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Al-Ahram Weekly 19 - 25 August 1999 Issue No. 443 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 19 - 25 August 1999 Issue No. 443
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Going for a song
By David BlakeThe Citadel Festival has split itself into three sections until the organisers can find a way to fill the spectacular hollow which was the original concert space with a reasonably musical sound. At present it is at its best with a popular, coke-throwing, infantile audience. The parent area at the festival is again split into two concert areas with, down below at the Opera House proper, the same programme, with midnight luncheons. So there is plenty of migration possible. After 20 August, the closing date of the Citadel shows, comes the international song festival -- allowing for inevitable complications and changing dates it should still be possible to catch up with a mixed plate of musical offerings from pop to Beethoven.
The Citadel Festival will be offering songs from the mega birds Whitney Houston and Celine Dion. The songs but not the birds themselves. But at least the songs will be moderately new. The programme, both at the opera and at the Citadel, suffers from a little too much history: non-stop Abdel-Halim Hafez, Abdel-Wahab, Kulthoum and Sombati. However nostalgic they may be, these songs are losing their feathers. Cairo is becoming beautiful again, putting forth the old-new allure of Madame Riga Mortis, showing how to be the ultimate survivor and opening an exciting door onto a hair-raising future. But the old songs don't show any of this and instead obscure what is really going on by the Nile. It is left to the migratory birds, the old-fashioned music goers, to find the new message far above the roads and bridges of the present city. Just who will be singing the songs of tomorrow, and what are they?
They were not at the Gala Piano Concert, given on 15 August at 9.30pm at the Al-Mahka Theatre of the Citadel, the dreaded hollow-toothed arena. It had the Festive Orchestra, conducted by Sherif Mohieddin, and three pianist. The first fatality was the orchestra itself. It is really unjust to put honest musicians, who have been trained (often regardless of money) and want to offer their best, in a setting like the tooth. It is not, and never will be, a concert hall; it is a battlefield. This was its Waterloo and the orchestra succumbed.
However well Mohieddin attempted to weave an endurable musical pattern it was negated by the battle noises from the loudspeaker amplifier. Gunfire, bombs, attacks of wind and the hollow voices strife in the machines made a jest of any proper listening. Not that the babies were to blame -- they have a right to be noisy. Better unruly than never to begin at all at musical appreciation. Nor the musicians themselves, for they are guiltless, attempting to solve the problem their own way. Nor the audience: they got a small return for the trouble of coming and still they generously applauded. It is the acoustics which must take the blame, and the wind was in a fair direction to make trouble on the 15th.
The first pianist, a girl, Amal El-Shahed, gave the first movement of the Grieg Piano Concerto. And so the battle was joined. The three pianists were victorious over the whole scene. A strange feeling emerged from the music of all of them as they bent the entire concert to their will. Regardless of wind, orchestra or mayhem, they would play. Amal El-Shahed positively dug into the Grieg and turned it into crazy Scriabin. The music is not up to Gershwin or Tchaikovsky, but she was not intimidated and so bashed her way through the movement like a trooper. And it worked. Who cared if poor dear old Grieg was nuts. She had won her battle.
Then came Wael Farouk, second pianist, in the first movement of Tchaikovsky's B Flat Minor Piano Concerto. He is one of Egypt's most interesting pianists, genuinely unique, a pupil of the Russian Demidov. His small body unleashes piercing blades of shining sound. Where does all that power, precision and staggering didactic accuracy come from? His short arms project a walloping power. It is the spirit of Wael Farouk which matters and achieves these things. The nasty concert hall met its match in him also. He went his way and the orchestra limped behind, battle weary.
Pianist number three was a newcomer, Mohamed Shams, lean, young, nervous, stressed, yanking up his trousers all the time in preparation for dramatic Gershwin thrusts. The piece was Rhapsody in Blue and he was equal to it. If they know how to take care of him, Cairo has another keyboard hero. It is a cause for thanks that these three artists did show in this almost comical setting. They know what music is all about -- work, struggle, effort and honest feeling.
The three found what lay behind the notes, behind the Citadel with its battle noises. Nothing drowned or intimidated them, they stood up to it like worriers and forged forth to victory. It was very moving and worth the heat and dust to hear them -- players genuinely aloof from the ordinariness of their surroundings.
