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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 February - 3 March 1999 Issue No. 418 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 February - 3 March 1999 Issue No. 418
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters These beans are hot
By David BlakeCairo Symphony Orchestra; Abdel-Hamid El-Shoueikhi, violinist; Ayman El-Hanbouli, cello; Sergio Cardenas, conductor; Main Hall: Cairo Opera House, 20 Feb
This was the second time round for a very intriguing double visit of two of Mexico's maestros. The first brought, on 13 February, Felix Carrasco, Vienna-trained but most active in his own country; the second, on 20, Sergio Cardenas of Mexico City and the US, also internationally active.
These visits brought a sharp bracing wind to blow through the music performed. They are both totally different but suggestive of a Mexican vitality bordering on the violent. Carrasco lent a creamy Viennese lilt to the music, Cardenas a stinging violent approach to Brahms. It all added to excitement, old things singing from new angles. Cardenas opened his concert with Rimsky Korsakov's big splash, Capriccio Espagnol. The Rimsky is a carnival piece, but not in Cardenas's showing. As it developed with its various dance rhythms and mood changes, it developed into a wary, warning mood in which the strength of the tone lay in the deep dark shadows of the orchestra; sultry warnings of events to come. Rimsky's orchestral weavings of genius were often demonic. They were given free reign here.
The orchestral web was totally unlike what had gone before on the night of the 13th with Carrasco. How does it feel to play in a splendid orchestra, and from around and underneath you ,completely different noises erupting, but both having a strong Latin lilt?
All the climaxes and sudden halts in this dance scene were performed with a flamenco shadow close behind. Cardenas drove the band along as if sending it through circles of flame. Rimsky changed places, but we never went as far as the corrida. Nothing so strange as moving from Rimsky in festive mood to Brahms' double concerto.
Richard Strauss
BrahmsThis great forceful thing has an uncomfortable first movement. Without ado, it strikes ruthlessly into a nerve-racking disputation between the two soloists, cello and violin, but with absolute mastery. Brahms spreads out his plan and begins to carry it out -- each instrument is treated with total compassion and understanding. The music is turbulent and the difficulties are spread before the players, but they must find for themselves the message beneath the surface. It is Brahms at his most oceanic; torments and waves enveloped the entire scene. Players never cease to pit themselves against its splendours. Right at the beginning, the two players declared their character -- El-Hanbouli, rather dreamy; El-Shoueikhi, forthright and powerful, piercingly audible: no ghost. Cardenas never let the piece slip into contemplation, so easy with Brahms, but assisted the players to deliver their converse -- El-Shoueikhi, argumentative; El-Hanbouli, bel canto, accepting. But the players were scrupulously divided, though they sang their differences in unison. There are huge leaps as the movement ends, but they went their way as separates.
The second movement brought excitement to the Opera House, and an enormously spread Brahms melody was given to the players, which introduced that rare thing, mutual concentration from an audience. This work appears headless, or at least an octopus. Cello and violin this night brought some reason and architecture to it. And the closing section offers, especially for cello, great music which El-Hanbouli, head on one side, sang with operatic fervour.
It might have ended quietly, but Brahms decided otherwise. It moves into a first classic vision, already falling to pieces as the 20th century shadows it, so that it resembles Donne's words above the bell, chiming for whom?
Brahms had not finished with this concert. Cardenas gave next the Brahms-Haydn Saint Anthony Variations . This is another Brahms -- another mask, compared to the double concerto. You can't push Brahms around at all. He used variations as a form of meditation. They have an almost sacerdotal ring to them, whether for orchestra or piano.
The Saint Anthony are gentle, ruminative and out of time and place, like voices from far-off lives. Veiled and without definition, they exude views from places not often visited by the living.
This was not to Cardenas's taste. The variations moved along in a clear light, warm, even hot, severe-edged and sharply defined.
Grey is a very beautiful colour, especially in a sky. There was no grey in Cardenas's sky, as the unearthly gracious music trod immaculately to its end. The elderly bearded old gent who was absent at the wonderful performance of the double concerto had returned, and sat peacefully observing another sort of Saint Anthony. A haunting.
The concert closed with Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel for orchestra. Till is well defined in this music, and his happenings too.
The big orchestra was fined down by the conductor to razor-edged sharpness. Till is a spirit mostly of fun, he's not bad or dead. He won't ever die, because he's too much part of Strauss's musical brain, but dead or not he seemed wrong-headed and wicked in this performance. And, sadly, we had no sheen on the quiet pathetic parts. Cardenas's Till was off onto an big city's empty lot, a hot tamale to play touch football. Never complain if they make it contemporary.
The Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, Eighth Anniversary Concert, conducted by Mustafa Nagi, Opera House Main Hall, 14 Feb
Time flies. This being the eighth anniversary of the Amadeus, it was time to look at the partying. There was plenty of go-go. The big hall was full to bursting. The atmosphere was party and the feeling was lavish. Everyone was happy, and the celebratory noises were fortissimo. Even the mobiles were put to rout. The music, when it came, was three piano concertos, and the launching music was the premiere of Adel Afifi's party piece, Solina's Suite for Orchestra in three pieces, romance (andante cantabile), Solina's Valse, and Fantasia Allegro Con Brio.
Is Solina known -- mythical or merely social? The music told nothing, but was conducted by Mustafa Nagi with tender care. It proved to be light music, hardly an hors d'oeuvre to a Bach piano concerto. Young Yasser Mukhtar, fresh from his concert triumph the other night, gave a bland, opaque reading of the work. But it was interesting to hear the lion among the teacups.
We were promised Haydn's piano concerto no. 3 in three movements next, to have been played by Ghada Shaker. Anyone studying with James Avery whets the appetite, but illness prevented her appearance. Instead we had -- guess what? Some of the oldest chestnuts from the repertoire of the Amadeus Orchestra.
Lastly came the performance most likely to lift the audience into Birthday Land. Ramzi Yassa's playing of the Mozart concerto for piano K.V. 414. It is one of Mozart's lighter-tone concertos, sprightly but not at all imperial, as he mostly was when writing for the piano. The "Grand Amadeus" was not present. Ramzi Yassa did his own thing. We were given a display of absolutely Olympian will power, which ended with the little concerto's virtual failure to support. Yassa relaxed and in perfect control and technical detachment -- worthy of Beethoven's no. 5.
So we enjoyed a technical display at the piano one doesn't often hear these days. Nothing but admiration was left by the perfect finger work, the incisive pauses, the sudden release of a tone, sunset rich, which sent the work up to paradise. This was the best of Presence.
There still lurks the feeling that, despite the sponsors, the management and the zeal, something is amiss in Amadeus territory. Why is the tone of the orchestra so bland and unruffled? This evening's repertory gave nothing more than surfaces, but it seems an orchestra stranded in Mango Land. Lonely, juicy and rich -- but where are the sounds of now?
