The opening event of this year’s Malta Arts Festival was a splendid symphonic concert by the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Brian Schembri at the Mediterranean Conference Centre on July 1.
The Malta Council for Culture and the Arts (MCCA) works hard both at promoting the arts for an ever larger audience and raising the standards of local productions by exposing us to international artists of the highest grade.
The former is surely a challenge considering that, unfortunately, attending live concerts does not rank satisfactorily high in our culture’s list of regular things-to-do.
The opening night concert diversified between popular classics and a Maltese premiere of a work by the late composer Charles Camilleri (1931-2009).
The first piece in the programme was Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1, in B-flat minor, Op.23. I always love listening to such immensely popular classics played live.
They keep challenging that notion of the ‘perfect interpretation’ – that idea of a classical Greek beauty – with the imprinted standards which we make up in our minds after having listened to countless versions on records.
Live performances are exciting because in their essence lies the instinctual enjoyment of watching performers, in flesh and blood, struggle and succeed (or fail) as they are confronted with physical challenges in not-always-favourable conditions.
In this first piece, we watched the pianist Oleg Poliansky and Schembri looking forward to communcating with the audience (something I appreciate a lot in a performance) while challenging themselves to recreate the grandeur of the opening movement from the score.
After struggling to establish the right tempo, they went on to dominate the spirit of the music, delivering that Romantic sense of yearning with an ever increasingly higher accuracy. Especially in the third movement, the music was full of passion and drive.
Schembri’s command was dominant as usual – just like a good school teacher, the conductor is authoritative and humorous at the same time, keeping the audience on their toes.
Challenging the notorious reputation of the venue, he gave us a very balanced sound.
The first two movement of Camilleri’s ‘New Idea’ Symphony were performed in a certain atmosphere of unease – rightly so, considering the evolution of the musical theme itself.
Schembri conducted the Maltese premiere, backed by the experience of having recorded the same work with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Scotland, premiered it in Brussels and conducted it in France.
He struggled to energise the orchestra with his passionate gestures. A little more confidence from the orchestra would have made the music feel more secure and unified.
Unfortunately, as is the case with many orchestras, contemporary music is not the most often genre performed. The third movement, which is more rooted in diatonicity, was better delivered and consequently better recieved. This movement depicts the theme as fully developed, ending the work regally.
I love the idea of having the orchestral sound in this movement resembling more that of an organ in a neo-classical style than that of a symphony orchestra in the more Romantic fashion – but that’s a matter of artistic interpretation.
Stravinky’s Firebird concluded the programme. A properly warmed-up orchestra gave us a fresh, bright interpretation of the Firebird Suite (1919 version) with Stravinsky’s gestures and clarity of orchestration fully represented.
The suite was majestic, passionate, ceremonial and moving at different times, as one would expect. Thumbs up, especially to the woodwind section.
The evening was rounded off with Khachaturyan’s waltz, Masquerade, as an encore.