I enjoy a piano recital best of all. That of 'Legendary pianist Ashley Wass' at the Manoel Theatre as part of the International Music Festival was well publicised. We have to also thank once more the European Foundation for Support of Culture for this concert. Our beautiful theatre is now acclimatized and the seats in the stalls very comfortable indeed. It is a delightful setting to listen to good music.
Ashley Wass came on stage wearing a blue silk Chinese jacket not the traditional black evening wear. Of no importance really but I haven't seen it before.
No programmes are for sale these days. It is all on your iphone. I have no idea what happens if you don't have one.
J.S. Bach, A. Shor, Robert Schumann and Shostakovitch were on the menu. A demanding programme.
J.S. Bach (1685-1750) Partita No. 1 in B flat major set the scene for the evening. The pianist played with complete naturalness and with elegance, with an effortless perfection and a wonderful touch.
The sheer volume of Bach's compositions, particularly in the areas of choral, keyboard and instrumental works is staggering in itself. After he died it took no fewer than 46 years to collect and publish all his works. There is a particularly strong spiritiuality in his music which was influenced by his dedicated religious faith. He was also an organist as well as violinist. He also had 20 children only nine of whom survived. Four of them became composers.
Bach had loved mathematics and it is well known that there is an underlying relationship between music and mathematic. Perhaps Bach is proof of that.
Next on the programme was a sonata by Alexey Shor, a familiar name in Malta. Born in Russia in 1970, his early life was dominated by a keen interest in, and remarkable ability for science and mathematics. As he explains in an interview: "I was a maths prodigy and in fact both of my parents were scientists, so for me the only question was what sort of scientist I was going to be." However, composing was in his blood and he went on composing. His works may well have remained private had it not been for a chance encounter with a friend of his, the well-known and celebrated violinist, David Aaron Carpenter who saw a score of his lying on a piano in Shor's house and organised a public performance featuring Shor's music.
I have to say that my heart sinks when I see the work on a contemporary composer on a programme. But I had heard Alexey Shor's compositions before and loved every one of them. His is not abstract avantgarde music. His are understandable melodies and traditionally-based harmonies. They are tuneful and beautiful and no wonder he is now an international composer who we can proudly say lives in Malta and whose works are played across the planet.
The sonata played that evening by Ashley Wass was indeed applause inviting. The maths prodigy turns out to be a musical prodigy too. Such lovely music and so beautifully played. It remains fragrant in the memory.
An intense Dmitry Shostakovich, circa 1930s at work
Robert Schumann's Kinderszenen - Scenes from Childhood - is so well known and so well loved. Träumerei in F major, No. 7 of the set, is one of the most famous piano pieces ever written, and has been performed in myriad forms and transcriptions. It has been the favourite encore of several great pianists. I have heard it often but never tire of it. This music is so restful in many ways in our fast moving world. Kinderszenen is a masterpiece and made me feel like a child again. It was played with gentleness and tenderness by Ashley Wass.
Poor Schumann, so gifted but he had such a tragic life finishing his days in an asylum.
And so to that enfant terrible - and another genius - Dmitry Shostakovich. He was apparently capable to conceptualize a new work entirely in his head and then write it down with extreme rapidity - if uninterrupted, he could average twenty or thirty pages of score a day, making virtually no corrections as he went. "I always found it amazing that he never needed to try things out on the piano," his younger sister recalled. "He just sat down, wrote out whatever he heard in his head, and then played it through complete on the piano." But this feat was apparently preceded by days of mental composition - during which he "appeared to be a man of great inner tensions" the musicologist Alexei Ikonnikov observed, "with his continually moving 'speaking' hands, which were never at rest." He himself was afraid that perhaps he worked too fast. "I worry about the lightning speed with which I compose," he confessed in a letter to a friend. "Composition is a serious process, and in the words of a ballerina friend of mine, "You can't keep going at a gallop."
We are so familiar and so love his Jazz suites 1 and 2 and of course Romance from The Gadfly. Who doesn't?
Ashley Wass plays with a natural authority whether it is Bach, Schumann, Shor or Shostakovich's prelude and fugue of which he played two: in E minor and D minor.
After such a demanding programme he came back and played Oh Danny Boy which still kindles a blaze in my heart.
His playing is a blend of sensitivity and athleticism. He has been described by Gramphone magazine as possessing 'the enviable git to turn almost anything he plays into pure gold.' If you want to know more about him turn to the internet.
How very lucky we were to have him here playing at our national theatre. It was such a treat, a roll call of delight.
He should have had full house that evening. Where were all the music lovers and pianists and piano students? We should have given him a standing ovation. Some in the audience in front of me were busy with their iphones. He should have been carried shoulder-high by cheering and besotted fans. But not in Malta. Now that the Manoel theatre is acclimatized and very comfortable even in summer it should have been full house! So sorry it wasn't.
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