4 - 10 January 2001
Issue No.515
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 4 - 10 January 2001 Issue No.515 |
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At just the right angle
New Year's Eve concert; Cairo Symphony Orchestra; Pamela Hinchman (soprano) and Ahmed El-Saedi (conductor); Main Hall: Cairo Opera House, 31 December
The waltz became almost ignobly famous when it began its conquest of western Europe. It had originated in the east and was considered both irresistible and suggestive. And in its early days it was certainly wilder, more turbulent than it became in imperial times -- one sure fire way to fling your hat into the air and stamp off into eternity full of high jinks and sparkly wine. But time tamed the wild waltz until, in the days of the high empire splendours, the empress lent to it her special, cool, simpering, beautiful perfection. It then moved into silver star land forever.
One quality the waltz possessed in spite of imperial balls was democracy. It could be learned in a few moments, was easy to dance and looked good performed by anyone, in rags or diamonds, from children to octagarians. Europe could dance it. The world followed. Yet it belonged to Vienna, to its life-style and to its music.
Waltz time was all time -- war and peace. And the waltz had a secret life, like no other music. It had a glow, a fluctuation of colours which enveloped the city of Vienna in a uniquely diaphanous garment. Nothing has ever moved it. It is not weather variations, collapse or survival; it is not even nostalgia. It is a caress, but it is not soft-centred. It is not merely a dance rhythm. Its history and the sturdy bastions of its opening beats do for Vienna what the caryatids do for the Parthenon.
photo: Sherif Sonbol
There was one caryatid in this New Year's Eve concert: Pamela Hinchman. Tall, sturdy, blonde and beautiful, she bore the vocal aspects of the concert on her shapely shoulders with authority and pleasure. What a thrill to find a singer who shows you she loves it. Her voice is a genuine operetta voice -- high, bright and cutting, but it drops to warm sensual depths enabling her to sing all this concert's music of Johann Strauss with absolute ease and humour.
This New Year concert offered no dancing, but it offered everything else. Never did the Cairo Symphony Orchestra sound so voluptuous -- rich, plangent and bronze. Its tones were really inviting and with El-Saedi's majestic speeds to move it along it took on that other-worldly sheen splendid orchestras of this type seem to adapt when playing what is usually called "light music." Light yes, but not thin, and you do not hear these sounds round every street corner. The sounds reared up when demanded and the entire evening was illuminated by its festal lantern glow.
Tonight's singing was valses, polkas, mazurkas and pizzicato polkas which require a bit more pepper than the usual polka. Light music of this sort is almost more difficult to play than the so-called "sober" classics. Almost no one knows the secrets of its personality or how that personality veers to nothingness or suddenly blooms. Great symphony orchestras and conductors like Karajan often produce the "light touch." It is not a question of energy or musical understanding -- it is something in the air or something you have acquired in life, like the right angle at which to wear a Fedora hat. This concert's Fedora was worn at the snappiest of angles.
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