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Al-Ahram Weekly 9 - 15 March 2000 Issue No. 472 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 9 - 15 March 2000 Issue No. 472
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Books Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Mind the drums
By David Blake
Cairo Symphony Orchestra, Haytham Ibrahim (Solo Piano), Mustafa Nagui (Conductor), Cairo Opera House, Main Hall, March 4
A Saturday night cheerio concert given by the Cairo Symphony Orchestra with Mustafa Nagui as conductor raises some interesting observations. Why have the two resident conductors gone in for such full-out total war sounds of late?
We had a huge row recently when the same orchestra gave the Ravel left hand concerto. Ravel, though, gets from performers only what he deserves in this piece of music, though admittedly Marguerite Long used to play it without bringing down the ceiling.
But there is no excuse for roughing up Mozart or Brahms or, in this instance everything else in the programme. The orchestra, the Cairo Symphony, deserves a better understanding. Time and time again, in chamber recitals, the musicians have proved their worth, recognised as often as not by a standing ovation from an appreciative public.
Why, then, have these conductors suddenly developed a penchant for drums, cymbals and full brass? The music leaves its proper timbre and becomes merely martial or circus. It is as though the maestros are angry with everyone, including the composers, whom they maltreat shamefully.
No orchestra can stand up to this treatment. Pity, because the Cairo Symphony, after rough passages, appeared to have entered a region of beauty and musical understanding rare in these times of jet travel poison which wreaks havoc with rehearsal times.
The latest Saturday clatter clatter bang bang was by any reckoning a masterpiece of ill-omen and crazed programme building. Between what proved to be treatment of total bombing came Beethoven's piano concerto no.3 with Haytham Ibrahim making his debut in the piano jungle. For this showing Mustafa Nagui and his players settled for a flat run through of the beauteous no.3, full of singing trills, songs and meditative silences, with a superficial vacuum cleaner-like monotony that turned the music into a salon party piece of flat-fingered Russian-like tone. The soloist was kept to a tiresome, marching, toneless tempo and suddenly Beethoven had become the perfect fodder for any sunny west coast skating rink. Beethoven on ice was our Saturday night fun. Was anyone happy?
photo: Yves Paris
It was the two extremes of the concert, though, that proved the ultimate simulation of total war without mercy. True, Shostakovich can be noisy but seldom has he been turned into such appalling explosions from hell. Some festival. Nagui let loose a none too secure first division brass into the battle which competed with sudden seismic thumps of the drums and trumpets until the final death charge. It was Land of Hope and Glory but without Elgar to save the tone. We bashed on to the finish with the central chandelier shaky but still in place on the roof.
Then the Beethoven. Ibrahim has nice nippy fingers but lacks the depth of tone required for Beethoven. Mendelssohn might suit him better, but even then he had better mind the drums.
The last section saw the battle reach an hysterical pitch of fury. Even Tchaikovsky's greatest admirers baulk at the March Slav -- it is more awful than Liszt's Les Preludes. Not so Mustafa Nagui, who strips and dives straight in, the best way if you really must do it. Whoever is in the business of dealing with atomic missiles should lend an ear to Mustafa Nagui's sound factory. They have a weapon close at hand. He left the disc, the module and the circulatory machine of sound and went off into orbits of his own devising. Even poor Tchaikovsky was left behind. The Opera House still stands, if only just.
This upheaval of molten lava melted into poor Swan Lake. But there were to be no swans in this show. We had a run through of the landscape of World War Two. Poor Adette and her white feathers were scorched to a cinder.
What a party. And what an awful lot of fag-burns in the carpet.
Cairo Symphony Orchestra, Abdel Hamid El-Shweikh (Solo Violin), Enrique Batiz (Conductor), Cairo Opera House, Main Hall, February 26
Cairo Symphony Orchestra, as directed by Enrique Batiz with the Egyptian violinist, Abdel Hamid El-Shweikh as soloist, a was a little more highly strung than usual and thus perfectly suited to these three opening pieces.
Batiz is Mexican and introduced a Mexican piece by Piazolla called Tangazzo. It is for large orchestra. It opens quietly but gets into a rhythm and atmosphere suitable to its name. The famous dance appears like the Czardas in Bartôk but never floods out into full tango force. It has climaxes but is usually quiet and detached from travelogue pictures of the glamorous heritage. The dance which lurks behind the piece haunts it and finally dominates the structure if not the harmony. The orchestra played with élan and enjoyment. Batiz was in his element.
The next two things, both Saint-Saens violin pieces, were the Havanaise and the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso. They were played by El-Shweikh, who is one of Egypt's most accomplished musicians. His style, distinction and perfect poise delighted a thankfully large audience. Such violinists are as rare as unicorns these days. His playing was easy and flawlessly tuned around the music. It was not notes only. We had an entire era and we were involved in the luxury of the pleasure domes of the Duke de Morny, a civilisation exalted beyond all others of its time, almost inadmissibly self-assured and luminous. All this El-Shweikh, with his lovely playing, gave to us, carpeted by the Cairo Symphony Orchestra in one of its more exalted moods.
His tone was fine and pearly. Shot with palest colours but never misty. Saint-Saens is a melodist of genius and the tunes and sounds soared out over the spaces of the theatre and shattered the heart. And then -- of all things -- came Sibelius and the Second Symphony, and the contrast was shocking.
Sibelius was never a lost genius, just an alcoholic. He was cruel, his power is diabolic and he is selfish. All his strikes find their mark. Comparatively, the Duke de Morny sounds Japanese, so far away are the tender weavings of Saint-Saens.
As the huge monolithic Sibelius thundered and sprawled along, Batiz unleashed oceans of ink and spume. This time the Opera House shook for the right reasons. The man is not mad and that is the troubling thing about Sibelius . He is as sane as bread and butter. He was created by the passions of real forces of aggression. He had an apocalyptic tone and so did the Cairo Symphony Orchestra. The tone is to shudder for -- not a gaudy splurge as so often does for Sibelius. He flashes out his love and it spews forth sparks. The Cairo Symphony Orchestra carried itself proudly to victory.
