Joyce Guillaumier enjoys an evening of easy listening music at the national orchestra’s University Foundation Day Concert.

The University Foundation Day Concert by the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra held earlier this month at the Mediterranean Conference Centre provided just that.

The emphasis was on ballabile and cantabile works which are very easy on the ear

The orchestra, under the baton of Mro Michael Laus, presented a very pleasant repertoire consisting of well-known works by famous composers – Mozart, Rossini, Mascagni, Strauss, Offenbach and Khachaturian.

The emphasis was on ballabile and cantabile works which are very easy on the ear, yet which present a challenge to the musicians and their maestro by not letting them slip into the mediocre. And the orchestra certainly did not!

Mro Laus held the musicians firmly in his grasp and managed to elicit beautiful interventions from various instruments and from the orchestra. The ritardandi were so beautiful while the oboe and the cor anglais, the flutes, the horns, the bassoons, the clarinets, the percussion and the strings gave a very creditable interpretation.

The Eine Kleine Nacht Musik by Mozart, played by the strings, moved from the rather aggressive 1st theme in the first movement to the tenderness of the second one, a Romanza of great charm. The third movement, an elegant minuet, set feet a-tapping while the fourth increased the rhythm into a Rondo which brought the work to its end.

The second work, the overture from Il Barbiere di Siviglia by Rossini, is very typical of the composer. The work does not only provide the joie de vivre associated with the musician from Pesaro but is also familiar because he used it in several of his other works.

I liked the pace established by the maestro and the soundwaves that flowed over the audience, bathing it in different pitches and timbres.

This boisterous overture was followed by the lyrical and highly charged Intermezzo from L’Amico Fritz, by Mascagni. Unfortunately, the opera is not very well known, which, for me, is a shame. However, the Intermezzo, coming at the end of the second act and the beginning of the third one, makes up for this discrepancy. It has a darker sound and it sets the stage for Fritz’s despair and eventual joy in his new-found bride. The orchestra gave a very good interpretation of Fritz’s sentiments.

To dispel a certain air of despondency caused by Fritz’s unreturned love for Suzel (little did he know that she loved him too) in Mascagni’s Intermezzo, we were regaled with the Overture from Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II . The strings had a field day as the audience twirled and danced (imagination at its best) to its thrilling and sweet melodies.

The Overture from Die Fledermaus was followed by the beautiful Barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffmann by Offenbach, played with great subtlety by the orchestra. This was one work which the audience was very familiar with. In fact, I could hear some humming coming from the audience.

The last official work was The Suite from Aram Khachaturian’s ballet Gayaneh. The Suite, consisting of five short movements, was a clear example of the composer’s interest in centuries-old motifs of Armenian culture and the influence that Western music had on him.

Of course, the Sabre dance featured prominently, followed by The Florentine March by Julius Fucik, as encore.

It was an enjoyable night. It would have been even better had people not kept coming in late.People should really know better.