Al-Ahram Weekly 16 - 22 September 1999 Issue No. 447
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Farewell to nowhere

By David Blake

Roman Svirlov (Violin); Olga Kouznetsova (Piano); Cairo Opera House, Small Hall, 12 September

This was a recital of astonishment. Billed as a performance by the Cairo Symphony Orchestra, there was no orchestra at all, merely two soloists, Roman Svirlov, who played on what sounded like a second violin or else an instrument of viola-like depths, and poor Olga Kouznetsova, a lovely, lively, probing pianist anyone would be pleased to hear, feathering away on an asthmatic harpsichord.

But hush hush -- could this be the authentic sound we were being given? It stole out through the Small Hall like a memory of a crazy past age. Neither young nor old but derelict.

The audience was sparse. They were young enough to escape the fashionable stigmata of middle age. An odd atmosphere as Cairo, the ever-ancient teenage town was flinging a last leg with the Tiny Top Festival of Experimental Theatre. We, the audience of this particular strange ritual, were really in ghost town -- way out in the Non-Est. Packed into a time warp we had arrived in the Heiean capital city of Japan in the year 999 at the time Sei Sh›nagon was writing her celebrated Pillow Book.

No festival this -- festivals are about quality not age barriers. The show tonight was the full classical onslaught, warts and all. From the opening Vivaldi sonata for violin and piano No. 1 in D minor in four movements running through the entire series of six sonatas, mostly in short movements, we were treated to an evening of small works with large ideas, limited sounds and limited constructions. They repeated themselves and the sameness finally made for boredom. Nothing in the sonatas ever broke the barrier of middle-slow-fast forward with a run-up to a virtuoso display of how to be pretty on the fiddle.

The time is past when this sort of music, dome straight, could make an impression. Somewhere we needed a bend, a change of tone or a few romantic flourishes to remove the tedium of clean and straight.

The two players are angels of professionalism. Their technique covers all problems, the rhythms unchanging throughout were up to tempo. The feel of the strange music was correct but something went wrong with the message the notes gave out, sending a mechanical feel through the hall, as if the Vivaldi was being played on a pianola. It was classical ossification.

Telemann's two sonatas didn't improve the atmosphere though the darkened range of colours permitted Kouznetsova to add a touch of slancio in the Italian way to the Telemann but the chances for change were not in her hands.

The last Vivaldi had introduced long, lunging octave sounds like bell-chimes but the chances to bring variety were lost. The concert ended with a Corelli sonata for both players.

The musical map was still the same -- no change. At least we had an example of classicism without fuzz or varnish. How dull it can be. An explosion of Amr Diab or Birtwistle music backed by The River Sprites could lead the way out of the tunnel.

This music, written under the shadow of Bach, does not suggest the spirit of the great incubus and did not allow much freedom to his inheritors. Bach's babies were not castrated but brainwashed. Maybe if Kouznetsova had been allowed a piano all our longeur would have been avoided.

Enough fun, perhaps, though throughout long stretches the music suggested an age of decadence that allowed nothing explicit. But a lot of sophisticated musical party wrappings for sonatas by the yard -- more or less a musical chain of complex puns to which exalted names were added.

As we headed for the door with the atmosphere of this strange mesmeric concert blowing down our necks, someone said let's make for home before the wolf comes to eat us all up before midnight.

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