by sections where the writing for the oboe is of a technically very difficult virtuoso kind.

The orchestra was supportive, yet as unobtrusive as could be while having its say whenever this was necessary. The overall impression conveyed was, rightly so, the work’s basically tranquil nature – the work of a man who had no need to impress and who resorted to economic yet very telling means to project his message.

That same kind of lightness of texture evident in parts of the Mendelssohn Suite was forthcoming in the string section when Benjamin Britten’s Simple Symphony was performed.

Listening to the work he put together at 21, from pieces he wrote even before he entered his teens, makes one really wonder at Britten’s melodic invention, sense of form, structure, balance and texture which were already at his command, ready to be honed and perfected as he was to do in due course.

The work went down very well and a good number of the audience seemed to especially like the Playful Pizzicato, after which there was the evening’s only case of misplaced applause. As a whole the work was performed to great satisfaction, although one must say that the Sentimental Sarabande was especially lovely.

The world premiere of Joseph Vella’s Concerto for Orchestra Op. 132, like all new works, needs more than one hearing to allow it to sink in properly.

However, one could already digest and appreciate right away certain parts of it, such as the forceful and powerful tutti sections which added a lot of grandeur to the work.

This came in great contrast to other parts where the scoring is very light in this one-movement work which comes in a number of distinct and mostly continuous sections.

A trio of flutes had a lot to say, being joined in their chatter by other wind instruments, and so it went on. All sections had their say, this being the very nature of the work. In sections or tutti, the orchestra gradually moved forward with a mighty impetus reaching a great climax.

The rhythmic and textural variety is great, the masterful handling of the different sections of the orchestra also reveal an intimacy with and understanding of its potential.

To quote Maria Frendo’s comment in her programme note: “... the composer strikes an equitable balance between the abstract and the more accessible” and later, in view of the way the music unfolded, justifies her remark that: “the end result is a work endowed with immediacy and abstraction, proximity and detachment”.

The audience warmly applauded Mro Vella and the MPO, who conceded Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 as an encore. It was delivered with such verve and gusto that it was loudly cheered.