CAIRO - IT was a wonderful night with Mendelssohn in the Main Hall at the Cairo Opera House, inspired by the Swiss conductor Andreas Spörri, helped by Egypt's Hassan Sharrara and his brilliant violin playing. The orchestra performed two of Mendelssohn's greatest works.Although the audience weren't treated to anything new, the selection was good. The programme started with The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave), Op. 26 by Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, born, and generally known in English-speaking countries, as Felix Mendelssohn (3 February 1809 4 November 1847), a German composer, pianist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn was particularly well-received in Britain as a composer, conductor and soloist, and his ten visits there during which many of his major works were premiered formed an important part of his adult career. The Leipzig Conservatoire (now the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig), which he founded, became a bastion of this antiradical outlook. His most-performed works include his overture and incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Italian Symphony, the Scottish Symphony, the Hebrides Overture, his Violin Concerto, and his String Octet. Mendelssohn wrote the concert overture The Hebrides in 1830, inspired by visits he made to Scotland around the end of the 1820s. He visited Fingal's Cave, on the Hebridean island of Staffa, as part of his grand tour of Europe, and was so impressed that he scribbled the opening theme of the overture on the spot, including it in a letter he wrote home the same evening. The work is written in a single movement with episodes of varying lengths. The orchestra was very professional in the way it merged with the violin soloist. It wasn't the first time the orchestra had presented this concert. The second item on the programme was the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in E Minor, Op. 64, one of Mendelssohn's greatest works. The concerto is often selected, because of its technical and rhythmic excellence and the need for a colourful orchestra. The work has been described as perfect for the violin. It differs from the traditional concerto as it is in three connected movements with no breaks; even the eloquent first movement cadenza is an integral part of the work, which was written by Mendelsshon, without giving any freedom to the violinist. If the concerto needs a skilful solo violinist, it also needs a professional orchestra, especially strong in the wind instruments. Tamer Kamal, Tareq Mahran, Wessam Ahmed and the violinists led by Yasser el-Seriafi were particularly impressive. Hassan Sharrara made a wise choice, as it had been a long time since we'd seen him conducting Mendelssohn in his usual sensitive fashion. Sharrara first played this concerto in 1969 in the old Cairo Opera House. The Russian Ambassador was in attendance and was so impressed by Sharrara, that he offered him a scholarship to study in the old Soviet Union. The programme ended with Franz Shchubert's Symphony No 9 in C, The Great (D. 944), with the Egyptian orchestra led by Spörri, with slight modifications to the solo instruments as well as the orchestra, fittingly rounding off a wonderful night with Mendelssohn.
