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Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 July 2000 Issue No. 489 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 July 2000 Issue No. 489
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region Focus International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Hunting the slipper
By David Blake
Music for All: works by Bertold Hummel celebrating his 75th birthday; soloists Mohamed Hamdy (clarinet), Nesma Abdel-Aziz (percussion), Julius Berger (violincello), conductor Jacek Kraszewski, Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 30 June
One Hummel everyone who has ever played the piano knows, and he is more than enough. The 18th-century-born Hungarian wunderkind who studied with Mozart in Vienna before he was 10 years old, went on a triumphant tour of Europe soon afterwards, worked with Hydan and influenced Chopin and Schuman. He was a brilliant comet in an age of comets, but his chief gift for posterity is a unique composition, the Pianoforte School, advanced lessons in technique and fingering which has bedeviled generations with their finger-twisting dexterity and practicality.
But this was not the Hummel of the last Music for All afternoon concert of the season but the other one, Bertold. Less a dazzling bauble than his predecessor, he turned out to be a nut -- and a tough one to crack. He was a mystery who gradually became clear, an echte Bavarian from Munich, master of orchestral technique and a mentor of Sherif Mohieeddin, with whom he studied. This concert was his 75th birthday bash, a present from his pupils, and a lengthy one, it turned out to be.
The Cairo music scene did him proud, as he had as soloists two of the best players in town -- Mohamed Hamdy, clarinetist and for percussion, Nesma Abdel-Aziz. The evening's conductor was a Pole from Szczecin. Together with celloist Julius Berger from Augsburg, they illuminated a generous selection of Hummel's music.
As music it is there sure enough. There is nothing tentative about its construction or the technique it displays, but its impact is another thing. Like Hindemith of another era, it seems to lack a tactile element -- the colours of warmth are missing. He glides along full of invention, never cool, often hectic -- but emotion is missing.
The first piece, the Poem for Cello and Orchestra with Berger as soloist, opens grandly and with auspicious impact. It is large and there are dark bronze passages using all the string power of the orchestra to suggest something really dark and dangerous. It sweetens up a little as it moves along, a dark river of molten mass, and then of all things a spectacular shift in the orchestra's fabric -- and up comes Ellington out of the mire. The Duke doesn't linger long, and the music slips back into atonal rugged leaps and bounds, abstract, spiky, without suggestion of time or place, nowhere to fit a listener. It was not to be forgotten, because it gave way to the next piece in which Mohamed Hamdy made his entrance.
Sometimes Hamdy's clarinet swells out of the orchestra, leaves the thinner, reedier tone of the clarinet behind and floods the theatre with 12 oboes. The sound is human, large and the voice with a throat of gold. He's a stupendous player.
photo: Yves Paris
This sound had something imposing about it like Hadrian's Wall. It rose high, vibrating with implacable authority, a sound over great spaces and ages of time. The music Hamdy made was the cause of this strange colour change as the orchestra had lost the abstract coolness of the first piece. The music was built to last.
Then came a section where the clarinet sang to small sounds, night sounds, insect sounds but lively and bright-eyed. From the heights of Hadrian's Wall deep in the night we were looking over there where lay barbarity. Whether it was Hamdy's sounds or the music itself, the atmosphere was AD100 -- the breakup of the world has begun.
Behind a formidable barrage of electronica, bells, gongs and various cymbals, Nesma Abdel-Aziz began her percussion concerto, op.70 of Hummel. It sounds as though there are other movements to come of this work, because it is titled First and Second Movement only. The two were slow and fast. The slow was loud, and the fast was quiet. The endless repertory of percussional sounds were explored by the player with a fiendish relish.
Nesma Abdel-Aziz is someone to watch. Her visual impact is dramatic and varied. At times she sounds like a street fire and can rise to earthquake proportions, falling masonry, lorry crashes, almost anything in the sound range of calamity is within her grasp.
She went through the two long movements with the energy of a demon who has the virtuoso trick of doing three things at once. The concerto did well with such a player. It left only silence to defeat her.
The second symphony of Hummel. Without breaking any new dramatic ground, it sounded lost. The themes and symphonic architecture were there, but nothing developed or got anywhere.
The second movement ends suddenly, like a breakdown on the autobahn. But there is nothing in this second movement to help us get anywhere. The third movement began briskly, and was one for the road. There is a piece of a theme that is recognisable. Then we are back on the road to nowhere and the symphony stops.
But the Hamdy clarinet playing and its view over the barbarians was exciting enough for any birthday concert.
