Concerts galore
Amal Choucri Catta wraps up the latest at the opera
Gershwin concert, Cairo symphonists, conductor Steven Lloyd, soloist Philip Martin, piano. Main Hall, COH 16 December, 8pm. Twente Youth Symphony Orchestra, Holland, conductor Jeppe Moulijn, soloist Heleen Haverkate, piano. Main Hall, COH 4 January, 8pm. Cairo Symphony Orchestra, conductor Steven Lloyd, soloist Karim Samir Saleh, violin. Main Hall, COH 6 January 8pm.
Among the plethora of concerts recently presented at the Cairo Opera's Main Hall, some deserve our special attention.
The George Gershwin concert of 16 December featured the Cairo Symphony Orchestra, brilliantly conducted by Steven Lloyd with the celebrated Irish pianist Philip Martin -- superbly performing the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in F-major. Cairene audiences welcomed the work with sincere enthusiasm, partly because the Concerto was new to many. Famous for his Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, La Lucille, Lady be Good and his only opera, Porgy and Bess, not to mention numerous films and hundreds of songs, Gershwin's melodic gift was phenomenal. Deservedly he came to be known as "the man who brought jazz into the concert hall". Born in 1898, Gershwin died in 1937: during his short but full life, he gathered money, women and controversy. His Piano Concerto in F, an emblem of the racy, roaring 1920s, is the perfect mix of the freewheeling jazzman and the cool classicist.
That night the Cairene audience was offered some atmospheric playing from an extremely dedicated orchestra under the Maestro's exciting baton. They gave us great sound, bringing Fifth Avenue right into the Main Hall, with the famous, syncopated time-is-money rhythm, as hectic as New York's rush hour and as romantic as lovers strolling down Central Park. But it was Philip Martin who stole the show: his virtuoso performance kept the audience wide-eyed, breathless and glued to their seats. A celebrated Irish pianist and composer, he had just returned from his native Dublin, where he premiered his third piano concerto with the National Symphony of Ireland. Martin has already toured the world and is planning another international tour for this year. The audience loved him just as much as they loved Gershwin, the Maestro and the entire orchestra.
The concert had opened with another American composer, Samuel Barber, rather unknown to local audiences. Born in 1910, he was a child prodigy, and started composing at the age of seven. He died in 1981, leaving a number of works, including operas, ballets, symphonies, concertos, vocal and choral works as well as chamber music. His Adagio for Strings was beautifully performed by the orchestra, inducing feelings of nostalgia and tenderness with some very sensitive conducting. The concert closed with the famous Ninth Symphony in E- minor, Opus 95, From the New World, a wonderful work by Czech composer Antonin Dvorak, inspired by his three-year sojourn in America. Once again we had the Bronx and the jazz, Harlem and the waterfront in lovely melodies. Brilliant!
THE SECOND concert to deserve attention took place on 4 January; it was presented by the Dutch Twente Youth Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Joppe Moulijn, with Heleen Haverkate, an excellent soloist, at the piano. On the orchestra's diverse programme, the musicians surprised their audience with Adel Afifi's symphonic suite Kalila and Dimna, as masterfully performed, as the rest of the programme -- opening with Carl Nielsen's Oriental Festive March from Aladdin and continuing with works by Edvard Grieg, Camille Saint-Saens, Georges Bizet, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and John Williams, then closing with the Triumph March from Verdi's Aida.
The 17-year-old high-school student who had started her piano lessons at the age of six, Heleen Haverkate, gave us a wonderful version of the second movement of Saint Saens's Fifth Piano Concerto in F- major, Opus 103. The entire concert fell under the charm of the Orient with the third movement of Korsakov's Sheherezade, Bizet's Aragonesa and Les toreadors from Carmen, or else the Arabian dance from Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite, to mention but a few. The audience was visibly thrilled by the sheer musicianship, the harmony and brilliance of the Dutch Youth Orchestra, though they were rather surprised that the number of female instrumentalists exceeded that of their male counterparts in the orchestra; their purity of sound, their discipline and sensitivity were particularly appreciated.
On 6 January the Cairo symphony Orchestra conducted by Steven Lloyd granted their audience another surprise, with 15-year-old Karim Samir Saleh as solo violinist. Born in 1991, this child prodigy started studying the violin at the age of six with his Russian mother, Tatiana Saleh. Joining the Cairo Conservatoire, he participated in a number of solo recitals at the Cairo Opera House, at local and foreign cultural centres, at Ein Shams university and at the American University in Cairo. He was 11 when he played the Mendelssohn concerto with the symphonists in 2004. In 2005 he won first prize at several competitions and took part in a number of different festivals.
Saleh played Aram Khatchaturian's Violin Concerto in D-minor, a difficult, demanding work requiring virtuosity as well as talent, musicianship and professionalism. The concerto was composed for the great David Oistrach, who performed it in Moscow in 1940. That same year the work was awarded the Stalin Prize. As with all Khatchaturian's works, it is colourful while remaining in the nationalist tradition of the St Petersburg school. The concerto's dynamic Allegro turns nostalgic in the andante and vivacious in the third movement, which ends with a finale described by the author as "violinistic fireworks". Saleh was presented with an impossible number of bouquets and received an endless standing ovation. The concert had started in a Baroque mood, with the second Concerto Grosso in F-major, Opus 6, by Arcangelo Corelli, a beautiful work mingling the meditative and the eloquent with genuinely brilliant results.
In the end, we were given The seasons, Opus 67, originally a one-act ballet by Alexander Glazunov, upholder of the Russian musical tradition. He is rather unknown to Egyptian audiences. However, his two major ballets, Raymonda and The Seasons are characterised by delirious, soft-centred music, which earned them a distinguished place in the Russian ballet tradition. The Seasons open with a short interdiction for Winter, with four variations introducing frost, ice, hail and snow, while Spring opens with chirping birds and warm breezes, followed by Summer with a waltz of cornflowers and poppies, and a Barcarolle turning into Autumn with a Bacchanale and a merry finale.
A surprisingly vivacious work, magnificently performed and brilliantly conducted: once again the Maestro was given a standing ova
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