By David Blake

He lounged on rocks

Don't panic when you think of Jiri Barta. Such talent is inclined to bring on unease. How do they do it? Where does it come from? Are they real or some sort of combustion that lies way out from the life/death balance which rules the rest of us?

Barta's playing was like taking leaps down a staircase backwards in the dark -- perilous. But there is something there, a sort of bare music in itself that brings his flights to safe endings.

The same with Mostafa Nagui, who is a cellist. Do we know him at all? We think we do -- and then he too springs a surprise with his conducting of an entire Dvorak programme. He had almost a personality change. He became a sort of spirit of contradiction, a child of the spheres, which made him able to cope with the sumptuous, melodic gift that is Dvorak's birthright.

Dvorak's music is almost like an organ in force, big arcs of sound, deep-toned, lusciously spread out before the listener like a 19th century dinner table. We had none of this. This last-Friday-of-the-month Music for All concert opened with the 9th symphony -- The New World. Heard before, of course, in all ages and climes, but not often like this. The word "adagio" does indeed open the symphony, and there was an oceanic calm and a suggestion of the open sea which persisted through the entire performance. A kind of miasma which never quite cleared hung over the opening phrases. Then, however, Nagui blared out openly, hard-driven, nervous, growling from the bass. What new world was this? Prophetic seeming. There was no Old Man River here. It was high-tech Saturday night rapture, a kind of new land far out beyond everywhere with only the ocean to fall into if you make one false step.

Don't go too near the edge. This is a new world, but which one was never made certain. Maybe Dvorak and Nagui were playing Russian roulette. Right from the first movement we had to say good-bye to the old tunes and feelings usually so apparent in this symphony. Great changes had been made; immense things were taking place. But the takes were raw and different and, as the music proceeded, an atmosphere began to build up of time passing, rushing. The covered wagon had blown to bits on the journey and the sea lanes were closed. On this trip we were on concorde, lean but lively. And Dvorak, being even tougher than his executants, always had melodies up his sleeve with which to offer resistence to all comers.

By the second movement the Great Tune came. Dvorak probably found it in heaven. It has nothing to do with the earth, not even space, colour or time. Nagui did not hold back his exuberance. Dvorak's wonderful bronze vision of sound did shine. With his capricious new speeds, Nagui removed it even out of time's attritions. This disturbing event in the middle of a long classical symphony shone, then melted like sugar into pure light.

The chords of the second movement, musical things, melting into infinity -- that's all it is and the Cairo Opera Orchestra was doing a good job.

Then came the "gallop". Its riverine rhythm of leaping, muscular, self-confident arcs of sound suddenly stops -- and it's for good. The end of this rhetorical occurrence was given a literal, heavy, Brahmsian weight full of self-importance, then a pause, and our new world was no more than the never-world of pre-history.

Then came a long interval.

If you've grown fed up with your regulation set of memories and would relish a few new excitements, why not hitch on to the young Czech cellist Jiri Barta? He is one of the most imposingly memorable figures around today. Physically, musically and personally he is outstanding. Among his teachers is Elenore Schoenfeld of the Piatigorsky seminar in Los Angeles. To see Barta arrive and leave the platform is a very moving experience. He resembles Igor Piatigorsky, greatest of cellists, and when he begins the same laconic atmosphere is created.

Barta is unique. What cellist has this tone? What does he do to the instrument to produce it? He never tries for speed, force or loudness. He never tries for anything. He almost lounges, sprawls out around his instrument -- a jinn without a trick. The music just comes and sings. The tones he makes are inimitable: they can sour with anguish or flash aloft with affection; his cello can laugh or cry; and he does nothing -- a sphinx, yet no hardness, no performance. He must have secrets, but it is the ease of the playing that shows.

So often Barta is practical. He lets the cello sing along alone, looking over its own shoulder. It has its own life, out in the air, away from the player, a free association. Capture this cello if you can. But Barta and the cello are closer than friends, an aerial pair.

Barta and Nagui made of the Dvorak cello concerto an inexplicable event. Nagui, a cellist, seems to have had a close rapport with the player, and the three movements really were one thing -- a meditation on time.

After the concerto is over and the hushed audience begins to move out, Barta unwinds himself like a sea god, an atlantide from the furthest reaches of the western world, and is gone. All of him, the cello, the tall form, and the concerto itself. What remains are the footsteps of a visitation. Don't ask for more.