Pianist Roberto Cominati made an indelible impression on October 11 at the Manoel Theatre, Valletta, playing transcriptions from Sgambati-Gluck, Liszt-Handel, Godowsky-Bach and Moskowsky-Bizet.

The moments I especially enjoyed from the latter half of the concert had to be Cominati playing Moszowski’s transcription from Bizet’s Carmen- Peter Farrugia

The concert showcased Cominati’s considerable keyboard prowess and range of expression, tutored under the likes of Aldo Ciccolini at the Accademia Superiore di Musica and Franco Scala at the Accademia Pianistica Internazionale.

Cominati’s musical education began when he was admitted to the Conservatory San Pietro a Majella in Naples, at the age of eight. He has since achieved a variety of distinctions including first prize at the Ferruccio Busoni International Competition and the Jacques Stehman award.

He has performed in the Salzbuger Festspiele and played at La Scala in Milan, the Washington D.C. Kennedy Centre and the Sydney Opera House among other prestigious venues.

This latest return to the Manoel gave the public an opportunity to enjoy Cominati’s very natural way of making music, within a concert selection that included some classic fare, and a variety of more innovative pieces.

The stage was sparsely decorated with arum lilies and the theatre erupted into applause when Cominati took his seat behind the Steinway. He opened the concert with Schumann’s challenging opus, Carnaval.

Schumann is best remembered for his piano pieces which vacillate between abstract or conservative works and smaller suites that treat literary themes.

Unlike Schumann’s first masterpiece Papillons (which weaves a story based on Jean-Paul’s unfinished novel Flegeljahre), Carnaval has maintained its popularity among pianists by providing the kind of exuberant chordal passages that delight audiences everywhere.

Subtitled Scènes mignonnes sur quatre notes (Little scenes on four notes), the four notes encode a cryptic puzzle which spell the German name for the town in which Schumann’s then fiancée was born, as well as representing the German word for carnival and a cypher of the composer’s name.

Quite a bit more was going on than one would expect.

As an aside, interested listeners might appreciate the recording of Charles Rosen playing Carnaval available on Youtube. Rosen studied with pupils of both Liszt and Chopin and the opportunity to hear (by so few degrees of separation) a technique informed by both composers will be sure to enliven any Sunday afternoon.

The moments I especially enjoyed from the latter half of the concert had to be Cominati playing Moszowski’s transcription from Bizet’s Carmen. Full of the opera’s Spanish fire, all movement and rhythm, the piece was a joy to hear.

We would do well to remind ourselves that the appreciation of fine music must never be reduced to a clinical dissection of mathematical sequences – that music is first and foremost an expression of spirit.

While the rest of the world is keen to open classical music to a wider audience and introduce it to as many people as are willing to take the plunge, it must be said that there are many Maltese struggling to maintain an uncomfortable appropriation of music, as some kind of exclusive pursuit best left to “the experts”.

It is a feather in the Manoel’s cap that the theatre has been instrumental in changing that attitude, but there’s some way to go yet.

Attitudes are difficult to shift and the sure sign of an amateur (no matter how refined or skilled) is their fundamental reluctance to be free – they find security in the small, the constrained and the tightly controlled.

However, true beauty is wasteful – it breaks the alabaster jar and fills the entire room with perfume, rather than eke out each drop with miserly self-satisfaction. The artist offers himself wholly and without reserve to the service of something shared between his idiom and his audience.

Cominati is such an artist and it was an utter pleasure to share in that beautiful music and become part of the Manoel’s mission to present music, not as a stifled concern of the few, but a living inheritance for us all.