The Baroque Festival provides us with a unique opportunity to listen to and enjoy some of the greatest pieces of music ever composed and performed by top quality musicians…. the Baroque Sundays wherein one can spend the day in Valletta traipsing from palace to museum to church and back to the Manoel are specially wrought to provide a day’s outing full of contrasting styles that appeal to young and old alike. Kenneth Zammit Tabona, artist, and Artistic Director of The Baroque Festival explains to Lily Agius.
When and how did your love for music begin and grow?
One is born loving music and that was definitely true in my case as very early on my parents noticed how the Rediffusion, which used to be kept on all day when I was a baby, affected my mood. My love for music grew but did not become defined till my uncle gave me a turntable (remember those anyone?) and an LP of Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto. All it took were those heroic declamations which define it to make me fall in love, hopelessly and irrevocably, with what is loosely termed as ‘classical music’. I must have been about 12 at the time. By the time I was 17, the then editor of the Times, the late lamented Charles Grech-Orr, asked me to review a concert at the Manoel. That was a huge turning point in my life as already, forty years ago now, I was getting myself involved, more than just a member of a relatively passive audience, in the development of music in Malta; something towards which I have, in various ways, contributed in the past four decades. Music, per se, then, with me, is a passion that supersedes all other interests even my own genre which as everyone knows is at being a watercolour artist. I cannot paint without music.
What is your fascination with music from the Baroque era?
I have been intrigued with baroque music since 1985 when the EC as it then was asked all European counties to commemorate the music of Bach, Scarlatti and Handel for the tercentenary of their birth in 1685. However my love for the baroque idiom is twinned with my love for the 17th and 18thcenturies, the era of The Sun King and his great grandson Louis XV, epitomising what Arthur Bryant dubbed ‘The Age of Elegance’. From Versailles the influence of the glorious art of baroque, permeated every corner of Europe, from St Petersburg of the Neva with its almost incongruous Italianate palaces built for Catherine the Great to the splendiferous Reggia of Caserta out of Naples built by Vanvitelli for Carlo III. In Malta the great ‘enlightened despots’ were undoubtedly the Portuguese grandmasters, Pinto and Vilhena, whose lions, winged hands and crescent moons are indelibly stamped on every edifice of note in Malta and Gozo including of course the Manoel Theatre, named after Anton Manoel de Vilhena who commissioned it in 1731. Malta was a cultural microcosm of Europe and inevitably the knights employed their own composers and musicians rather like we take around our Iphones and IPods to keep us musical company. Therefore in Malta we have our own home-grown composers of the period like Benigno Zerafa and Mikelang Vella who provided music for the Grandmagistral Court, that of the Inquisitor, that of the Bishop, and those of the auberges, not to mention the houses of the well to do Maltese. The Church alone in those days commissioned masses and oratorios, vespers and hymns from their favourite composers to add pomp, majesty and drama to liturgical services. This is the world of the baroque that unfolds during an event like the Valletta International Baroque Festival; now in its second edition.
How do you feel about Valletta hosting such an event?
With Valletta 18 on the horizon hosting a festival like this was vital. Baroque epitomises Valletta and Malta. The greatest manifestation of the baroque idiom in all its forms is the traditional Maltese festa: pomp, circumstance and exaggeration. Therefore one can be reassured that come Valletta 18, there will be an ‘established festival to kick-start the year in which it is hoped Malta will make a great cultural quantum leap forward. We have been told of late that Malta is a cultural desert. This is something I cannot agree with. As a culture vulture I find it very hard to keep up with all the activities that crowd each week. January was in fact a lean month and now we have filled it with a glorious plethora of musical events by local and international musicians, singers and ensembles.
There is a varied choice of performances. Would you say there is something for everyone?
Yes; this being the second edition of the festival I was able to concentrate on having a good mix of highly popular works like the Brandenburg Concertos and the Messiah with a parody by Charles-Simon Favart of Rameau’s Hypolite et Aricie which has never been performed in Malta and which is specially designed by the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles to be premiered in Malta for the Rameau anniversary year. It’s going to be an amazing performance with puppets on a specially designed stage within a stage. We have a matinee on Sunday afternoon and a special schoolchildren’s performance on Monday morning. The monumental B Minor Mass by Johann Sebastian Bach takes place in the evening at St John’s Co Cathedral while the following week is full of wonderful ensembles and soloists performing Rameau arias, Bach cantatas and compositions by Habsburg Emperors too! I can assure you that Malta has yet to listen to the like.
The ticket pricing is very reasonable. How is this possible?
This is possible because the festival is fully sponsored by the Government of Malta. We keep the ticket prices low because we want to encourage people to attend as many performances as possible. Special student and Kartanzjan discounts apply. We also have other sponsors for whom an event set in January makes sense. The MTA for instance heavily advertises the festival overseas for naturally a festival in a relatively mild climate like ours in January will attract people from all over Europe to come and listen to top quality music being played in a unique ambience like that posed by Valletta.
How many venues are being used for the festival this year? More than last?
More or less the same; the Manoel Theatre is primus inter pares; first among equals. Then we have St John’s Co Cathedral for the ‘big’ concert and various other churches like Ta’ ?ie?u, All Souls, St Paul’s Anglican Pro Cathedral and St Catherine’s while this year we also have the glorious painted salon at the Archaeology Museum in Republic Street not to mention the grandiose throne room at the palace. We have excellent support from the pro Cathedral in view of the fact that the 17th Century organ, which was played by Handel, will soon be available to regale us with some fantastic baroque Buxtehude and Bach not to mention the glorious Handel Organ Concertos; pleasures yet to come.
This will continue to be an annual event. By 2018, is there any more that the festival can offer?
The festival must expand to improve and survive. It has, miraculously already established a good musical reputation among the cultural elite of Europe and I expect more and more people from overseas will be subscribing to it as long as the standard of the product improves. It is now up to us to ensure that the elite becomes popular and I am very confident it will. The establishing of the Valletta International Baroque Festival Ensemble will also help to anchor this festival in the international scene as it will be able to represent Malta and the festival itself overseas in specialised events playing excerpts from Maltese 17th and 18th Century composers. We must look to beyond V18 and what it represents. Malta’s future will depend more and more on cultural tourism and this is why we must do everything we can to devise unique products like this festival to be able to finance great events in future.
Has the event attracted cultural tourists?
As I mentioned previously, one of our most vital and helpful sponsors of the Malta Tourist Authority which, because January is a ‘lean’ month, gives the festival excellent exposure that it might not have otherwise got at any other time of the year.
What performance(s) are you looking forward to the most?
Difficult to say however I think it must be the Monteverdi Vespers which is being performed by the Valletta International Baroque Festival Ensemble. It will be great to see and listen to this great evocative work being performed by my friends Sally Jackson and Sarah Spiteri who were instrumental in setting up the ensemble for which we have had special budgetary funding for. Monteverdi’s Vespri della Beata Maria Vergine 1610 fall just within the established time barriers of what is termed to me the musical baroque period of 1600 to 1750 and are among the most beautiful and emotionally charged compositions on the period.
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