The well-attended Bir Miftuħ International Music Festival’s third concert, presented by Din l-Art Ħelwa, was made possible by the generous help and support of the German-Maltese Circle and the Goethe Institut.
The performers were the Modern Cello-Piano Duo, consisting of French-born cellist Daniel Sorour and pianist Clemens Kröger. The programme was a varied one, ranging from Schubert to Päart, but began with a composer, Granados, roughly midway between those two.
The duo chose two of Granados’s famous set of 12 Spanish Dances. Originally for piano and with the best-known arrangement for solo guitar, this evening’s combination was a novel one to me. I liked the warmth of the cello in Andaluza and Orientale, both of which, especially the Andaluza, were taken at too fast a tempo.
Things were better settled in the third movement, Saeta-Grave, from Cassadó’s Sonata in A Minor, and went on with a very fast-paced but well-coordinated Ritual Fire Dance from de Falla’s El Amor Brujo.
I almost feared for the Adagio affettuoso from the Cello and Piano Sonata No. 2 in F Major Op. 99 by Brahms. Well, just because there was a sensation of a barely repressed spiral of energetic abandon.
However, these fears were stilled because of the duo’s lovely interpretation of this piece. This romantic vein continued with the opening Allegro moderato version for cello and piano of Schubert’s Sonata in A Minor, D. 821 for the obsolete arpeggione and piano.
There was a change of idiom in Päart’s very intriguing and rather lovely Fratres, a 1971 work which is of a particularly rich, rhythmic and textural kind.
The long ostinato solo cello intro paved the way for the piano’s entry and the interaction between the cellist and pianist revealed a very close rapport and excellent sense of timing and balance.
A lot of energy came across as well from the Duo’s rendering of the Pampeana, Opus 21 No. 2, a rhapsody for cello and piano by Ginastera. Very amusing were the Poules et coqs and l’Éléphant from Le Carnaval des Animaux by Saint-Saëns, followed by the final piece from that work, the graceful and marvellously performed Le Cygne.
The sheer virtuoso cello pyrotechnics already experienced in the de Falla and Ginastera works returned in the concert’s final piece which, however, began with the tender prayer Dal tuo stellato soglio from Rossini’s Mosé in Egitto with a set of variations by Paganini.
Simply breathtaking, after which the duo rounded off their performance with an encore, their own excellent arrangement of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.