Breaking the ice
Amal Choucri Catta attends Sergio Cardenas's first concert as principal conductor of the Cairo symphony Orchestra
Cairo Symphony Orchestra, A Capella Choir, cond. Sergio Cardenas; Ahmed Fahmy, violin; Iman Mustafa, soprano; Jolie Faizy, alto; Walid Korayem, tenor; Reda El-Wakil, bass- baritone. Main Hall, Cairo Opera House, 13 September, 9pm
Saturday's concert came as an introduction not only to the Cairo Symphony Orchestra's new season, but also to the recently appointed musical director and principal conductor of Cairo's symphonists. Sergio Cardenas did not disappoint: this was a prodigious opening concert, with remarkable compositions by Egyptian composers alongside established repertoire show-stoppers.
By the time Cairo Opera's Main Hall closed its doors there was a full house. The instrumentalists marched onto stage, taking their positions behind a single row of music stands before Maestro Cardenas took his first bow at the rostrum. If members of the audience had questions regarding the new principal conductor, they would receive all the answers tonight. Sergio Cardenas dispatched any question marks with absolute assurance.
The concert started, appropriately enough for this evening of new beginnings, with Tarek Ali Hassan's Fanfare for the Opera, originally commissioned for the opening of the Opera House in 1988. It was written solely for brass and percussion, with a fanfare majestically announcing the advent of extraordinary events. It launches impressively into the opening flourish, utilising the most glorious colours the brass can provide before the percussion takes over, swinging into exciting rhythms that are followed by a spectacular return to astounding polyphony by brass and percussion. It is positively purple, and found obvious favour with the audience who greeted its completion with screams of delight.
Whatever the excitement of Tarek Ali Hassan's compositions a romantic tenderness is never far behind. He studied music in tandem with his medical career. At one time professor of internal medicine at Al-Azhar University, he served as chairman of the Cairo Opera House, following Ratiba El-Hefny in 1991.
As brass and percussion left the stage violin and orchestra marched on, with Ahmed Fahmy as soloist, presenting Dialogue for violin and orchestra, a musical poem by Rageh Daoud. A meditative, somewhat solemn work that endeavours to blend oriental and occidental elements in a single composition, the piece attempts to effect a meeting between two differently characterised cultures, the technical with the spiritual, the scientific with the mystic.
Ahmed Fahmy, born in 1978, joined the Cairo Conservatoire at the age of seven. He has attended master classes in France and Germany, and remains one of Egypt's most promising violinists, expressive, his interpretation is never less than sensitive. The oriental parts of his violin solo in particular were managed with a nostalgic tenderness.
On the podium, meanwhile, Cardenas was giving the audience a lesson in serious musicianship, despite the fact that these two scores must have been new to him. An unfaltering sense of rhythm, and extraordinary qualities of leadership, shone through the music.
"Music is the true breath of life. We eat so we do not die of hunger, but we sing to become conscious -- we are alive," he quoted from Yasmina Khadra's Swallows of Kabul in the introduction written for the concert's programme.
Cardenas also translated a poem by Mexican Dyma Ezban on Beethoven -- "the anointed one, emperor of his own silence" -- for the programme. The second part of the concert comprised the Ninth Symphony. Conducted without a score, Cardenas had obviously worked hard with soloists, musicians and choir.
The first movement, Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso, appeared to be growing out of soundless silence, out of limitless space, with the two notes repeatedly recalled by the strings seemingly evoking the creation of sound and announcing the advent of joy.
Vocal soloists and choir appear only in the fourth and final movement: bass-baritone Reda El-Wakil, tenor Walid Korayem, soprano Iman Mustafa and alto Jolie Faizy, with the A Capella Choir, managed a lovely interpretation of Schiller's ode, which was freely rearranged and edited by Beethoven to focus particularly on "Joy, daughter of Elysium".
The symphony is an extended essay in optimism, and it was on this aspect that Cardenas concentrated. Beethoven was never a provider of virtuoso display material. He was neither a quick nor an easy worker: his mastery of structure and key relationships was the basis on which he worked a revolution in the handling of the sonata form, and these require rather more than sympathy on the part of the conductor.
Saturday night, when Reda El-Wakil opened his recitative with "O friends, no more of these sounds," the audience suddenly fell into raptured silence: even those members of the public who had preferred listening to their own chatter were suddenly overwhelmed by the Ode. The singers' voices soared into the hall and the audience was, for once, quiet, eagerly listening to the heavenly sounds.
Walid Korayem, tenor, joined the lyric department of Cairo Opera in 1998 and then obtained a scholarship from UCLA. His repertoire includes Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, La Traviata, Un ballo in maschera, Aida, La Boheme, Tosca and the Merry Widow. He sang Radames during last year's staging of Aida at the pyramids. Iman Mustafa, Cairo Opera's first dramatic soprano, has represented Egypt at several foreign competitions. She studied and performed in Paris with Caroline Dumas and completed her doctorate degree with honours. She won first prize at the Maria Callas competition in Rome in 1991 and was awarded a state prize in 2002. Jolie Faizy, mezzo-soprano, is a young singer. Born in 1978, she joined the Cairo Conservatoire in 1987, studying with Nevine Allouba and Violette Makkar. She has sung at the Citadel, in the Small Hall and Open Air Theatre of the Cairo Opera House and has performed several roles at the Academy of Arts Theatre. She is a newcomer to the lyrical department, trying to make a name for herself. But it was the bass-baritone Reda El-Wakil, who was the real star of the evening. The winner of several international competitions, he often sings abroad, where he is in demand, and remains an important asset of the Cairo Company. Together with the A Capella Choir the four soloists managed a far from perfunctory version of the Ode. As the immense coda came to a stupendous end flowers showered from the ceiling onto the stage, a welcoming gesture for the maestro and an appreciative one for performers. The ice had been broken: Cardenas had established himself as the new master of Cairo Symphony Orchestra, and the house came down cheering.
