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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 28 Sep. - 4 Oct. 2000 Issue No. 501 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 28 Sep. - 4 Oct. 2000 Issue No. 501
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Elections Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A helping hand
By David Blake
Cairo Symphony Orchestra; Wael Farouk, pianist; Patrick Fournillier, conductor; Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 23 September
The Rachmaninov No 3 is piano big deal. Many great players give it a miss, and it has the knack of lowering the status of those who fail to rise to its demands. Slash and bash will not do for this arrogant monster. It is, then, courageous that the young Egyptian player Wael Farouk should attempt it at such an early age. Horowitz did battle with it for most of his life, until at last, when old, he played it in public.
If you intend giving a good performance of this concerto, then leave your hands at home. Go to work, play it and trust to the Almighty to find you the equipment to deal with its furious problems.
Rachmaninov was famous for his large hands -- an octave stretch and then some more. Hangman's hands, they were called. But he was a quiet hangman. In performances at the old Queen's Hall, London, one was not even conscious of hands, so miraculous was his airborne technique, which gave him a nonchalant indifference to public performance. Some of this nonchalance arose from the orchestral layout when Wael Farouk came and quietly took his place at the piano.
Toscanini maintained that this concerto was not a vehicle for virtuoso fire and brimstone but a legend, a song of regret, because Rachmaninov's beloved Russia was crumbling into 1917 when he wrote it. Its scope is vast, from affectionate and gentle to almost brutal, but stopping at the extremes. There were times in the performance when Farouk and the orchestra made it sound like a cradle song for the damned.
Very soon the stops are out and the piano is thrust forward into the orchestral web, which it dominates. And so it was with Farouk's performance -- he was the master of it, though he seemed very young for this music. Yet the thing moved inexorably forward, and his courage and determination to reveal his own vision of Rachmaninov's elegiac Gotterdammerung soon bore fruits. He was once more the young person playing Schumann and Mozart, creating and thinking at the keys, not showing off. Farouk disappears and the notes take over. This is great piano playing. He seems always to attain his self-aspiration, and without any satisfaction.
During the long first movement there are many sections which bear Rachmaninov's special signature. Quiet, composed and deeply felt, then rushing up and down the piano at electrifying speed. The bomb is built up to frightening heights. Neither orchestra nor players, however, went for noise. It was tone, tune and song, always sad and given the exact shape of a dying fall. This concerto is an autobiography, and the composer had a rather blasted life. War, revolution, migration, disorientation and mental breakdown, a worthless father who blew the family fortune on fripperies. But while many grumble at their fate, Rachmaninov never did. It all went into the music.
His 1909 US tour, which featured this No 3, he detested. So he went further and further behind his mask. He fits no pattern, no time. As Farouk and Fournillier, his conductor, went deeper into the music it became a question of our own disorientation, not theirs. Where were we?
"Is this a piano I see before me?" Macbeth joined in the elegiac song. Never did this third concerto sound so lovely. So successful were the two artists in showing the mystery of life, and never for one moment did the small, neat figure at the keyboard lose his way. As the allegro movement melted into the intermezzo there was excitement and a passion of chords, torrential but never blood-stained with heavy effort.
How is it done? Ask Farouk. With the assistance of Patrick Fournillier, we were given the most astounding pianism. These two, masterful and majestic, cast a spell like the gorgeous cloak of the Kotshti in The Golden Cockerel over the Cairo Opera. Farouk and Fournillier had disappeared beneath it.
Pokofiev was next. No concertos but the long Romeo and Juliet suite. It sounded rather dry after what had gone before. But that is its nature, so it was effective, if rather chill.
These two Russians don't mix. Where are the snows of yesteryear does not go with the hard, brittle life-line of Renaissance Florence.
