Seasonal prelude
Amal Choucri Catta attends the opening of the symphonic season marked by the appearance of Turkish pianist Gulsin Onay on Cairo Opera's main stage
Gala Concert, Cairo Opera Orchestra, conductor Nader Abbassi, with Iman Mustafa, Reda El-Wakil and pianist Gulsin Onay. Venue: Main Hall Cairo Opera House, 7 September, 9pm
Sunday night, and Cairo Opera's Main Hall finally opened its doors to the first concert of the new season, only this time the season opened not with Cairo Symphony but with the Opera Orchestra, under Nader Abbassi, in a gala concert organised in cooperation with the Turkish Embassy.
It opened with the Overture to Rossini's most popular opera, The Barber of Seville, a witty, dynamic piece of music in which the slow introduction gives way to colourful, exuberant melodies, conducted with panache.
Following this delightful introduction bass-baritone Reda El-Wakil managed a rapturous version of the Calumny aria from the same opera in which Don Basilio, the music master, explains to Don Bartolo, Rosina's old tutor, just how calumny works. From the merest whisper the voice slowly gains in strength, "like a serpent creeping stealthily... it dims the senses and fires the brain", to reach a menacing forte. Reda El Wakil's diction was perfect. The audience was thrilled, greeting the singer with thunderous applause.
He was less lucky with the second aria, the heartbreakingly beautiful "She never loved me" from the fourth act of Don Carlos. King Philip, alone in his study, realises his wife has never loved him but rather loved his son, Don Carlos. El-Wakil struggled valiantly but the audience, as audiences will, preferred the comic potential of the first over the tragedy of the second.
Nor did they appear particularly keen on Puccini's lyrical drama, Manon Lescaut, the next item on the programme. It began with the magnificent symphonic intermezzo that precedes the third act, this saddest of themes articulated by muted violas. Manon's tragedy starts in the third act; by the fourth she is dead. On stage Iman Mustafa sang Manon's great aria, "Alone, lost, abandoned".
The first part of the concert ended with the Overture to Verdi's four-act opera Il Forze Destino, a drama of love, hate and vengeance. It was perfectly interpreted and quite magnificently conducted, yet the question remained as to why we were given so much hopeless drama and only one lonely piece of optimistic music. It was an overdose of drama that seemed to have spoiled the mood of the audience. Many looked ready to leave during the interval though they could not; they were, after all, waiting for the event of the evening, Turkish pianist Gulsin Onay's interpretation of Rachmaninov's second piano concerto in C- minor, Opus 18.
Rachmaninov was one of the greatest pianists of his time, not only of his own compositions but of others' music. Born in Russia in 1873, Rachmaninov died in California in 1943 and is remembered as the last of the colourful Russian masters of the late nineteenth century, possessed of a characteristically Russian gift for long and broad melodies imbued with a resigned melancholy. Of the four piano concertos he wrote only two have entered the general repertoire: the second and the third. They are an essential part of the neo-Romantic repertoire. Rachmaninov also wrote chamber music, choral and symphonic music, preludes, nocturnes and other pieces for the piano, and a number of songs. Among these he wrote the vocalise, a wordless vocal exercise or concert piece, sung to one or more vowels.
It was with Rachmaninov's vocalise, Opus 334, No 14, that the second part of the concert opened. Soprano Iman Mustafa gave voice to the wordless notes and then finally, after she had uttered the last of her lovely ah ahs Gulsin Onay, the evening's "event", arrived on stage. She is one of the most talented Turkish musical artists, only six when she gave her first public concert on Turkish radio, and 16 when she graduated from the Paris Conservatoire, winning the premier prix du piano. This was followed by a number of other prizes won at different competitions in France and elsewhere. Gulsin Onay has performed in 38 countries, both in recitals and with the world's leading orchestras, the Dresdner Staatskapelle, the Berlin, Munich and Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestras, the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, the Sinfonia Varsovia and the Warsaw Philharmonic.
In Turkey she has been granted an honorary doctorate by Bosphorus University in Istanbul. She has a wide repertoire, spanning all musical styles and periods. Her latest recording is of Rachmaninov's third concerto, with St Petersburg's Philharmonic Orchestra.
On Cairo's main stage she was an audience favourite from the very first chords opening the concerto's first movement, a stupendous moderato. She gave us an astounding display of technical mastery and virtuoso playing, tonally beguiling, absolutely disciplined yet with a charming sense of fantasy. Her extraordinary skill kept the audience spellbound till the end which was greeted with an endless standing ovation.
So the season starts, and Nader Abbassi had done a splendid job conducting: he will be presenting 80 concerts this season, says the Cairo Opera House.
