Flying fiddles

Another "in the face" Cairo concert night. They come along almost uninvited, without publicity, unexpected. What will it be and who will do it? The whole thing may be cancelled. And the audience, will there be one? There was for this concert. Certainly, not a seethe, but respectable and wide awake to potentials. Keep it clean boy: thus spake the late great Jelly Roll Morton in the seminal days of jazz. Being lean is a great way to survive almost anything musical, particularly if it has to do with a band. It keeps to the line, scale and narrative. Surface looks after itself. The conductor of this concert was again the protean Ahmed El-Saedi. He had done a slim-line Mahler 6th a few weeks ago. And, now, with Debussy's Nocturnes and Richard Strauss's Also Spake Zarathustra, he did it again ó and it paid off again in a smashingly exciting wind up.

Who would expect such clarity and aesthetic facial surgery on these two ancient personages? El-Saedi knows how to bring it off. Nocturnes whizzed along just like 1930s jazz and Zarathustra, now over a century old, crashed into the opera house like a nuclear missile explosion and went berserk. For Debussy's Nocturnes we were spared any delicate gouache washes of colour, 1900 being the date of the work. Instead, we had Delacroix, positive colouring and a high romantic view of Nuages, Fêtes and Sirène. It was Debussy at Carthage before its destruction. A very exciting time bend.

What happened to Zarathustra? Being over a century old, he is a dinosaur of quality, the lustre of whose jewels is real. This strange, horrid work still has the sheer bravado to knock you over. It does not age. It just ignores everything, moves out into a new era, indifferent to any criticisms ó and charms everyone to death. Death for sure, since it is all about survival which is the same thing.

The concert was lean ó and late. It is now 1998. This Zarathustra was 1896. The classic age was about over, and so Strauss brought opulence. Listeners really cannot do without opulence for long. The eager listening ear needs stretches of richness. And nothing better than Strauss to provide it. Zarathustra is autobiographical, symbolical, elephantiasis, Persian ó and Zoroastrian, quite a legitimate belief, but Richard Strauss turned it into Luciferism.

The sci-fi times took up the opening explosion of the chords for the beginning of Kubrick's 2001. Zarathustra entered pop land, but it is now back where it belongs as the most enormous symphonic poem of all. It is not as awful as it sounds. In fact, the domestic-erotic part of it is very beauteously done, what was later to come in the Strauss operas. Who is to mop up the overflow from the Strauss orchestra? No one so far. It grew too large even for him to handle, split into pieces and became the new music of Vienna.

El-Saedi knows his way with such music. He flies high, looks down upon it and segments it into lucid, small, exact pieces, all held together by the central themes from which it had grown. So, though the timbers of the opera house shivered under the impact of the mighty noise, instead of being blowsy and overblown, it became a brilliantly lit sight of a musical landscape that may soon to disappear forever. Richard Strauss came, stayed a while and left us. Like an anaconda he swallowed western music alive.

The Egyptian Chamber Orchestra; Iman Mustafa, soprano, Wael Farouk, piano and Olga Shourkhouetsa, harp; Small Hall, Cairo Opera House; 20 April

Music does not defeat time. It stretches it. The two final concerts of this review demonstrate how far the stretch has gone. Musically they left the human landscape and flew far away into an inhuman one of insects and spacescapes in which only the moon, a reflection, is the light that shines.

The Pro Helvetia-Egyptian musical handshake showed the distance covered. It was a lively showing of four composers whose work is the result of study both here and abroad, but arriving more or less at the same destination, brothers under the skin looking out at a scene which haunts them and which leaves them little room to strike individual images.

Uzor has been played here before, and his music fits a formula which is common to most Egyptian composers, whether they have studied at home or abroad. Uzor is Nigerian, but international in his career movements. His long soprano scenea called Canto 1 for soprano and ensemble makes a fine, intense listen. He does what so many younger composers do these days when dealing with the human voice, allowing a sense of sheer drama to enter the vocal line by way of enormous intervals with which the singer must cope. Iman Mustafa, rather like the tenor who faced the horrendous intervals of Uzor's Akhenaton music, made a success of the piece, but such music never allows the voice to flow freely. The going becomes hard and rather heartless.

We were also offered Ahmed Madkour's The Kings Valley ó grandiose and spacious with dark tones. His music flows and has a kind of root security the other music of this evening lacks. He is from Aswan and maybe his study with Mona Ghoneim encouraged a sense of presence which sounds in her own music beyond most other Egyptian composers.

Piano pieces by Amr Okba, Egyptian and locally trained, were played by Wael Farouk with understanding. Farouk has an artist's technique, strong but tuned into the music at hand, and Okba's sounded exciting, adventurous and outward looking.

Finally, Frank Martin's String trio with the Egyptian Chamber Orchestra. Martin has a place in Egyptian concert life. He attracts institutions and satisfies a public. A mystery because though his fame is international, it is difficult music and his position is unique, though not widely recognised. So much the better for Cairo's concert life. This piece rocks back and forth like an old armchair. It spins the movements like a loom of life, sometimes bright, then dark, but always with a question mark. The question is grey.

Cairo Opera Orchestra; Music for All V; Mohamed Hamdi, clarinet, Manal Mohie El-Din, harp and Mamdouh El-Gebaly, lute; Ivan Filev, conductor; Small Hall, Cairo Opera House; 24 April

Music for All is more an event if played in the Main Hall of the opera than in the Small. And there were fewer children than at the other concerts. The concerts are not necessarily for children, but their presence helps the matinée atmosphere to be more like a musical party. What would they have thought of this concert? It had great interest, had a pattern and a sound, set the images flying in space, ó and it also had three terrific soloists and an imaginative conductor. It therefore had about everything and was enjoyable, but also slightly sharp and disturbing.

Music for All suggests something populist which this concert was not. Had the children come, they would have been subjected to a mixed bag of rather elitist contemporary music given by three players, all of whose coordination skills produced an electric atmosphere and one of menace.

If the sounds in this concert can be taken as typical, then Egypt has a musical sound uniquely its own. Slightly further centre than Steve Reich or Brian Ferneybough, it has minimalist and constructionalist tendencies which give it a definitely spooky rather than humanist impact on the listener.

The concert was divided into two parts. First came Khaled Shoukry with something called The Tomb, two movements for chamber orchestra. Then The Cavaliers, a suite in five movements, about points, lines and finding yourself. Then the Sonata 2 for string orchestra. All these titles brought forth music situated in the same place. Where that place is uncertain.

The Cavaliers had a noble tune, buzzing shapes full of glissandi and disintegrated silences when chirps from night insects chatted with each other. All Shoukry's sounds were closely related. Insects, millions of them billow past the listener in clouds. Space, vast space is suggested, and maybe it is not Egypt at all.

Part two of the evening was devoted to compositions by Sherif Mohie El-Din. Different composer, same landscape. The Concerto for oud introduced none less than one of Um Kulthum's best musicians, Mamdouh El-Gebaly. His playing was virtuoso and added some variety to what had preceded it.

The piece of the evening was called Tahmil. And so came Manal Mohie El-Din to play the harp part. She was completely breath-taking ó as was Mohamed Hamdi on the clarinet. This was the first performance of the work, sounding as if it was launched on a successful career. Every device for the orchestra and soloists was shown and played with great intensity. The piece is dramatic as drum sounds, footsteps in the dark. In fact it is the same crepuscular music we had heard all night. Before or after the flood, but without Noah. No humans, just notes or moths who may be notes. Nothing for sure.

Time, the oldest enemy, has ceased to palpitate. This music is wind lanes and time lines around the great pyramid. A year is a lot of time in the life of a moth, but brief in Mohie El-Din's sounds. Never look into the gloaming for any truths. They can be heard, now, at the end of things, but never seen.