Of musical subtleties
Amal Choucri Catta splashes in the fountains
Festival of 20th Century Music; Cairo Symphony Orchestra, cond. Giorgio Croci : Italian and French Subtleties, Ravel, Debussy, Nino Rota, Ottorino Respighi; soloists Mohamed Shams El-Dine, piano, Mohamed Hamdy, clarinet: Cairo Opera House, Main Hall, 22 March, 8pm
The general mood was at a low ebb in the Main Hall of Cairo Opera House. It was as depressed on Saturday night as it had been the night before, during the Mother's Day Gala Concert, when 14 singers performed arias by Rossini, Verdi, Puccini, Mozart, Bizet and other masters of the bel canto, with the Cairo Opera Orchestra receiving firm direction from the baton of Nader Abbassi. But neither the conductor's brilliance, nor the singers' voices, could succeed in releasing the anguish most listeners were experiencing that night. Everyone's mind had been on the Iraqi war, and everyone was feeling the same anger, an anger born of helplessness.
The audience in the Main Hall, like hundreds of millions around the world, know this war is unnecessary, cruel, and should have been avoided and they reacted accordingly. Under other circumstances the concert would have ended in bravos and spontaneous applause. After all, it was Mother's Day. Jehane Morsi had done such a lovely decorative job on stage. But glamour was not to be borne that night, on a day many a mother had shed tears of sorrow, if not for her own children then for the children of others, and for their mothers, and for a whole nation condemned.
The mood was the same on Saturday, though the concert was in the framework of the 20th Century Music Festival. Unfortunately Saturday's programme had undergone last minute changes: instead of Nino Rota's Concerto for double bass and orchestra and Maurice Ravel's La Valse, we had Ravel's Concerto for piano and orchestra in G-major and Nino Rota's Concerto per archi in four exquisite movements. Conducted by the Italian Giorgio Croci, the strings of Cairo's Symphony Orchestra opened the concert with Rota's Concerto, a delightful piece of music, the dynamic rhythms of which, largely influenced by Jazz, at times were reminiscent of Debussy's Golliwogg's Cake Walk. The maestro had some pleasant moments conducting this symphonic piece of ragtime which the audience enjoyed.
Nino Rota (born in Milan in 1911, died in Rome in 1979) was -- like Maurice Ravel, who used the blues in his violin sonata, and Igor Stravinsky, who wrote Ragtime pieces and composed the Ebony Concerto in 1945 for Woody Herman -- one of those symphonic composers influenced by Jazz. Paul Hindemith, Francis Poulenc and many others used jazz features, as did Alban Berg in Lulu. Having composed an oratorio at the age of 11 and an opera at 14, Rota went on to write 10 operas, three symphonies, concertos, chamber and incidental film music. His operas are unabashedly tuneful and direct in appeal, and he won a particularly wide following with A Florentine Straw Hat and The Visitation. Regrettably, however, his music has never really been introduced to Egyptian audiences, though the Renato Greco ballet, regular visitors to Cairo, have used his scores.
The solo part of Ravel's Piano Concerto in G was brilliantly performed by talented Mohamed Shams El-Dine, brother of soprano Taheya. Born in 1984, this young virtuoso had a whale of a time playing the highly syncopated work in three movements. He was met with unending applause and gave us a meditative encore before rushing off. He is on his way to big things.
Maurice Ravel is often bracketed with Claude Debussy, though the dissimilarities are striking. Ravel's harmonies, often impressionist in technique, extend the range of tonality by exploiting unusual chords and using bitonality. He was one of the great innovators for the piano and is, until this day, much loved by soloists.
Claude Debussy opened the second part of the concert with the Rhapsody for clarinet and orchestra, with Egypt's first clarinetist, Mohamed Hamdy, as soloist. Like many of Debussy's scores this one starts with a single note which flowers into a descending four-note phrase. The clarinet answers with an ascending three-note phrase, like a distorting mirror. These two fragments provide much of the work's material, a kind of advanced mathematics. The soloist was excellent: Mohamed Hamdy is seldom satisfied with the less than perfect and tonight his audience received perfection. He is a rare musician who seems never to have an off night. Professor of clarinet at the Cairo Conservatoire, he is a soloist with the Cairo Opera Orchestra, and received a well-deserved ovation.
Last on the programme was the Italian Ottorino Respighi's symphonic poem The Fountains of Rome, a description, in four parts, of the fountain of Valle Giulia, the Triton fountain, the Trevi fountain at noon-time and the fountain of Villa Medici at sunset. A striking piece of music, in the post-romantic tradition, it is at once graceful and radiant.
Born in 1879, Ottorino Respighi is responsible for, among other things, the operas Maria Egiziaca, Re Enzo and Belfagor, which really ought to be considered for local production. Respighi did not have a natural talent for dramatic composition and relied for effect on sumptuous scoring and lyrical inventiveness. His style owes much to his teachers, especially Rimsky-Korsakov, Richard Strauss and Maurice Ravel. He died in 1936: his music, however, was more successful in Germany and in the Americas than in Italy. In Cairo the audience appeared enraptured by the Fountains, with the orchestra gamely tackling the pastoral mood of Valle Giulia, the stronger colours of the Triton Fountain, the midday extravagance of the Trevi and the calm, meditative mood of the Villa Medici at sunset.
This, indeed, was the most impressive music of the evening, and the most picturesque. Violent, passionate, subtle and sensitive, Croci was conducting with an insight that can only be described as poetic. He has already been acclaimed by local audiences, conducting Aida at Luxor and at the Pyramids; he has also conducted operas in the Main Hall, and recently the ballet Zorba.
