For the Love of Classical Music…

A rare concert in the heart of the upmarket Lagos neighbourhood, Victoria Island, relished by a coterie of classical music buffs, turns out to be a celebration of the best of local talents, says Okechukwu Uwaezuoke

CONCERT

Could this be one of Lagos’s best kept secrets? Surely, a first-rate piano concert in one of the city’s upmarket neighbourhoods, headlined by a handful of the local classical music scene’s foremost talents, deserves more plaudits than that! Besides, being numbered among its few chosen guests should be deemed a rare privilege.

Enter the Steinway Piano Concert Series. It is a brainwave of the Orpheus Company Limited. And this concert is only the first in a series of others of its kind aimed at stirring up interest around the prime piano brand Steinway. The venue? The Steinway brand’s showroom along Ologun Agbaje Street in Victoria Island, Lagos.

Recall that Orpheus, which has in its 28 years of existence wormed itself into the local classical music aficionados’ consciousness, had similarly woven concerts around the Rodgers brand. So, it is on this same cherished tradition that the current series hope to pivot.

Thumbs up by the way for the organisers for their adherence to the known classical music concert norms. Besides reminding the attendees to keep their mobile phones on a silent mode, the company’s managing director, Chijioke Nwamara, also ensures the non-desecration of the concert’s sanctity by the philistinic interruption or disturbance of the less punctual invitees.

Which takes us straight to the concert. For the concert’s curtain-raiser, the spotlight falls on Uchechukwu “Uche” Nwamara – that’s right, he is Chijioke’s younger brother. His business-like appearance clad in white shirtsleeves and black tie surely leaves an impression.

And the piece? None other seems more suited for this occasion than Fritz Kreisler’s “Praeludium and Allegro in the Style of Pugnani”. For a recital of this two-part piece, which the original composer strangely and misleadingly attributed to the obscure Italian violinist and composer Gaetano Pugnani, Uche is accompanied on the piano by his brother, Chijioke. But the problem is, the average guest in the hall care little about this attribution to Pugnani. And why should they, or anyone, care anyway?

Talking of the Nwamara brothers to stirs up the dregs of nostalgic memory. Without ado, the two brothers’ MUSON Centre years swims into focus. There are good reasons for that. Both trained under Our Saviour’s Anglican Church’s music director/organist Theophilus Orkang and performed at the cultural centre’s much-looked-forward-to concerts. Yet, the chemistry between the duo dates way back even beyond those years at the prestigious classical music hub. They had in addition been featured with their flute-playing father, David Nwamara – the founder and chairman of Orpheus Company Limited – in several other concerts.

Back to Kreisler’s “Praeludium and Allegro…” It is one of the Viennese-born musical virtuoso’s many short pieces for violin and piano and seems the favoured one among aspiring violinists. And it suits Uche’s punctilious adherence to the rules. Indeed, his deft fiddling proclaims his years of long familiarity with the string instrument. True: his musical first steps may have been taken at the age of six with piano lessons under the watchful eyes of Mrs Anna Ogunnaike. But he switched over to the violin a year later. Thus, he was subsequently weaned under the successive instructions of Theophilius Orkang and Vania Sigridova.

While in the US for his tertiary education, he further burnished his musical credentials under Zina Gendel at the Washington Conservatory, Washington, DC and the late Janet Packer at the Longy School of Music, Boston, Massachusetts. He would later also become a student of Susie Meszaros of the Chillingrian String Quartet in London. Seizing the many opportunities that came his way for performing chamber music, he had joined the Mount Vernon Symphony Orchestra and the Harvard Mozart Society Orchestra.

Back in Nigeria, Uche remained a steadfast adept of classical music, performing at private and family concerts, and serving now and then as a classical music critic for THISDAY newspaper. And indeed, not even his day job as lawyer or the demands of family life could blunt his enthusiasm for the musical genre.

To be sure, many aficionados of this genre root for the voice. So, is it any wonder that the tenor Joseph Oparamanuike ratchets up the audience’s enthusiasm a notch? Thus, Vincenzo Bellini’s “Ma Rendi Pur Contento”, an ariette from his Composizioni da Camera, becomes an entrée to those drooling for his voice. It is followed by the aria from the operetta Das Land des Lächelns (The Land of Smiles), titled “Dein ist mein ganzes Herz!”     with music by composer Franz Lehár and words by Fritz Löhner-Beda and Ludwig Herzer.

One thing the invitees can be sure of is that they are yet to hear the best from this singer. Which sends curious aficionados scouring for his credentials. Originally chemical engineer by training, he has switched to his unalloyed loyalty to the opera. Impressive, if not intimidating, are his credentials in his new role as an opera singer.

This music director of the Lagos Catholic Archdiocesan Choir was known to have bagged a master of music opera (MMus Opera) at the Alexander Gibson Opera School (AGOS), Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS), under the tutelage of Scott Johnson, among others. Perhaps, among his most cherished performances were before Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh during the 2014 Commonwealth Games. He similarly performed in several concerts, since 2012, in Germany, France, Italy, Austria, England, Scotland, China and Brazil with Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival Choir and Chorakademie Lübeck.

If Joseph’s virtuosic performance surprised no one in the audience, Foluso Nwamara’s should. Soon after Chijioke Nwamara’s expected dexterous rendition of Johannes Brahms’s “Intermezzo in A Major”, Foluso asserts her presence as a MUSON Choir-brought-up. Not even the most obtuse member of the audience would have been unmoved by her superlative rendering Christoph Willibad Gluck’s well-known “Che Faro Senza Euridice”. This song, from Orfeo ed Euridice an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck based on the story of Orpheus, was set to a libretto by Ranieri de’ Calzabigi.

Somehow, it looks as if Uche’s return for Henryk Wieniawski’s “Legende” is only meant to prepare the grounds for the return of the ace singers, the maestro Joseph and his wife, Foluso. With the former, Salvatore Cardillo’s “Core ‘Ngrato” and Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Donna È Mobile” couldn’t have sounded any better. The latter consolidates on her previous performance with “Recitative” and “Ombra Mai Fu (Largo from Xerxes) by Georg Friedrich Handel.

Back to Joseph. Not even his hearty rendition of the concluding piece, François Adrien Boiedieu’s “Viens Gentille Dame” (from La Dame Blanche), seems enough to appease the audience. In response to the audience’s call for an encore and as a birthday tribute to his wife, he draws the curtains on the evening with a rendition of Edouardo di Capua’s “’O Sole Mio”.

By the way, the next edition of this concert series holds on Saturday, May 20 at this same venue.

• This concert held on Saturday, March 18.