Russian Masters at the Mediterranean Conference Centre

Is there any one questioning that Tchaikovsky is one of the greatest of all composers? He manages to exude melody with everything he writes. Listening to his ballet music – Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake nobody can be in any doubt that Tchaikovsky had a massive talent for creating highly melodic, catchy tunes, one of the main reasons why his ballets are performed so often today. ***

These great tunes are equally in evidence when you listen to Tchaikovsky’s symphonies and piano concertos. The 1970s gave us Russell’s popular film The Music Lovers with Richard Chamberlain. In my mind’s eye it is difficult to think of Tchaikovsky without at the same time Chamberlain coming to mind. ***

This Russian composer led a tortured life, principally because of his homosexuality which was socially unacceptable at the time and died in mysterious circumstances. He suffered from depression and was suicidal on more than one occasion. He was also driven to despair by the poor reception given to his early compositions, many of which, like his 1812 Overture and Piano Concerto No 1 in B flat minor (played that evening at the MCC) became world famous. The latter was one of the first classical records to achieve ‘gold disc’ status. This is his most famous and most triumphant of works. ***

In 1877 within a few weeks of his wedding to his teenage student (he was then 37) Antonia Milyukova, a relationship that seems to have taken a terrible toll on both of them, he had fled the city and found solace in the Russian countryside, where he could reflect on life without the pressures he faced in St Petersburg and Moscow.

He was lucky as he could afford to resign in 1878 from the Moscow Conservatory, where he had been teaching thanks to the patronage of a wealthy widow named Nadezhda von Meck. She provided him with a monthly allowance until 1890; oddly, their arrangement stipulated that they would never meet and if they did not to acknowledge one another. ***

Pavel Kolesnikov proved an admirable soloist and provided many imaginative touches to this famous and much loved work. There is the sheer power of the music. The very opening is gloriously arresting and was used, with great effect, to advertise the concert on radio and television. Upon hearing the advert I said to myself ‘On no account must I miss this’.

A look at the programme notes gave us much to expect of the pianist and we were not disappointed. Following his debut in January 2014 at the Wigmore Hall The Telegraph gave his recital a rare five-star review and called it “one of the most memorable of such occasions London has witnessed in a while.”

The Malta Philharmonic Orchestra directed by Jean-Marc Burfin gave the pianist excellent support. It was caught up in the music making and provided plenty of excitement throughout. There was not much flashiness but finesse and poetry. Both pianist and orchestra held their own. The Guest Orchestra Leader was none other than Carmine Lauri. ***

Musicians, including conductors are not made overnight. Conductors, it is no secret, enjoy long working lives – some have even passed away mid-performance. I wonder what their formula is. Not only do they conduct thousands of works but also make recordings and teach. Sir Neville Marriner who died in October last year at the age of 92 was the son of a carpenter. In an interview he said that compared with other musicians, conductors are physically ‘fairly lucky’. ‘The upper half of your body is kept on the move. I still play tennis. Not very well. Only with the girls. I certainly notice it if I have two or three days away from the podium. I begin to miss it and think I ought to have some physical activity elsewhere.” ***

Jean-Marc Burfin was born in 1962 and has many years to live to catch up with the likes of Sir Neville Marriner. Burfin has had a distinguished career. The programme notes, by Dr Joseph Camilleri, tell us that this awardwinning conductor has conducted a number of famous orchestras throughout Europe and beyond. He has also conducted premières of various works by young composers in France and abroad. There is a series of recordings and on top of it all he dedicates part of his career to teaching conducting. ***

In the second part of the programme we listened to Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony Number 5 in D Minor. I am not at all acquainted with this 20th century Russian composer but love and play again and again his Jazz Suite Nos 1 and his Waltz No 2. Absolutely beautiful, especially the Waltz. His Symphony No 5 is subtitled ‘A Soviet Artist’s Practical Creative Reply to Just Criticism.’ He had fallen foul of the state in 1934, when Stalin stormed out of a performance of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. The review in the following day’s Pravda was headed: ‘Chaos instead of Music’ and the reviewer went on to brand Shostakovich as ‘an enemy of the people’. The composer penned Symphony No 5 as a way of trying to get back into favour. It worked and he was welcomed back into the fold, although he still had runins with the authorities later in his career, and he was creatively free once again only when Stalin died in 1953. ***

I must say I prefer this genius of a composer’s light and frothy music to his ‘serious’ compositions. Yes, I am that superficial at least when it comes to music. But no doubt that he is among the most significant composers of the 20th century. He was also one of the first great film composers of the 1920s and 1930s with many of his movie scores still performed today. His score for the 1955 film The Gadfly remains the big hit in this century. The six-minute Romance for violin and orchestra explains the score’s continued popularity today. Unashamedly inspired by French composer Jules Massenet’s soulful Méditation from the opera Thaїs, it’s an elegant, heart-on-your-sleeve melody, which leans and yearns with grace and poise.

I have to say that by and large this is how I like my music. ***

What an evening this was! The combined talent of the pianist, the conductor and our orchestra were well worth the effort of arriving an hour before the performance started in order to ensure reasonable parking. mbenoit@independent.com.mt