The Season Opening Concert (2023-2024) at the Manoel took place on 4th October. This is always a popular concert as it is also a social occasion. The Acting President, Prof. Frank Bezzina, who is replacing Dr George Vella while he is in Australia, was present. Dr Bezzina is also pro-rector of the University of Malta.
The programme consisted of two Quintets, one by Mozart, and the other by Schumann, with the versatile Michael Laus at the piano.
Composed in 1784 Mozart's Quintet for Piano and Winds in E flat, K452 premiered two days later in Vienna. Shortly after the premiere, Mozart wrote to his father that "I myself consider it to be the best thing I have written in my life." It is scored for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon.
I love the first notes of the first movement the Largo where the pianist is almost caressing the notes but there is plenty of vitality in rest of this composition. It has a sense of joy, so very Mozart, as depicted in the film Amadeus, at least for that is the only Mozart I am acquainted with. This is surely the kind of music our souls need with all the conflicts and horrors of war going on around us.
This quintet though very pleasing is nowhere as popular as Schubert's "Trout" quintet in A Major composed for the same combination of instruments.
My favourite instrument is the piano and I would rather go to a piano recital than anything else especially if my pieces by favourite composers are being played.This does not mean that I don't enjoy anything else. Of course I do. When I have to miss a piano recital, as sometimes happens, I am very cross with myself and regret it but there are other things which must get done in life.
Let me share with you the following piece about Wolfgang Amadeus which I read some time ago and copied into one of my cahiers: Having settled in Vienna in 1782, in a letter to his sister, he gave a detailed account of his hectic days in his chosen city: "My hair is always done by six o'clock in the morning and by seven I am fully dressed. I then compose until nine. From nine to one I give lessons. Then I lunch, unless I am invited to some house where they lunch at two or even three o'clock, as, for example, today and tomorrow at Countess Zichy's and Countess Thun's. I can never work before five or six o'clock in the evening, and even then I am prevented by a concert. If I am not prevented I compose until nine. I then go to my dear Constanze, though the joy of seeing one another is nearly always spoilt by her mother's bitter remarks...At half past ten or eleven I come home - it depends on her mother's darts and on my capacity to endure them..."
On another occasion he wrote to his father: "Altogether I have so much to do I often do not know whether I am on my head or my heels."
Is it any wonder that poor W.A. died early.
The second piece of music that evening was The Quintet for Piano and Strings in E flat, Op.44 by Schumann which consists of four movements. It has been written that "no astute listener can doubt that the E flat Quintet is the product of a most fertile musical imagination - fresh, buoyant and inventive." Schumann's life was a tale of tragedy and early death. A brilliant composer he spent most of his life in the shadow of his wife Clara Schumann, one of the most famed pianists of the day. He suffered from syphilis and depression. He tried to commit suicide and was placed in an asylum where he died two years later at the age of 46.
This is a fine Quintet, romantic in spirit. It was widely acclaimed and much imitated. Its success firmly established the piano quintet as a significant, and quintessentially Romantic, chamber music genre. But Schumann's Piano Quintet failed to please at least one discriminating listener: Franz Liszt heard the piece performed at Schumann's home in 1848 and described it as "somewhat too Leipzigerisch," a reference to the conservative music of composers from Leipzig. Schumann took enormous offense at this remark. By some accounts Schumann rushed at Liszt and seized him by the shoulders. Liszt eventually apologised. Schumann did not forget Liszt's offhanded insult, and raised it several times in letters to Liszt. Liszt's relationship with the Schumanns was never entirely mended.
The concert was followed by a lively reception in the new Sala Isouard. Altogether a most pleasing evening.
I asked Dr Michael Grech, Chairperson of the Teatru Manoel Board of Management and Administration, to comment on the latest restoration. Here is what he told me: "The completion of the restoration and refurbishment works in the Priory of Navarre Building marks another important milestone in the transformation of the Theatre's complex - we now have a new multi-purpose hall, which we have aptly named the Sala Isouard, that can double up as a concert hall for chamber music, as well as a venue for conferences and receptions. We have, additionally, opened a new booking office at ground floor level, equipped with state-of- the-art technology, that will enhance our patrons' experience, including interactive and fully bilingual booking facilities, and will shortly, also be opening a cafeteria. The project will also mark another first, in that it will render the entire Theatre complex fully accessible. We will now take the works outside, with the next phase focusing on the restoration of the old Priory's entire façade commencing on Old Theatre Street, and all the way down Old Mint Street."
I will say one thing: in a Malta where there is so much written against the present government's performance let us give praise where it is due. Our national theatre has remained the pride and joy both of this and the previous government. May it remain so.
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