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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 November 1999 Issue No. 456 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 November 1999 Issue No. 456
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Invitation to the dance
By David Blake
Clarinet and Piano Recital, Sherif El-Razzaz (Clarinet) and Yuko Masuda (Piano), Cairo Opera House, Small Hall, 12 November
How to be happy in go-go land? Go dancing, or try a good concert at the Opera House. Any of the halls will do. You will be intrigued -- chasing your own footsteps in the dark.
Both these concerts demonstrated beautifully one of European classical music's most remarkable tricks -- at such concerts of the classique pure, whatever your preference, they always get better and better as they go along and end with a theatrical coup -- the punchline of the final curtain. The last is best.
These two recitals played it this way. We walked in and we flew out to the echo of that sweetest of all words to a musician, Bravo, repeatedly hitting the ceiling.
The first concert was a high standard duet between two extremely talented players. One, the Japanese pianist, Yuko Masuda, and the other, the Egyptian clarinetist, Sherif El-Razzaz, playing dissimilar instruments which don't easily fuse together -- the clarinet, aerial, and the piano, powerful by nature, assertive, possessor of endless tones, from filigree to the decibels of an entire symphony orchestra.
Throughout the long and intriguing programme these two found it possible to conduct a love affair between their instruments, intimate, amusing, playful and often deeply romantic, far away and above the bar lines. Their affair made it joyful and in the end a dance, a game, speedy and challenging.
The Busoni piece which began the concert, Frühe charakterstücke, was endlessly beautiful, spacious, soft and velvety, with Busoni holding back his heavier musical weaponry. At the beginning of the andante, Masuda's piano tone was too heavy, dark and ponderous, but as the work progressed she became lighter, bright-toned, and her speed was remarkably invigorating, sharp and forceful, to match El-Razzaz's clarinet. He managed a citric edge to the instrument's tone.
Towards the end, Busoni being Italian, the sounds were more bel canto, though shadowed over with a fascinating grey. It ended, though, with the Italian colours gamely flying in spite of the impending storm.
Piece two -- Nobert Burgmüller's duo, was Italian opera all the way. Full vibrato with passionate rhetorical outbursts mixed with long, flowing melisma for both instruments.
Next came Brahms with his usual surprises. He is the master with Argus eyes and the coloured coat of Joseph. None but he could have taken the two instruments, so unlike each other, and proceeded without the slightest effort to weld them, allowing them to drift further apart than they are in life and then give them the pathos and uncertainty of the beginning of a long sea voyage.
The Brahms atmosphere, like a sea fog, enveloped the players and these two wonderful people really showed their mettle. The tones of their music changed like the surface of water. Piano, from soft and high, echoed the clarinet nervously. The street rhythms of the piano, sinuous and dominating, had the clarinet's acid in contradiction. They captured that certain thing unique in music, the Brahms' atmosphere. It is beyond enjoyment, rather a state of enthrallment. And so we had the voyage across the ocean. Time to disembark.
After the break came Werner Heider and his Dialog for the two instruments. This was a long voyage away from the sea. It was the Vienna of Arnold Schoenberg, one of the monolithic figures of the departing century.
This Dialog was a rough and energetic battle, style and style again, making it another form of musical transcription. Like it or not, Heider is a confabulation already showing its age. The devoted couple made out of its intervals, crashes and flying rubble a sort of order.
After this we went slipping madly backwards in time to Weber, whose legs were firmly planted in the 18th century but who did the jump into the 20th. This concertant op.48 was Weber at his most pristine. This wonderful man could never write a dull note. He who had cracked one century began the work of reconstruction on the next.
The players positively spread themselves and relished the three movements as one. This concertant was the end of the beginning of the invitation to the dance. It was totally enlivening. The piano became a spinning-wheel, the clarinet a humming-bird and the evening happily took off into mid-air. We were flying, not dancing.
Cairo Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra II, Alexander Rudin (Soloist Cello and Conductor), Cairo Opera House, Main Hall, 13 November
Where would we be without the Russian soul. It is a word for something immense. It sprouts up everywhere. Homeland, foreign parts, world wide, it goes from coast to coast. It is as potent to the Far East as it is to the sacred halls of European culture.
It made a noble appearance at the opera with this concert. But is it Russian? It is a strange blend of something -- Slavic, Hungarian -- and certainly pre-revolution. It includes even Prokofiev, who spanned old and new Russia. The soul is a powerful voyager.
Alexander Rudin's biography gives his international movements without actually saying that he is Russian, though it mentions he studied when young at the Gnessin School of Music for Gifted Children. At 12 he won the International Competition Concertino Prague. He has been almost a professional competition winner since.
From the moment he began the Rossini Sonata for String Orchestra No. 3 in C major, the soul was loosed and the concert took off. Rudin is one of those rare conductors who has a sense of historicity. Everything he touches becomes a person, an object, a deed in time.
The Rossini of the Sonata was 18th century, rational, balanced. Delicate, fluted, witty music suffused with richesse and elitism. Then the earthquake -- Rossini went on far enough to set the young Verdi towards the path of music drama.
All this was in Rudin's reading of the music as before us the rococo object came riding the waves. Exciting.
Haydn's Cello Concerto in C major Rudin conducted from the sitting position with his cello.
Rudin has a lot of honours to pin on the wall. For the music of Haydn and Vielgorsky, a piece played after the intermission, his tone was sweet, clear, with no cello tones or harshness. Light, young, the great father of most of Europe's music was played with dreamy patches and with the Russian soul to add a timeless quality. Often Haydn is very paternal but not with Rudin. This Papa Haydn had no dry patches.
And so to Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings in C major op.48.
It is so often played, one forgets one knows it, so it comes as a shock in its variety of renditions. Tchaikovsky dressed for a formal presentation. Voilà -- it struts out, orders pinned to shoulder -- and often in the playing it stays that way, smug.
Not tonight. Listeners were spared court and academic formulism. Rudin let Tchaikovsky talk for himself. Less a meditation than a night off the hook on which society had hung him.
Rudin not only plumbs the deeps of his music he goes for realisation, the surface things as well. It resembles Brahms a bit. Towards the end there is a heaving of the heart but with no time to repine.
Rudin left things as they were in the music. It was simple and dynamic. Tchaikovsky and he left no time to say goodbye.
