An updated mediaevalism
From Stalinist terror to the tavern: Amal Choucri Catta makes the trip
20th Century Music Festival, Cairo Symphony Orchestra, cond. Sergio Cardenas; Shostakovich, Concerto for cello and orchestra, soloist Hassan Moataz; Carl Orff, Carmina Burana, A capella Choir, soloists Taheya Shamseddin, soprano Hisham El-Guindy, tenor, Andrea Martin, baritone. Cairo Opera House, Main Hall, 29 March, 8 pm
Saturday night and audiences were hurrying to the Main Hall of Cairo Opera House, drawn in large numbers by the promise of Carl Orff's scenic cantata Carmina Burana. There was something else on the programme, of course, but it would be foolish to assume that it was not Orff that was the draw.
The first part of the programme, then, is likely to have come as a welcome surprise: Shostakovich's first Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in E-flat major, Opus 107, in four movements, with the young and talented Hassan Moataz at the cello, and Sergio Cardenas, the great Mexican, conducting the Cairo Symphony Orchestra. The concert was taking place within the framework of the Twentieth Century Music Festival and the Opera had a full house. Among the audience was the reassuring sight of small groups of tourists who said they had "just happened to be passing by" and decided to stay for the show.
It was the right decision for they, like the rest of the audience, were treated to a memorable evening of music. The applause was loud and deserved : the soloist displayed a virtuosity belied by his years, and the conductor was simply marvellous.
Dedicated to his friend, celebrated cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, Shostakovich's concerto is complex : its instrumental effects retain the power to disconcert and it makes enormous demands on the soloist who, towards the end of the second movement plays in a very high tessitura, requiring absolute technical mastery. From a humorous march to a lyrical interlude and from a meditative cadenza to the final allegretto, Hassan Moataz took his audience on a thrilling musical journey.
Born in Cairo in 1980, he joined the Cairo Conservatoire aged nine and was awarded a number of prizes between 1994 and 1997, among them a certificate of merit from the International Festival at Schleswig Holstein, Germany and, appropriately given tonight's programme, from the International Rostropovich Competition for Cello in Paris. He has successfully toured a number of European and Arab countries. Those who have already applauded his previous performances in the Main Hall, with one or the other of Cairo's orchestras, were happy to applaud him again, and those who had never heard him before were treated to a revelation of technique.
Shostakovich's compositions are demanding not only on soloists, but on orchestras and conductors. His works, though a fixture of the international repertoire, are seldom heard in Cairo though he was aprolific composer.
Born in St Petersburg in 1906, Shostakovich started studying music with his mother at the age of nine and later entered the Glasser School of Music and the Petrograd Conservatoire. His first symphony earned him international acclaim at the age of 20 and today he is regarded as among the greatest of 20th century composers: in his symphonies, quartets and in many other works demonstrate mastery of the largest and most challenging forms with music of great emotional power combined with formal invention. Nearly all the significant features of his music are present in the First Symphony: sectionalised structures with themes built up into a mosaic and frequent use of solo instruments in their highest and lowest registers. All his works are marked by emotional extremes: tragic intensity, grotesque and bizarre wit, humour, parody and savage sarcasm. In later years he seemed preoccupied with death and his great final works have extraordinary power. Increasingly disillusioned with the Soviet system, the darkness and bitterness of his music intensified, and the unresolved tensions produced a series of masterpieces.
His production is enormous: he wrote 15 symphonies, five operas, six ballets, as well as chamber music, sonatas, songs, incidental music for plays and film music. Shostakovich's loathing of Nazi tyranny was equalled only by his hatred of Stalinist terror. He outlived both and after the second world war, travelled to Western Europe and to the United States. His Sonata for viola and piano was his last composition: he died on 9 August, 1975. Shostakovich was not only a creator but an educator, ra believer in Lenin's words: "Our workers and peasants deserve something greater than spectacles. They have earned the right to great art. We should not lower ourselves to the average cultural level of the masses, but raise them and give them access to the greatest aesthetic treasures".
This is what Shostakovich did. And they are words that those responsible for planning the programmes and selecting the performers at Cairo Opera House might do well to remember. Cheers echoed verywhere at the end of the concerto.
The second part of the concert had drawn the crowds: Carmina Burana, scenic cantata for choir, soloists and orchestra, composed in 1936 by Carl Orff, with the A capella Choir, directed by Maya Gwinneria, and the Egyptian soloists Taheya Shamseddin, soprano, Hisham El-Guindi, tenor, and the Austro-Italian baritone Andrea Martin.
It was in 1803, when the monastery of Benedictbeuren in Bavaria, Germany, was being secularised, that the illuminated manuscript of 280 poems and songs, dating back to 1250, was discovered in the monastery's library. In 1847 the Bavarian philosopher Johann Andreas Schweller published thes texts under the title Carmina Burana, or "songs of Beuren". The authors of the poems included churchmen, students, minstrels, goliards, vagabonds, jugglers and all kinds of secular amateurs of dubious morals. They wrote in Latin, in mediaeval German, in old French or in contemporary Bavarian dialects. When Carl Orff came across these poems he chose the thoroughly secular ones, dividing his Carmina Burana into three parts: Primo Vere, Springtime, In taberna, the tavern, and the Court of Love. The three sections are framed at beginning and end by a grand chorus of invocation to Fortune imperatrix Mundi -- fortune, empress of the world, unreliable goddess, constantly changing like the moon, rotating unceasingly while presiding over the fortunes of mankind.
In the first part, dedicated to Spring, the different tunes sing the renewal of Nature Iussi Cypridis, "by the order of Venus". In the end, a rndo introduces a theme of collective mockery, making fun of the girls who want to spend summer time without the boys, while laughing at the unsuccessful poet, a symbol of mocked romanticism, being served a roasted swan in the tavern.
The orchestration, though colourful, is simple, with two pianos, a large percussion and a huge orchestra. Orff's mature style is dry and staccato, with much use of drums, and the content of the music is based on rhythmic patterns and on their variations. Harmony is reduced to basic elements and melody is nearer to rhythmic speech than to the expressive ideal of other composers.
At the head of Cairo's symphonists, Sergio Cardenas developed, his own rhythmic conception, leading the orchestra, singers and choir to a glorious finale.
Taheya Shamseddin's clear, warm soprano fascinatied the audience. She studied opera in Cairo, Salzburg Austria, Italy and the United States. In 1984 she joined the Cairo Opera Company. She has a useful stage presence which cannot be said about tenor Hisham El- Guindy, who is shy and uncertain. Baritone Andrea Martin, on the other hand, had the pleasant charm and alluring attraction of the bon-vivant. His smile kept the entire audience smiling and his professionalism saw him through some unforyunate difficulties. As for the choir, it managed an evening of rare perfection. In the end the house really came down with the loudest standing ovation heard for long time.
