The Manoel Theatre’s spotlight this week turns to two young ladies on two very different sets of strings. David Schembri catches up with violinist Nadine Galea and pianist Christine Zerafa ahead of their concert on Wednesday.
Nadine GaleaIt’s 7pm on a Tuesday evening. Christine Zerafa sits at her Kawai baby grand piano at her home in Qrendi. “The piano is my passion,” she says as she caresses the black polished top of the instrument.
Meanwhile, 2,000km away, Nadine Galea is at the Royal College of Music in South Kensington, London, playing in front of her violin professor, Radu Blidar. It is her last lesson before she flies back to Malta to join Zerafa for a concert of chamber music at the Manoel Theatre’s Sala Isouard, as part of the Spotlight series.
During her lesson, Galea played Szymonawski’s Tarantella to her notoriously hard-to-please tutor, and later happily reports that Blidar was “very pleased” with her progress. “It means a lot coming from him,” Galea says later: “I just have some bits and bobs to improve further, but it is never enough in music; it can always be better.”
The pair have both come a long way from their starting points. Zerafa, 25, the eldest of the two, comes from a musical background which isn’t exactly congruent with the style of music she plays now – both her grandfather and her mother played in one of Qrendi’s village bands.
Christine Zerafa“My grandfather was very musical,” she recalls fondly, “and a lot of the advice he gave me rings true to this day. My mother is also quite musical – being a music teacher means I can tell when someone is musical or not.”
Galea only had an older cousin to look at for inspiration: “My family is not musical at all; I’m the black sheep! My cousin, six years older, used to play guitar in a church group for a while, so when I was seven I wanted to join her, and that’s how my musical journey started.
“Then, when I was nine I wanted to take up the violin too; I just liked the way the instrument is played, so I used to pretend my guitar was a violin and used a clothes hanger as my bow...”
Their starting points eventually converged when in 2011 Nadine was looking for a pianist to accompany her on her debut recital, and after asking Joanne Camilleri, who was busy, she was told to approach Zerafa (her student) instead.
The pair rehearsed the programme when Galea was home for the Christmas holidays, but a small injury to the violinist’s hand required proceedings to be a bit slower than usual
“We clicked together immediately; we both love chamber music and love to discuss it in depth with no rehearsal time limit. It is very rare to find such pianists, so I feel very blessed,” Galea says.
Zerafa, in another country and oblivious to what her friend was to write, agrees, adding in an amused, yet somewhat subdued vein: “We even go out together at times, to discos and such.”
Not that partying seems to be a priority for either, as both musicians have to dedicate long hours to honing their craft. Galea, having spent her post-secondary years in an Italian conservatorio on a scholarship, is now at the Royal College of Music (she was so unconfident of her audition that she applied for three other schools) in her final year of her B.Mus, and practises as long as her body allows her.
After a two-year stint at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, where she got her M.Mus, Zerafa now has to juggle her passion for the piano with a PhD in auxetics – a cumbersome juggling act, if there was one.
“I believe that if you manage your time properly and focus – you need to be efficient, basically – you can do things well. It’s not easy, because things take up a lot of energy, but you get great satisfaction at the end of each day, because you feel you’ve actually accomplished something,” she laughs.
“I try to keep four to five hours of practice daily, but when I have a deadline approaching I try to do at least two hours.”
The pair rehearsed the programme when Galea was home for the Christmas holidays, but a small injury to the violinist’s hand required proceedings to be a bit slower than usual.
In the interim, both musicians have been practising their own respective parts before reuniting for intense bouts of rehearsals prior to Wednesday.
The programme, featuring works by Boulanger, Saint Saëns, Grieg, Piazzolla, Oblivion, Debussy and Ruben Zahra, is, as Zerafa takes pains to emphasise, “not just me accompanying the violin”, but more of a collaborative effort.
Indeed, previewing Minstrels, one of the Debussy preludes being played on Wednesday, there is little doubt that the spotlight will be on both women as Zerafa gets lost in the notes.
“Debussy’s music is like abstract art; there is a certain degree of freedom and transparency; he creates a picture through several motifs with various colours and leaves it up to your imagination to visualise it,” she explains later, as she dissects the various motifs in the short piece she has just played.
A distinctive touch to proceedings will be local composer Ruben Zahra’s Crimson Sunrise, which is dedicated to Galea herself. “He kindly dedicated this piece to me and I premiered it in London; the audience and my colleagues really liked it!
“He then transcribed it also for saxophone and piano and it was played in Malta, but this will be its Maltese premiere in the original version for violin and piano,” Galea says.
The piano and sax duet was performed by Zerafa herself (as part of the Batera Duo), who goes on to explain that the concert’s leitmotif is dance in its many forms.
“One of the major works in the programme is Grieg’s third sonata for violin and piano (in C minor). The first movement is a marvel of concentrated themes, relentlessly contrasted and juxtaposed, and the second movement brings in typical folk elements which Grieg is most famous for. The quasi-folk song is wrapped around a fast brittle dance.
“The last movement is also mainly a crisp dance but also incorporating an urgent and mysterious development section and a triumphant climax in C Major,” she says.
The dance element also features in other pieces in the programme, but in different styles, such as Szymanowski’s Tarantella (which is preceded by a Nocturne), Saint Saens’s Danse Macabre and also Piazzolla’s sensual tango, Oblivion. Zerafa’s solo Debussy pieces: Danseuses de Delphes, La Danse de Puck and Minstrels also have a dance theme to them – although they may be quite hard to dance to. That, however, can be left for when they go clubbing.
Spotlight will be held on Wednesday at the Manoel Theatre, Valletta, at 8pm.
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