Exsultate Jubilate

The round of stuffing hasty buns or sandwiches into that hole in the face below my nose between my mad rushes between the City Hall, the Cultural Centre, the Art Centre , the Science Museum and various UA cinemas having ended on the 5th April. I could finally relax again to the sound of music last Saturday at the City Hall. It was billed as "Mozart +: Sing Mozart Sing." 

Conducting the HKPO was Jan Willem de Vriend, the chief conductor and artistic director of the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra and the Combattimento Consort Amsterdam and also principal Guest Conductor of the Brabant Orchestra for baroque and classical repertoire. De Vriend has also done numerous operas by Handel, Monteverdi, Purcell including Mozart's Die Zauberrflötte and has made recordings for radio and television for the Radio Chamber Orchestra, the Brabant Orchestra and the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra and is now making recordings of all Beethoven symphonies. Singing for us was Mara Mastalir, a young Austrian singer since age 5 and a frequent performer in various theatre, films and television. She has sung as soloist in oratorios and a leider recitalist in various Austrian music festivals and appeared as Clorinda in Rossini's La Cenerendtola, as Valenciene in Léhar's Lustige Witwe at the Vienna Volkoper.

The evening's programme started with the Darndanus Suite by the little heard French composer Jean -Philippe Rameau. It was followed by two works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: extracts from the operas Cosi fan tutte (Una donna a quindici anni, Temerari, sortite..Come scolglio) Le nozze di Figaro (Giunse aflin il momento..Deh vieni non tardar) and then his Exsultate Jubilate K 165 and ended with Beethoven's Syphony No. 2 in D, Op 36 in Adagio-allegro con brio, Larghetto, Scherzo (Allegro) and Allegro molto.

Little is known about the life of Rameau before he was forty but he first got noticed by his pre-Revolutionary French elite when he produced his first opera Hipplolyte et Aricie after which he continued writing his treatises on music theory and other operas and stage works, Dardanus is his fifth opera in which he tried to deal with serious subject matter instead of providing mere entertainment and his music is known for its powerful dramatic effect. According to the Programme Notes, the opera deals with the love of Princess Iphise for Dardanus, the sworn enemy of her father and eventually consummated their love with the blessing of the goddess Venus. It is a five act opera with a "raging sea monster, a mystical solar eclipse, a battle scene (Bruit de Guerre) an entrance music for warriors" but also with contemplative scenes like Dardanus' meditations whilst in prison (Lieux funestres) and is principally ballet like music. We got 8 parts: Ouverture (Opening), Gracieusement et un peu gai (graceful and a little gay), Entrée pour les Guerriers (Exiting Entry of the warriors), Tambourin I/II (a two-beat dance with strong tambourin rhythm) , Bruit de Guerre pour Entr'acte ( galloping horses and other battle sound) Menuet tendre en Rondeau ( Tender minuet ( an elegant 3 step dance) in rondo form), Riguadon I/II ( a rigrous two-step dance) and Chaconne. (a three step dance with the stress on the second beat). The Dardanus has been re-written three times (1736, 1744, 1769) and is thus full of musical ideas and dances.  To me, the music sounded by turn grand, elegant and courtly, soft and measured, fast, almost rushing, exciting, then graceful once more and finally flowing and energetic. 

Cosi fan Tutte is full of the fun, the joy and the sorrows of love and when first presented in 1790 was advertised as La scuola degli amanti or the school for lovers, because in it two army officers were betting with each other how to lure their girl friends, Fiordiligi and Dorabella into infidelity. At the end of Act I, we hear Fiordiligi singing Come scoglio (Like a rock) to repel the advances of their disguised lovers, pretending to be Albanians and tempting them as such. Despina, the men's maid servant, tells the girls in Act II that even a girl of 15 must learn to lie without blushing so as to get the men to do what they want.  

Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) is the farcical story about how Figaro, the servant of Count Almaviva must keep his fiancé Susana out of the bedroom of his lecherous master by asking Susana to disguise herself as the Countess so that she could expose the Count for what he is right in front of his wife (who is herself disguised as Susanna) . Before she tricks Count Almaviva by singing "Deh vieni non tardar"( Come, don't delay), she deliberately lets Figaro hear her false intentions before the Count, just to make him jealous. 

The final song sung by Mara Mastalir was Mozart's Exsultate Jubilate K 165, written in Milan and first performed in 1773 at the Theatrine Church to be sung by Venanzio Rauzzini, a famous castrated male singer with a childlike high voice not ruined by male hormones. In fact, this has been a church tradition. The piece is a three-part sonata for voice, oboes, horns, strings and organ and is about how souls sing happy praises to God, followed by an a hymn to the Virgin Mary in the form of an aria, leading to the final Alleluia.

Mara Mastalir appeared in a red bare top evening gown with a glittering band at the lower breast line and a matching necklace. She has a very sweet voice. Perhaps because she is not really big, one could not reasonably expect her body to act as the kind of sound box of those sopranos with a more opulent torso. She sang with plenty of feeling and expressive gestures. I like her.

The final piece of the evening was Beethoven's Symphony No.2, a symphony heard as often as his No. 5, 6, 7 and 9. This is a symphony written when Beethoven first learned that he might have a problem with his hearing and was fearing that his condition might be permanent but as Beethoven, he would gladly meet his death with joy and hence the symphony was written in D major. It is full of some of folk melodies that he heard in Heligenstadt, whither he went upon medical advice to enjoy less noise in the hope of recovery. It premiered in 1803 but did not get much attention because at the same concert, there were also his Symphony No. 1, his Piano Concerto No.3. Some say that the slow introduction to the first movement prefigured that of his ninth and that its very long second movement prefigured his sixth. The third movement has a very happy and light rustic feeling to it whilst in the the fourth, he burst out in full joy and exultation.   It was another very pleasant evening at the City Hall.