...........'Even in Arcadia I exist'.............I simply cannot believe that 14 years have passed since Davinia Galea, Lucia Parnis England and I dreamt up the first Bir Miftuh Classical Music Festival for Din L-Art Helwa; Malta's doyenne of NGO's, with a track record that is second to none and with a formidable number of restored properties that it mans and maintains with the help of its cohorts of dedicated volunteers. Along with the Chapel of Hal Millieri, the church of Santa Marija ta' Bir Miftuh is DLH's most prestigious religious property and opening it up to stage concerts these past 14 years has rendered it the NGO's most popular one.
I attended the concert by the Cosmos Wind Ensemble at Bir Miftuh on Saturday the 29th. Unfortunately, could not stay on for the second concert after the 45 minute interval which was a vocal recital by the Feldkirchen Choir from Austria. The evening was a sort of Anschluss as the Wind Ensemble was sponsored by the German Embassy while the Choir was sponsored by the Austrian Embassy.
I cannot but stress the importance of these diplomatic sponsorships. The connections many of the diplomatic corps have with the cultural elements of their respective countries can be formidable and although they all complain that their budgets are shrinking I am sure that their influence is such that for the sake of showing off the artistic and cultural richness of their country they will somehow clinch it. They always have and I for one am extremely appreciative of their efforts.
The Cosmos is made up flautist Rebecca Hall, who kept us eruditely entertained by her commentaries about each piece, oboist John McDonough, clarinettist Godfrey Mifsud, bassoonist Ulrike Buhlmann and Jose Garcia Gutierrez on the French Horn. These musicians have over the years built up a great rapport that enables them to perform as opposed to merely play. Their ability to convey the passion and the romance of the music transcends their undoubted mastery of technicality. This is as it should be. Again the eclectic choice of music made the evening very interesting. The Beethoven adaptation of the op 71 wind sextet originally scored for 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons and 2 horns was arranged by Robert Stark for the above elements. This was followed by Charles Camilleri's Picasso Set in six contrasting movements and the very beautiful and evocative Variations sur une theme libre op42 by Eugene Bozza.
Wind ensembles are funny things. The sound of them is unique and the great music written for them simply does not sound right when transcribed for string or any other instruments. This is because the composers in question, and somehow Mozart's utterly celestial Quintet for Piano and Winds K 452 springs to mind here, understood the colours and capabilities of these instruments to the extent that they were able to push them to the limit. Strangely enough I found that this was patently evident in the Bozza piece which I had never heard before and which I have been told has never been recorded.
Written in 1942 in a war torn France this piece is sheer escapism. It is impressionistic and colourful and explores harmonies that cannot fail to move in a set of seven variations on a medieval theme. It is of course dyed in the wool Gallicised music full if slightly quirky charm and warm colour. While other composers, many of whom had fled to the US were scratching a living writing film scores and when composing seriously were being total iconoclasts, Bozza remains serenely unaffected and produced something that could have easily have been written half a century before and would have still sounded old fashioned. This is why I feel that this piece is a wonderful form of escapism, a piece that could easily have been called Et in Arcadia Ego.
The Lento (Chorale) in Variation 7 was extremely beautiful and elegiac and the set was splendidly executed by the Cosmos whom I feel should seriously think about recording it as they should also record Camilleri's Picasso Set. I fact In Arcadia Ego would be a very apt title for a CD comprising these two very interesting and engaging 20th Century works.
Pablo Picasso strode the art world of the 20th century like a colossus. His prodigious output never ceases to amaze. His stylistic variations and experimentations are the product of a genius who was also a driven workaholic. Nothing else existed apart from the creative process for this diminutive Spaniard with those penetrating blackcurrant eyes whose paintings, sculptures, drawings, etchings and ceramics fill the major MOMAs of this world. A painting of his entitled Nude, Green Leaves and Bust has only a couple of weeks ago set a world record for the price paid for a work of art.
Apparently the Picasso Set was composed when Charles Camilleri was in Canada in the 60s and was destined to enhance a CBC documentary about Picasso who was then the world's greatest living artist. Set in six very descriptive and contrasting pieces I am convinced that the composer must have studied the artist's work pretty closely. Rebecca Hall says that the third movement Mural; Lento refers to Picasso's most famous mural ; the 1937 Guernica that depicts in stark monochrome the savage bombardment of a Basque village by the same name. Although we will never know for sure it is highly likely that it was. That leaves the other five movements open to speculation which, as I have just visited the Picasso Museum in Barcelona yet again, sent my mental visuals reeling.
While Camilleri explored the full capacities of the wind ensemble in different styles he was obviously taking the different phases the artist worked through and in. The Blue Period, the Rose, Cubism are the major ones but then Picasso was always uniquely and quintessentially himself, uncompromising and as prickly as Beethoven. As Harlequins and Minotaurs, Contortionists and Satyrs rushed through my head I could not help admiring the cohesively tight playing of the Cosmos Ensemble and the way it managed to communicate this at times weird and wonderful music to a most appreciative audience.
The Beethoven op 71 in E Flat Quintet is a beautifully crafted genial piece form Beethoven's middle period that is full of graceful charm and sunny rhythm. It could almost have been written by Mozart in fact. It was a pleasure to listen to the clear articulation and the crispness of the Cosmos interpretation. I especially enjoyed the final Rondo Allegro which was a really fast and furious peasant round dance in which, despite the pace, nothing was lost and the infectious Beethoven idiom was fully delineated