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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 26 Oct. - 1 Nov. 2000 Issue No. 505 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 26 Oct. - 1 Nov. 2000 Issue No. 505
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Palestine International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Night lights
By David Blake
Cairo Symphony Orchestra; Mohamed Shamseddin, piano; Ahmed El-Saedi, conductor; Cairo Opera House: Small Hall, 21 October
Mozart's Overture to Don Giovanni opened this concert, and so the night begins with murder. They used to call this a jocular piece. Irony? It is a collection of nasty people, all wearing masks in life as well as on stage, all lying about something and more than ready to blame everyone else. It is very modern; nearly everyone is opaque. Nothing really matters. Only the mocked fool Donna Elvira has a heart and sincerity, yet she too ends as a prisoner of life's devious double deals. She is going to waste away her life, asking forgiveness for sins she has never committed.
Greatest of all operas, Don Giovanni ? Probably. The opening bars of the overture are trully awful. Some great maw is about to take a bite out of everyone. The music is inky dark -- "look out" is Mozart's warning. And it is almost longer than Aida. Even the hard edged sounds the Small Hall so often makes were lacking. Under El-Saedi we plunged into the ink. The sounds of the orchestra were really thrilling, and so the overture continued, prehensile, sinewy, fizzing with primeval energy and pitilessly beautiful.
The second piece, the Piano Concerto in C major no. 21, K 467 of Mozart is an unanswerable enigma, easy to look at, beautiful to listen to, with a racy, sprightly speedboat ending. But that is not all. Mozart intended a lot more than beautiful surface and it is what he intends that matters most.
The way the music slides into the heart-rending slow section is one of Mozart's greatest inspirations. Who looks merely to see the surface beauties of life misses the doppelgnger that haunts us all, and Mozart more than most. The wondrous thing sails along like some flying creature, weightless but palpitating, and then at the end of the second movement collapses with a shrug.
All this takes it out of pianists. Everyone plays it, few reveal its secret. Mohamed Shamseddin is so young it is unnerving to hear how beautifully he does all Mozart demands. His playing is often hauntingly like that of one of the grandest pianists of the 20th century -- Annie Fischer. He can never have heard her, yet she hovers over him like a godmother.
Never ask pianists how they do what they do. The better they are, the less they seem to know. Technique is one thing, the conversation with notes revealing what they mean is another. The notes talk through Shamseddin to us.
After the journey we had made with Mozart grandfather Haydn did sound a bit pedantic. But the Symphony in D Major, the London, is grand and imposing. The entire symphony was vibrant with bursts of dynamo-like speed and the end was a real dance show. The London symphony bounced on to a photo finish.
Song Recital; Neveen Allouba, soprano; David Hales, piano; Cairo Opera House: Small Hall, 20 October
This concert was of great interest. It opened with Schumann's most beautiful writing for piano and voice -- the Frauenliebe un leben, op 42. Allouba and Hales are like a pair of norns. They fit. He understands her voice, her breathing, her needs. She suits him and he suits her. With him she is like a ballerina: "I can do four spins in the air if you are there to catch me." She is better with him around. To hear them together is one of the bonuses of the Cairo musical scene.
Mohamed Shamseddin
Helping the young is chic, but it can go too far. And the Opera's new policy of filling empty seats with university students meant Hales and Allouba competition in the noise stakes. These kids should have been told there are other people in the hall besides themselves, people who have actually paid for their seats, and that the Cairo Opera, and those who perform in it, are to be respected. No heaving and slouching around as the performance goes on, as if they were in an amusement park. Yet Allouba and Hales were angels of patience, and kept going through Schumann's complex song cycle as if they heard not the upping and leaving, the slamming of doors at the exits and the generally relaxed, innocent, but nonetheless bad behaviour going on below them.
These two artists played the Schumann cycle almost a decade ago in the same theatre. Their interpretation has richened, deepened and acquired a different colour. Allouba's voice has broadened and darkened; Hales' playing has moved along the long lines of the music with symphonic audacity. Even the student members of the audience were silenced.
The five Hugo Wolf songs are one of his most perfect things, auch kleine dinger -- the small things that make life in the wearing round bearable and beautiful. The duo were perfect. One day, maybe, they will throw caution to the winds and give us the poems of Goethe set to music by Schubert and Wolf.
The last part of the recital was Turina's Spanish Canciones. Allouba's versatility is remarkably practical. Without fuss she manages to catch the Spanish atmosphere and later, with Poulenc's music set to poems of Paul Eluard, the Parisian. Each song in the Poulenc is about a painter, and was accompanied with slides of the paintings screened on stage to help the audience. It began with Picasso's Guernica and continued with a bored woman painting her own image in a mirror. An unsettling presence from some other world.
It ended with a gray presence by Jaques Villon. Nothing gray, though, about the Hales-Alllouba presence. Hopefully they are setting out on another decade of concerts.
Clarinet and Piano Recital; Mohamed Hamdi, clarinet; David Hales, piano; Cairo Opera House: Small Hall, 16 October
How does one play a clarinet like Hamdi does? It sounds so easy. Likewise Hales' piano glides knowingly over every difficulty. All you get is song and beautiful sound, with no intimation of the problems of how you make the big black instrument sound like a zephyr. Together these two wove things with their instruments from composers like Weber and Debussy. They performed a grand duet concertante, and it went like a bel canto operatic aria. Hamdi's ear for a melody is bird-like, a bird of prey, straight to the heart. His tone never sounds the same: sometimes like the beating of wings or the shriek of a lonely falcon.
The duo then played a Saint-Saens sonata. This was a move into another era, a gorgeous heavy perfume-laden sound which had all the authentic power of France's great contribution to European music -- the long unending parlando line. No other nation can achieve this balance of humanity with luxury.
How far had they travelled -- from Schumann through Weber and Debussy to Saint-Saens and his morbidezza and then into the playful, hen-like pickings of Poulenc.
Don't ask, just listen. Learn what you can, their gift is exalted and great fun.
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