Amal Choucri Catta bids the season farewell End of season concert. Cairo Symphony Orchestra, conductor Christoph Mueller, piano soloist . Venue: Main Hall, Cairo Opera House, 25 June, 9pm Last Saturday Cairene audiences bid a final farewell to symphonic concerts: they will probably be resuming their weekly performances next September under the bâton of a newcomer, in all likelihood Steven Lloyd, who is not unknown to Cairo's symphonists, having already conducted the orchestra at different occasions. The last word concerning a definite appointment of the new principal conductor and musical director of Cairo's Symphony Orchestra has not yet been uttered: surprises are therefore still possible. Last Saturday's concert was a grand event with a full house due to the presence of Egypt's top piano virtuoso, , gracing the opera's Main Stage while performing Serguey Rachmaninov's Concerto No. 2 for piano and orchestra in C-minor, Opus 18, with the symphonists conducted by Christoph Mueller. Winner of several international prizes, has appeared on the world's most prestigious stages, such as the Barbican, the Berliner Philharmonic, Kennedy Center, Mann Auditorium, Sala Verdi, Musikverein, the Tivoli, the Palau and the Theatre des Champs Elysées. Yassa's concerto performances have furthermore associated him with such conductors as Charles Groves, Yehudi Menuhin, Zubin Mehta, Horst Stein, and Vladimir Ashkenazy. He was born in Cairo and studied at the National Conservatoire before joining he Tchaikovsky Conservatoire in Moscow for five years. Prize winner of the Marguerite Long and Viotti competitions, Yassa won a certificate of honour at the Tchaikovsky competition and at a later date he received the first Grand Prix of the Paloma O'Shea International Competition in Santander. He was likewise granted the Franz Liszt Centenary Commemorative Medal and has often been invited on the judges' panel at different international competitions in Europe and the United States. In 1998 Yassa was director of Cairo's Opera House and in 1999 he was appointed special advisor for music to the Egyptian Ministry of Culture. Residing mostly in France where he is pianoforte professor at the Ecole Normale de Musique Alfred Cortot, Paris, he often comes to Cairo where he is likewise artistic director of the Manesterly Palace, organising regular musical performances every season. Audiences were happy to applaud him at Cairo Opera's Main Hall. His performance was magnificent: poetically sensitive to the nuances of the music, with an enormous tonal and dynamic range, and never sounding effortful, even in the most testing sequences. Yassa's piano playing was of the highest quality and the interplay and balance between keyboard and orchestra was among the finest. The alla marcia sequence in the first movement was captured to perfection and the musical dialogue with the orchestra was truly special. Some wonderfully fleet-fingered pianism marked the performance, which was passionate without being forceful, mighty without heaviness and sensitive without any trace of over-sentimentality. Conductor, soloist and orchestra were as one in a reading that captured the spirit of the piece and went straight to its heart. The audience was granted lyricism, sensitivity and virtuosity, and above all, the absence of gratuitous showmanship. It was a masterpiece masterfully performed. At its close the house came down with deafening ovations. Since it featured in the soundtrack of the film Brief Encounter, Serguey Rachmaninov's second piano concerto has replaced Piotr Ilitch Tchaikovsky's first as the most popular piano concerto worldwide. It is, however, incredible to imagine that, due to the composer's depressions, one of the most beloved musical creations almost ran the risk of being denied existence. As the story goes, Rachmaninov had been suffering badly from debility and lack of creativity after the perceived failure of his First Symphony and he was persuaded to consult a hypnotherapist to help him return to composition and musical creation. In January 1900 Rachmaninov began his sessions with Dr Nikolai Dahl and by the summer of the same year he had resumed writing. The composition he started work on was the second piano concerto, concentrating on the second and third movements, and adding the first movement some months later. It was an immediate success and has never since left the concert repertoire. Rachmaninov dedicated it to Dr Dahl, explaining his healing process: "While I lay asleep in the doctor's study I heard the same hypnotic formula repeated day after day: "you will work with great ease and your work will be of excellent quality". Though it seems incredible, this cure helped and he began composing at the beginning of summer 1900. The premiere of this second concerto took place on 14 October 1901 by the Philharmonic Society Orchestra, Moscow, with the author himself as soloist. It has never stopped being an overwhelming success. For the second part of Saturday night's concert, audiences were invited to listen to a musical fairy-tale: Nicolay Rimsky-Korsakov's Symphonic Suite, Opus 35: Sheherazade, opening with the loveliest of violin solos, an ever recurring theme of the "lady story-teller" who succeeds in saving her life, in view of persuading Sultan Shahriar to refrain from executing her. The four parts of the Suite took audiences to sea on Sinbad's ship, while listening to the "tale of Prince Kalendar" and enjoying the romance of the young prince and his princess at Baghdad's festival, then returning to sea where the ship is finally wrecked on the rock of the bronze warrior. In the end the main theme returns with Yasser El-Serafi's beautiful violin solo, before reaching its glorious climax. Rimsky-Korsakov excelled in clear and colourful orchestration and his music seems to epitomise the brilliance and pageantry of Tsarist Russia. Born into an aristocratic family, in 1844, his main ambition was to be a sailor: he therefore entered the Corps of Naval Cadets in St Petersburg in 1856, where he received piano lessons and attended operas and concerts. Though ignorant of names of chords and of rules of part- writing, away at sea he completed his first symphony and wrote Sadko and Antar. In 1871, while still a naval lieutenant and unlearned in harmony and counterpoint, he was appointed professor of practical composition and instrumentation at St Petersburg Conservatoire, where he likewise taught himself in secret. He wrote around 15 operas, as well as orchestral and choral works, chamber music and transcriptions, and even textbooks on harmony and orchestration. His Sheherazade Suite is one of the most celebrated works for a large orchestra: Cairo's symphonists enjoyed playing it, the Maestro enjoyed conducting it and the audience enjoyed hearing it. It brilliantly closed last Saturday's concert, which was, at the same time bidding Adieu to Maestro Christoph Mueller, while Cairo Opera House was honouring him for a job well done and wishing him well on his way to new musical shores.
