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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 July 1999 Issue No. 436 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 July 1999 Issue No. 436
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Special Interview Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Laying the last egg
By David Blake
Cairo Symphony Orchestra; conductor Mark Ermler; soloist (piano) Adilia Mailova; Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 26 June
Adilia MailovaMark Ermler, orchestra and soloist Adilia Mailova gave us what we need from Russian music -- Mussorgsky, bells, bells and more chimes, set against the richness of ancient tapestry. Like old paintings on the Kremlin walls, everything was brown and richly stained by history. This entire concert suggested both the transitory aspect of those accidental happenings of history that leave traces and wounds on the surface and the eternal nature of the place beneath, Russia, which will last at least as long as the rickety planet.
Ermler began with Mussorgsky, The Muscova River at Dawn, misty, hushed, but with the rhythm of power not far below the surface, and managed to suggest the current which drowned not just Napoleon, but all who leave Russia. On the way we had bells, the huge bronze power, clanging, swaying, and turning the entire musical palette into a gorgeous mass, like a Rembrandt painting oozing gold and light.
It seemed a sadness that this piece should ever end, because Mussorgsky was off on one of his downhill ski-rides. But we had little to worry about. There were to be more thrills as the concert continued.
Next item, the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor Op. 16, with soloist Adilia Mailova. With Prokofiev, dates are important -- he stood like a barque on the crest on of a wave, a wave of blood that began to spill in 1914, the date of the composition of the work. Russia was to dive straight into the bloodbath. The pillars had, in any case, already collapsed. Prokofiev's world was bleeding to death. Princesses were a few rubles a handful, the Almanac to Gotha was in shreds.
This work is no summer picnic. Everyone -- conductor, audience, and above all the soloist -- gets it in the neck. And Prokofiev could be sadistic. Parts of this work are so painful its like biting off the tips of your fingers and feeling the blood run.
For the pianist the composer shows no mercy. Yet Mailova, tall in cream-coloured lace, alluring with charm, sifted over everything. She suggested the lady in the Veronese painting, fishing Moses out of the Nile when he was a tot. She has real status, and needed it for what was to come.
Never have I heard this concerto played as Ermler and Mailova did. The piano in this work is neither percussive nor polyphonic. It is a mass of brittle, cracked crevices and intervals. The piano of the No. 2 is always on the move, bouncing into runs of chords like an electrified spider. The effect is often of sheer cruelty and sadism. But it has a purpose. Mailova was fastidious in reading all the notes. No jeu perle for her, we had everything that was written without a hint of impressionism. Early cubism it may have been, but nothing romantic.
In the first movement, after grisly chords, comes a long piano aria, gradually expanding into a terrifying orchestral climax and an explosion of a chord like a time bomb. And through it all went Mailova. Her tone is clear, burnished and honed like a diamond, but never cold. The intervals grew more hectic. Mailova jumped them and went on, guiding us through the nasty Minotaur's maze. We emerged free, and so did she, to the end.
The last movement suddenly cleaves apart and through it comes a polyphonic version of the strange frisky melody that has haunted the work since the beginning. Here Ermler gave the orchestra peace enough to give a glimpse of the eternal Russia so beloved by Prokofiev.
Did we melt into tears? No, never. We had seen the landscape of nightmare or dream and Mailova had played this furious masterpiece, which left a lot of us in shreds, without a trace of weakness. She had kept her femininity to the end, uncontaminated by any touch of el bruto, so fashionable with women pianists today.
After Prokofiev came Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. Like all his work, the symphony is about himself, which is a problem. Symphonies need something other than biography, and Tchaikovsky is not as interesting as God. So the symphonies sink. The equal of everyone, in everything apart from the symphony, these works are losing ground. His ballets and operas are vivid, alive, self-generating and life-giving. The symphonies are gradually ending on the shelves.
Mark Ermler's way with the Fifth was laconic, laid back and totally opaque. Never explain, never complain. Ermler leaves all the doors wide open. The reading is theatrical without being empty or the slightest bit vulgar. Ermler does not fill the spaces, but goes on as if there aren't any.
The orchestra was beautifully coloured, witty and warm. Controlled at the purple sunset bits, it gave to the Fifth the attention and clarity it never receives when conductors wallow in the blousy patches. Ermler is blessed with reserve.
