Amal Choucri Catta finds solace in two concertos Cairo Symphony Orchestra; Steven Lloyd, cond, , piano, and Cairo Symphony Orchestra: Cairo Opera House, Main Hall, 25 February; Jan Stulen, cond., Yurie Miura, piano: Cairo Opera House, Main Hall, 4 March Following the Fifth Arab Perspectives Festival Cairo Symphony Orchestra returned to their regular weekly concert schedule with two programmes. Both turned out to be thrilling musical experiences which the audiences appeared to thoroughly enjoy. At the heart of each was a superb piano concertos. The world is celebrating not only the 250th birthday of the Austrian Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart this year; it is also celebrating the hundredth birthday of the Russian Dimitri Shostakovich, born in St Petersburg on 25 September 1906. He is considered by many as the greatest musician of the 20th century. Over 15 symphonies, and in many other works, he demonstrated his mastery of the most challenging forms, producing music of great emotional power and technical invention. All his works are marked by passionate extremes: tragic intensity, grotesque wit, bizarre humour and savage sarcasm. Following heart attacks in 1969 and 1971 his music seemed preoccupied with death and his final works are filled with extraordinary power and alarming tension. A child prodigy, Shostakovich was given his first piano lessons by his mother and was acclaimed for his first symphony while still a teenager. As a convinced believer in Russian socialism, he sought ways in which his music could serve the state. But he fell into disfavour with Stalin after his successful opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, though his seventh and eighth symphonies seemed to please the Soviet authorities and he received numerous awards. His fifteenth symphony was composed in the summer and autumn of 1971, mainly at Repino, near Leningrad, the same autumn he was awarded the Order of the October Revolution. Shostakovich died on 9 August 1975 in Moscow and was accorded a state funeral, while the world's press hailed him as perhaps the most outstanding composer of his generation. Symphony No. 15, Shostokovich's last, premiered in Moscow in 1972 with the author's son, Maxim Shostakovich, conducting. It was, unusually, acclaimed by the audience, the critics and musicians. The symphony contains a wealth of experiences, a whole gamut of feelings and philosophical meditations on life and death. It was performed in the second part of Steven Lloyd's concert at Cairo Opera's Main Hall, with Cairo Symphony under Lloyd providing the audience with an outstanding musical evening. The orchestra was joined for the programme by , who opened the evening with Tchaikovsky's first concerto for piano and orchestra in B- flat minor, Opus 23. One of Tchaikovsky's most popular works, it has melodic inventiveness, grand sweep and constant freshness: the first movement opens with horn calls and a surging melody on the strings, against the soloist's rising chords. It starts as sweetly as a fairy-tale then throws itself into rapid arabesques before returning to its original melody. One theme is based on a Ukranian folksong while another appears in the woodwind, establishing a mood infused with longing. The work continues, through sparkling movements and brilliant cadenzas, giving the soloist ample opportunity to display a virtuoso pianism, which did. The second concert introduced one of the finest young pianists to perform on the Cairo stage -- Yurie Miura from Japan. Born in Tokyo in 1981, she joined the Yamaha Master Class in 1993 and is currently studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Her performance took place within the framework of the Japanese Cultural Week. Aged 13, Miura won the first prize at the Goettingen International Chopin competition, and went on to win other prizes, in Marienbad, in Spain and most recently in the Haverhill Sinfonia Soloist competition. For her Cairo debut she chose Frederic Chopin's first piano concerto in E-minor, Opus 11, with Cairo Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the Jan Stulen who, though based in Amsterdam is no newcomer to Cairene audiences. Chopin's Concerto opens with a grand, sweeping introduction by the orchestra, featuring the main thematic material of the movement. When the piano enters it reminisces over melodies from the introduction before elaborating them with virtuosi display. There are haunting shadows and delicate moments of hopeless love and despair in this movement, as there are moments of passion and stormy interludes before the second movement comes on, with its romantic, meditative melody, beautiful beyond words. In the end the rondo vivace, reminiscent of an old, popular dance, is as demanding in its liveliness as the romanza of the second movement is in its melancholy. Miura managed brilliantly, and Jan Stulen succeeded in maintaining a harmonious dialogue between the piano and the orchestra. Frederic Chopin is certainly not an easy composer, and certainly not the "consumptive drawing-room balladeer of the keyboard" as he was once called. At heart he was a revolutionary, destroying formal and spiritual traditionalism and opening up an alternative path. Born in 1810 in Poland, his father, Nicolas Chopin, hailed from Marainville in Loraine and taught French at a high-school in Warsaw. Young Frederic grew up among the children of Polish aristocracy. His musical promise was apparent at a very early age: at six he was improvising at the piano and by seven he had written two polonaises, one of which appeared in print. He played for Tsar Alexander I when he was fifteen and dominated the domestic concert scene, striking out as far as Berlin in 1828. Aged 19, he left Warsaw for Vienna and from there he went to Paris where he met the love of his life: Aurore Dudevant, otherwise known as George Sand. Chopin was seriously ill with tuberculosis when he and Sand split up in 1847. He died on 17 October 1849 and was buried in Pere Lachaise cemetery between Cherubini and Bellini. After the burial his sister, who had come all the way from Warsaw for the funeral, set off home with his manuscripts and personal effects and, in a bottle of formaldehyde, his heart, which, he had asked, should be buried in Poland. The concert had started with El-Mashrabeya, by Egyptian composer Mona Ghoneim, and closed with Cesar Franck's Symphony in D-minor. Both compositions were well received by the audience. On 23 March at the Main Hall the Austrian orchestra "The Spirit of Europe" will be joining Cairo Opera Orchestra in an event featuring conductor Nader Abbassi, pianist and, opening the programme, Shostakovich's Festival Overture.
