Palestine Mozart Festival 2007

Palestine Mozart Festival 2007
Tim Moore, This Week in Palestine
Two hundred local and international musicians will be performing works by Mozart throughout the West Bank this month, during a festival whose top-bill artists include two young Palestinian musicians who are enjoying great success abroad.

For Edward Said, Mozart’s gifts ‘bordered on the supernatural’ - and indeed, dedicated festival-goers will be able to enjoy works ranging from the most intimate of solo piano pieces to religious works sung by a chorus of 60 people. For light relief, there will even be three performances of Mozart’s enchanting comic opera, The Magic Flute.

During the first two weeks of April, the Palestine Mozart Festival will reach venues in Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nablus, and Ramallah. Fifty of Mozart’s compositions will be performed. The festival opens with a recital for organ, with Mozart revelling in his ‘king of instruments’. There follows a fascinating week of the composer’s smaller-scale works - melancholy and introspection lurking alongside sunny folk melodies in a series of chamber concerts taken from all periods of his life. The second week begins with two playful recitals of operatic arias, which lead up to the full-scale performances of The Magic Flute - before the festival suddenly wheels back round once again to close with the Requiem, the often-terrifying choral work on which the composer was feverishly working when he died.

These two weeks will be an excellent way for newcomers to Mozart to learn whether they enjoy this famous music; they should consult the superbly detailed festival website (see below) for brief summaries of all of the pieces being performed. At the same time, the festival offers experienced listeners an opportunity to thread their previous enjoyment together. A small series of lectures and documentaries, which focus on the composer and his relationship with the Near and Middle East, will accompany the performances.

The music promises to be top-rate. The festival has been organized by the Choir of London, a large group of young professional musicians from Britain who are returning for their third volunteer tour of the region. Their debut CD, Sir John Tavener’s Lament for Jerusalem, recently spent many weeks at number one on the UK classical music charts.

When not performing, choir members will offer a number of workshops and master classes in schools. This supplements their grassroots commitment to Palestinian musical education, which has led them to host a number of gala concerts in the UK to raise money for a bursary scheme to fund residential music training in Britain for four Palestinian students a year.

During the festival, the choir will be joined by tireless local music organizations, including al-Kamandjâti and the Edward Said Conservatory, as well as other local choirs. They will also welcome two of the hottest young Palestinian music talents abroad.

Dima Bawab, a 25-year-old soprano singer, was born in Amman and currently resides in Paris. Since 2004, when the jury of the Toulouse Conservatory unanimously awarded her their gold medal with distinction, Ms. Bawab has been performing with a number of European orchestras and also appeared last year at the Jerash Festival. She will be performing a duet recital of Mozart songs and arias, and singing solo before the Requiem.

Saleem Abboud Ashkar was born in Nazareth and studied piano at the Royal Academy in London. He has already performed in the most celebrated musical venues in the world under the batons of the most challenging conductors; his debut CD release (EMI label, 2005) includes one of the Mozart piano sonatas that he will be performing in this festival.

For him, the festival counters the political isolation felt by many Palestinians. ‘The more we are politically isolated, the more we must fight to find our voice on the international cultural stage. But to have that voice, you can’t just deal with your own folklore. You have to produce art beyond that. In poetry and literature, we have. But our music has yet to find a world stage. I suspect that classical music may offer a route. So we must be part of this festival - both as performers and as audiences’.

The Palestine Mozart Festival runs from March 31 to April 14. Complete listings are available on the internet at www.palestinemusicfestivals.org.