Concert
Romantic Classics
soloist: Simon Abdilla Joslin, cello;
Malta Philharmonic Orchestra
Manoel Theatre
Brian Schembri always pulls a large audience and last week’s concert at the Manoel was no exception.
A full house packed the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra’s concert, which marked the first time Schembri was conducting since his recent appointment as chief conductor of the MPO.
His typically robust touch was very evident in Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture. This does not mean that he did not also apply another facet of his conducting, namely the more lyrically flowing side, colouring the tragic aspects of the overture’s programme.
He was to give full vent to this later in the concert in an exciting, turbulent and, where necessary, touchingly tender reading of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet.
In between there was similar dichotomy in the performance of Schumann’s Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129.
Soloist Simon Abdilla Joslin is no stranger to this work which I believe he performed at the Manoel some eight years ago. Tackling a work after a long interval could result in either a loss of one’s touch or the opposite. The latter was the happy case: a performance enshrined with a mature and deeper interpretation than formerly. Indeed, it is never the same although with regard to sensitivity, this performer maintains it as undimmed as ever.
Even though this work does have difficult moments (otherwise where would the challenge be?), it is not one which is a virtuoso exercise merely for the sake of show. Still, it remains one only fit for a skilfully adept musician and the soloist came up to expectations. All forces combined went from movement to movement in one connected, easy flow. Abdilla Joslin was at his lyrical best in the very cantabile central movement. Support from and rapport with the orchestra remained to the fore and contributed to the successful conclusion of this with a brightly articulate cadenza from the cello and a pretty brilliant orchestral coda.
After the brilliant rendition of Romeo and Juliet, the path was open to more orchestral excitement, with Jean Sibelius’s final published extended musical composition, Symphony No. 7 in C Major Op. 105.
That there is no formal similarity with the composer’s previous symphonies is true, but there are echoes of some of the earlier ones in the appearance of some repeated thematic material as the work builds up into a great climax.
Schembri’s typically robust touch was very evident in Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture
The orchestra responded magnificently to the direction which maintained a continuously seamless flow of its organic, cohesively symphonic thought in this multifaceted single-movement work.
I found the whole thing pretty grandiose as it was exhilarating, a carefully thought-out reading where nothing was left to chance.