Amal Choucri Catta finds herself alone in the dark -- almost Cairo's symphonists are bidding farewell to a somewhat ambiguous and disconcerting musical season, closing with two concerts under the bâton of Christoph Mueller who will be leaving Cairo for brighter musical horizons coming September. The first of the two concerts took place last Saturday, 18 June, at the opera's Main Hall, while the second, and last of the current season, has been scheduled for Saturday 25 June at the same venue. Summertime has invaded the city and audiences in the Main Hall seem to be fading away with the mounting heat waves while end-of-term exams are keeping youngsters and their entire families glued to their homes. Last Saturday musicians on stage were, once again, faced with a rather empty Main Hall, and local members of the sparse audience were embarrassed when realising the gigantic amount of empty seats. The concert itself, however, was a splendid affair, opening with Mendelssohn's Overture to Fingal's Cave, followed by Jean Françaix's Concerto for Clarinet, and closing with Brahms' Fourth Symphony. Fingal's Cave, also named The Hebrides is an overture in B- minor, Opus 26, composed by Mendelssohn who is said to have invented the principal theme while on a visit to the Hebrides -- a group of 50 islands west-north-west of Scotland -- and mainly to the Island of Staffa in 1829. Written in one single movement, with sequences varying in mood and length, the work's light and dark colours filled with graceful melancholy and timid tenderness, recall memories of softly undulating waves caressing sandy shores. Somber and menacing in minor tones, the mood turns radiant in major keys, with violins soaring on imaginary waterfalls while basses and bassoons diffuse mysterious scales on illusory cascades. Realism and fantasy are caught up in a chimerical landscape filled with the loveliest music ever invented. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy is said to have been the most precocious musical genius of all time. Born in Hamburg, Germany, on 3 February 1809 to a wealthy and highly cultured Jewish family, young Felix was 12 when he astonished Geothe and his circle in Weimar with his keyboard prowess. His mother supervised her four children's education, while his father and uncle ran a banking firm which flourished until 1938, when it was closed by the Nazi regime. The Mendelssohn children were however baptised in Berlin as Protestants, and the two eldest, Fanny and Felix displayed incredible musical virtuosity. They were sent to Paris for piano lessons, and by his 15th birthday Felix's old teacher, Carl Friedrich Zelter, proclaimed the boy a member of the brotherhood of Bach, Haydn and Mozart. At 16 Mendelssohn was already a composer whose genius for memorable themes and dazzlingly original textures went hand in hand with a breathtaking command of large-scale structure. Mendelssohn's gifts were phenomenal: he was a good painter, had wide literary knowledge and wrote brilliantly. He was furthermore a superb pianist, a good violinist, an exceptional organist and an inspiring conductor. He had an amazing musical memory and was generous to other musicians: his craftmanship and melodic freshness were, and still are, highly valued. By 1844 Felix Mendelssohn's health started to decline: he died on 4 November 1847, aged 38. Fingal's mysterious cave was followed by one of the most difficult clarinet concertos ever composed: Jean Françaix's Concerto in four movements, performed by one of the most promising virtuosos, renowned Dimitri Ashkenazy -- a slender, rather fragile-looking young man, whose long hair and dark beard seem to be covering the major part of his somewhat frail features, leaving it hard for anyone to discern one or the other of his facial expressions. His unbelievably brilliant performance on the clarinet, however, left no doubt as to his musical sensitivity and his remarkable virtuosity. Born in 1969 in New York, Dimitri Ashkeneazy started playing the piano aged six, before switching to the clarinet and continuing his studies at the Lucerne Conservatoire in 1989. Son of the famous Vladimir Ashkenazy, Dimitri has already performed widely, both as soloist and as chamber musician, appearing, among others, at London's Royal Festival Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; at the Hollywood Bowl and at a number of other important venues. His interpretation of Jean Françaix's Concerto was a masterpiece of virtuosity. Françaix, born in Le Mans in 1912, was a French pianist and composer whose father Alfred was director of Le Mans Conservatoire and whose mother conducted a choir. Dedicated to Fernand Oubrandous, musician at the Opera de Paris, the clarinet concerto, composed in 1967, was successfully premiered in 1968 and turned into one of the major items of the clarinet repertoire. It stands as one of the most difficult works to date: its vertiginous Allegro sequences had a dizzying effect on the audience, while the two Cadenzas and the Andantino, with their colourful passages going from a dark Pianissimo to a giddy Fortissimo, brought a smile of appreciation on everyone's lips. According to Jean Françaix, this Concerto "is amusing to listen to, though playing it is another matter. It presents an acrobatic display for the fingers, with looping the loop, steep turns and sudden dives aimed at terrifying the soloist who must have nerves of steel and thousands of hours of "flying time" under his belt. There are no free rides in this concerto, not even in the slow movement, where enchantingly long passages have to be played in one single breath. To pursue the aeronautical image further, it is a bit like the pilot turning the engines off and gliding till the plane is one the brink of plummeting down, then casually flicking the switches back on and swapping his pilot's helmet for a circus clown's rotating wig." Dimitri Ashkeneazy's performance and Christoph Mueller's conducting certainly deserved the audience's ovations. The second part of the concert was dedicated to the fourth symphony of Johannes Brahms, closing the "Brahms cycle" for this season. The Fourth in E-minor, Opus 98, composed in 1885, is the last of Brahms' symphonies: it was premiered in Meiningen in the fall of the same year, turning gradually into one of the most appreciated works of the great master. Opening on a theme of tragedy with sobbing violins followed by fanfares marching to war, the work turns from tenderly serene to powerfully passionate, with a finale of 32 Passacaille- variations of a gigantic emotional impact. The audience loved the work: that night they even loved the orchestra, the soloist and the Maestro who had given them a rather belated though quite lovely soirée musicale.
