Bir Miftuħ Festival’s second concert was one with a great difference. It occurred a few hours before the recent European Parliament elections. In order to celebrate this event John Vassallo, former Ambassador to the EU, and his wife Marianne Schäfer Noll, both staunch Europeans, decided to sponsor this concert presented by Din l-Art Ħelwa.

It was devised with the enthusiastic collaboration of music director Roberto Beltrán y Zavala in what was dubbed very rightly so as ‘A Concert for Europe’. It was a celebration of the European Year of Cultural Heritage championed by Europa Nostra. The concert was also held in collaboration with the Gudja local council.

Modern Cello-Piano Duo

The concert began with a number of works for string quartet performed by a quartet formation from the Re: Orchestra of Rotterdam consisting of Nicholas Bernstein and Reggie Clews (violins), Hara van Amersfoort (viola) and Wijnand Hulst (cello). They performed the opening Allegro con brio from Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Major, Op. 18 No. 1, followed by Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K. 546, then followed by the opening

Allegro moderato from Fauré’s String Quartet in E minor, Op. 121.

These are very beautiful works, but a surprise came along with the last part of this section. This featured the rarely aired and heard, very delightful Three Minuets for string quartet (1892) by Puccini, while the composer was still working on Manon Lescaut which was to be his first major operatic breakthrough.

The concert then continued under the direction of Zavala, with the added participation of guest artistes Jessica Ellul (clarinet), Jenny Melville (oboe) and two of our leading vocalists, mezzo-soprano Claire Ghigo and soprano Gillian Zammit. These two women are among our finest, versatile interpreters. They proved this well enough because both sang a Lied and pure bel canto with equal conviction and mastery. Ghigo sang Mahler’s Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen followed by Ciel pietoso from Rossini’s opera Zelmira.

Zammit’s Lied was Morgen, that exquisite masterpiece by Richard Strauß, after which she launched into Eccomi in liete vesta from Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi. The two then sang with beautiful abandon the Barcarolle from Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann, and, the very perky, witty Havanaise composed by the great Spanish mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot.

A celebration of the European Year of Cultural Heritage

Another unusual touch, aimed to celebrate the European spirit, was for the two singers to sing in German parts of Schiller’s An die Freude, as set by Beethoven in the last movement of his Ninth Symphony. Then there was a little rehearsal with singers and audience singing the main theme to a translation into Maltese by Dr Vassallo. The singing was done with great gusto!

After the concert there was the usual reception in the beautiful garden behind Bir Miftuħ church and where guests were treated to champagne offered by Drs Vassallo and Schäfer Noll.

Meanwhile the well-attended 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 very 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, the evening’s combination was a novel one to me.

Well, the cello could sing and I liked the warmth of the cello in Andaluza and Orientale, both of which, however, 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 Arvo 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, Op. 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 breath-taking, after which the duo rounded off their performance with an encore, their own excellent arrangement of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.