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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 April 1999 Issue No. 423 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 April 1999 Issue No. 423
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Interview Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The harp belongs to daddy
By David BlakeMusic for All; conductor Sherif Mohieddin. Main Hall, Cairo Opera Orchestra, 26 March
Sherif Mohieddin's monthly Friday concerts are like the voice of the whippoorwill: seldom heard, they are never forgotten. The whippoorwill's voice is, of course, celebrated in blues music. It is a sound from the Hudson River, just as Sherif's voice is of the Nile.
These concerts had simple beginnings, a product of the Cairo Opera's plan to bring music to a new and younger audience. It is a policy that has remained alive and is still growing. Memory nudges that it was admission-free to begin with but now costs LE10-15 -- even so, it remains the best value in town.
The hour of 2pm, the beginning of the concert, is a blessed hiatus if you can make it, and Fridays are beautiful because you can actually see the streets through which you pass. And the journey ends at the Opera House gardens, which are now flourishing, free from the usual merciless sadistic pruning of gardeners. Eden grows apace and inside there is music for all. At these concerts you hear the best, sometimes imported but mostly Cairene. Continuous praise is always difficult. It can't be that good. He's getting old and sentimental. But I'm not. Just go for yourself on a Friday and find out. Three Fridays ago, we were given an all Bach programme which, for depth of sound, excitement and sheer pleasure, could hardly be surpassed. Today's concert began with Mozart's Magic Flute overture. It was of necessity grandly spacious, but also warm and human with no rush to the finish. Lovingly done, nothing like the brilliant cynical style Mohieddin adopted for The Marriage of Figaro. Following the flute came a concerto for harp and orchestra by J. Rodrigo. The soloist, Giselle Herbert of Paris, has been here before and is the teacher of Cairo's special harpist, Manal Mohieddin.
Giselle Herbert is a very strong, heroically individual artist. Many players of this instrument are themselves seduced by the celestial sounds the harp makes, and we get endless lovely washes of noise, heavenly but devoid of strength or variety.
Maybe the harp is the most beautiful of all instruments. Certainly it was special to Apollo. But Giselle Herbert seems to offer her playing more to Zeus. The enchantment of the sound which the harp can make, like branches of wisteria, she offers. But her harp resolutely belongs to daddy. Her control and depth of passion are what used to be called masculine, but she gives to the heady sparkle a totally different aspect and one all her own. The Rodrigo came to us new, reserved, architecturally polite, unbending, with not a whiff of the salon music to which it honestly belongs. Little Rodrigo came as an imposing visitor, performed by a player with total, unbending command over the capriciously difficult harp. But she could not help herself. The Opera House resounded to dreamlike sounds, many of which were coloured mauve and purple. Her performance was that of a great executant, and we were grateful for her presence.
There was a lull after this exposition, and then came the music of Puccini, whose Boheme fame needs dusting up a bit and saving from the football arenas. Mohieddin may be just the man to do it.
Verismo music is the especial loathing of English and New York reviewers though it is a class of music to which Puccini honourably belongs. They call this writing operatic garbage. So much for London, which at present does not even have a city opera of its own, depending on the life jacket Saddlers Wells.
Without any ado, Mohieddin went on to give a meltingly lovely account of Puccini's own verismo version of Manon Lescaut, which is stormy and riven by irony and loss. The beautiful silken sound Mohieddin brought from the small orchestra made one think again of the breadth of his capabilities. Here is Puccini in full flood, and over there a bark handle on Mozart, all given a speed and concept far different from most other conductors. Mohieddin and his two orchestras also take in contemporary music. As we were listening to the heart-rending Manon, we thought of Alban Berg and Lulu. Who influenced whom? The Puccini suddenly became Viennese-coloured. What, one wonders, might Mohieddin do with Lulu? It might be exciting for the Cairo Opera to try to find out.
Wedged between this blue-period Picasso of music, the Olympian, and Beethoven's Piano F, was a small concertino for clarinet and orchestra by Weber. And once again we had another master soloist, Mohamed Hamdi. Weber never wrote a dull note in his life, but he is always difficult to play. Hamdi's looks are so business-like, expectations could be of an official musical book-keeper. Not so. When he begins his clarinet sounds as exciting as the great jazz players'. Weber gives the player his usual wide intervals and dramatic leaps. It all sings, this music, but the underlying feeling is of tension.
There is unease in spite of romanticism. Hamdi is an Egyptian falcon. He swoops up into the blue, does some twists and turns, then makes a dramatic u-turn and suddenly drops sheer down into a hair-raising descent but never lands. The clarinet is off into another tune. The player does not seem to breathe at all. Maybe he is not human, and the clarinet does not need lungs. The concertino was like a flash of colour, waving welcome and good-bye.
Beethoven's strange fantasy for piano, orchestra and chorus had a really dazzling performance, with vocal soloists Tahia Shamseddin (soprano), Hana El-Guindi (mezzo), Tamer Tawfiq (tenor), Hossam Mustafa (baritone), with the Cairo Choral Society in full voice to lend support to the main piano part. And once again Ramzi Yassa showed his freedom from all restrictions. He began the work with a long, dramatic series of chords, runs and trills which found him generous and bristling with clarity. He played for enjoyment, his own and ours, and so did the entire group. Everything disappeared before the onrush of Beethoven's energy. Puccini was over the hills while for us, down below, the great big happy street-cum-military band tune was given its head.
So Music for All came to a finish but not before the large audience demanded a repeat of the spine-chilling end. As with all Beethoven, the very simplicity of the tunes rivals Verdi for instant appeal.
Cairo is in change regardless of quibbles. The gates of its musical freedom are open wide -- let anything in, orchestras everywhere, guests, residents, what's the difference. The new thing is that Cairo is beginning to feel the pleasures of being a brand name. And Music for All is one of the new dynamos.
