The second concert in Din l-Art Ħelwa’s Bir Miftuħ International Music Festival presented the Lucentum Quartet, featuring four Spaniards, excellent horn players all.
A wide range of technical prowess, including excellent phrasing and breathing control
Their performance delighted the audience that filled the small medieval church, not only thanks to their expertise but also thanks to the varied repertoire presented.
The quartet, made up of José Garcia Gutierrez, Gabriel Garcia Gutierrez, José Chanzà Soria and Alberto Garcia Izquierdo, played music composed by Weber, Homilius, Bruckner, Tscherepnine, Reiche, Shaw, Muller and Wagner, who was born 200 years ago, to be precise on May 22, 1813.
The four musicians, who were very well-rehearsed and who knew each other so well that they played as one, presented works from different eras and styles.
Playing on double horns tuned to F and B Flat, they displayed a wide range of technical prowess, including excellent phrasing and breathing control. The constant changing of leadership gave the correct weight to different works in different tonalities, which presented many emotions and colours.
Thus, the repertoire was very varied and represented works composed as early as the late 18th century (Weber’s Der Freischutz) stretching till today (Fripperies are quite recent works composed by Shaw for his students at the university in Buffalo, the US).
The stirring music of the Hunters’ Chorus by Weber was well chosen as a start to the concert. This was followed by Homilius’ Quartet in B Flat, which is in three movements and written in the classical, very traditional style.
After this, came Bruckner and his Andante for Four Horns, a short work which is highly emotional and which offered a very good contrast to the previous work and to the following one, which was Six Pieces for Horn Quartet by Tscherepnine, a thoroughly enjoyable descriptive composition.
Tscherepnine, a Russian-born composer, used the pentatonic scale, his own Tscherepnine scale and Russian modal works and harmonies. This provided a well-marked contrast to the preceeding one.
Brezel’s Polka by Reiche added joy to the evening, as it provided an excellent breather, a happy work reminiscent of festas under summer skies.
This short work, with its abrupt ending, went down very well with the audience, who reacted very positively when this short work was over.
Next came Fripperies, Set 1, by Shaw, born in 1930. This work explores the jazz idiom and was composed by Shaw to teach his students how to present commercial music.
Again, it was a happy piece, a work that makes you smile. This led to Waldlied by Bernhard Eduard Muller. The Forest’s Song is a calming composition, very different from Wagner’s majestic music, which lost none of its glory and beauty as transposed for the quartet.
It took a very courageous ensemble to leave Wagner to the end of this very unusual concert, which pleased the audience no end, so much so that the four musicians decided to play an encore – a well-known tango that went down well with the Spanish Ambassador and his consort (the musicians are Spanish), the German Ambassador and his consort, who sponsored the evening, as well as the American Ambassador, who also attended.