CHARLENE FARRUGIA will be giving a recital ‘Encore’ organised by The Malta Piano Trust, in the garden of Villa Bologna, Attard on 12 July. Marie Benoît asks her a few questions and is certain that, despite the heat, she will make you sit up and listen

Charlene Farrugia who has won many awards and prizes, needs no introduction, especially to music lovers for they have been listening to her and following her fortunes for several years. Charlene started learning the piano when she was just six years old.

Was there any particular time that she sensed that she was a gifted pianist, a cut above most piano playing youngsters?

“A truly gifted pianist has the ability to connect on a spiritual level with the music, and become one with it. This oneness happens when the pianist is totally in love with the music, she is playing, whether in front of an audience or alone. In fact there is a difference when preparing for a competition and for a concert. In a competition, there’s less scope for freedom. In a good performance, there’s room for creativity. Taking a chance in a concert makes it a more exciting experience. In a competition you can’t mess up, you are there to win!”

If she looks closely at her ancestry on both sides was the gift of music ever evident on one side or the other?

“Well, I am open about the fact that I don’t come from a musical family. When I was young, I used to love listening to classical music, especially piano music, so I asked for piano lessons. Since I was not yet six, I started going to ballet lessons, but made certain that I started attending piano lessons as soon as I turned six. I never thought I would be a pianist one day. First I wanted to be an air hostess, then a mathematician and an accountant. I was taking music lessons seriously all along, but I didn’t really decide that music was to be my life until I was 17, and chose to follow a BA (Hons) in Music Studies at University.”

Many young people don’t have the patience, the determination and the discipline to persist in their piano practice. Did she find it easy to practise for a good deal of hours every day?

“The real piece a concert pianist plays is not what’s printed on the page,” she offers. “It’s the sounds the composer heard in his head, and the feelings the composer was expressing with those sounds. So, the pianist tries to recreate these sounds and feelings for the audience. While practising, I notice at each moment the differences between what I expect and what the composer actually wrote. This is done during practice time, and for me it is full of interesting activities, although I have to admit that it is very tiring, because you must always listen closely and try to express the feelings of the music. It’s odd that most people think that practising only means repeating the same thing over and over again.”

At the age of just 13 years

Charlene made her debut with the National Orchestra at the Manoel Theatre, playing Mendelssohn’s First Piano Concerto for which she had received a standing ovation.

Does she recall what it felt like to play for the first time in our national theatre at such an early age?

“Although it has been seven years now, I still recall all the feelings I had on the night. I can’t say I had stage fright. I don’t think I knew what it was then! I remember being backstage, while the National Orchestra was playing the first orchestral work on the programme, before I had to go on stage. The musicians on stage were all smiling at me, and so I felt as if I was about to play with some good old friends. When my time arrived to go on stage, the pit stage on which the piano was standing had some hydrolic problems, and it could not be raised. I couldn’t believe it! When the piano was finally raised, the audience applauded. And this was the trigger and I thought to myself, people are here to listen to good music, so that’s what I will give them. When the concerto came to an end and I heard the thundering applause, I thought: ‘Yes, I have managed to carry the audience with me into the imagination of the concerto’.”

I knew that Charlene had received very high marks in her finals at the University and has now been accepted to further her studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London where she will be following a postgraduate diploma in piano performance.

What does she hope to achieve in London?

“I am looking forward to my life at the Academy. I’d really like to play more concertos with orchestra. I particularly enjoy playing chamber music as well, and plan to enter competitions since they are an encouragement to learning new repertoire. They also help me to gain experience performing to a critical audience.”

Apart from music does she have time for any other interests? If so what are they?

“Yes, I love reading. I’m insatiable and I’ll read all sorts of different types of books.”

Once your studies in London are over do you intend going on

performing or will you take up teaching or perhaps combine both?

She hopes to be a soloist, “ideally combined with some teaching, so perhaps I will follow the Academy’s LRAM teaching diploma as well.”

At the concert at Villa Bologna Charlene will be playing

Schumann’s Carnaval: Scènes Mignonnes sur Quatre Notes. This consists of 22 pieces. Could she tell me something about the music.

“Carnaval is an example of a cyclic work, so all its short pieces have to be played in a recital. In it, one character after another takes centre stage. It was described by the composer as ‘Little scenes on four notes’, in which he proclaimed his love for Ernestine von Fricken through the music. The letters ASCH, which spell Ernestine’s birthplace, as well as a fragment of his own name, translate in German musical notation into the notes A, E Flat, C and B. Permutations of these notes litter the entire score, generating the themes for the Carnival characters, some of them historic, like Chopin and Paganini), others folkloristic and so on.”

The rest of the programme is made up of Liszt. First of all there are the Grandes Etudes de Paganini No 5. The Etudes dedicated to Clara Schumann are six studies which include the famous La Campanella. These are considered to be technically among the most difficult pieces and require piano-stretch runs and a chord base which spans the entire piano, pieces for a virtuoso.

What made you choose this challenging work?

“Liszt’s first encounter with Paganini had a significant impact on his music, encouraging him, according to his memoirs, ‘to experiments of a new kind’. Etude No 5 forms a very good introduction to Liszt’s distinctive character. It is a free transcription of the Ninth Capriccio for Sol Violin by Paganini, and is famously known as La Chasse. Liszt skillfully imitates the flute and French horn as exhorted by Paganini’s instructions ‘imitando il flauto’ and ‘imitando il Corno’ written in the original Caprice.”

Following the Etudes there is Liszt’s Après une lecture de Dante – Fantasia quasi Sonata, another enormously challenging work which poses a taxing technical challenge even for the most skilled performers. As you know you are going to need reserves of intricate dexterity and raw muscular endurance if you are going to emerge from it unscathed, as Dante himself does at the end of the Inferno. Can you comment on these pieces.

“This work is the final piece of the second volume of Années de Pélerinage, and was inspired by a reading of Dante’s Inferno. It is set in D Minor, the traditional key for musical descriptions of hell. The piece begins with the interval of a tritone, considered by medieval theologians to be the devil’s interval. A chromatic theme follows which represents the wailing of the souls trapped in hell, and a brilliant chorale follows, which is a musical description of Lucifer himself, ‘The creature eminent in beauty once’, as described by one of the greatest living musicians, Alfred Brendel.”

The Malta Piano Trust presents

Charlene Farrugia’s piano recital ‘Encore’ on Thursday 12 July at 8pm. She will be introduced by Joseph Chetcuti in the garden at Villa Bologna, Attard, courtesy of the de Traffords. Entrance to the concert is strictly by invitation. Should you or your friends wish to attend please advise Mrs Jo Staff on

Tel: 2149 3588/7970 6890 or

Mr John Appleby on

Tel/Fax: 2131 8533; email: [email protected]