A touching experience

By Heidi Trautmann

With my presentation of the Kyrenia Chamber Choir and the musical event together with the Nicosia Municipality Orchestra in the last issue I had opened the door to expectations and I will now fill the space with my words of appreciation after I have been to the concert on 25 October at the Bellapais Abbey.

Excitement was in the air when I arrived, the choir members in their ‘uniform’ in  black and blue still mixing with the crowd of concert goers and the hall soon filled to the last seat, not one more chair could have been squeezed in. Close to 500, I roughly counted.

With the first part of the concert evening, Oskay Hoca and his orchestra opened the hearts with beautiful orchestral works by T. Albinoni, J.S.Bach, K.Belevi, P. Tchaikovsky, A.Dvorak and W.A. Mozart,  softened our minds, a good preparation for the main piece, Fauré’s Requiem. Close to me I recognized K. Belevi, the composer of the ‘Valse’; he is a composer of guitar music and his compositions are known internationally. Our readeers may remember the guitar concert he gave at the Karmi Church two years ago.

For the second part of the concert, the Requiem, the orchestra moved down to the level of the audience to make room for the 27 members of the Kyrenia Chamber Choir. It was a nice feeling to be at touch distance with the violins. Rauf Kasimov now joined the scene on the organ, and George Ward, the director of the choir, took over the conductor’s stand for orchestra and choir.

The very soft entry tunes of the choir immediately created a mystic atmosphere which continued throughout all seven movements, backed by the orchestra. It sounded like the wind going through the foliage of trees, whispers of elves, not from this world, not frightful but somehow soothing, then jubilant. I found an interpretation of Fauré’s Requiem and it actually confirms my impression;  Fauré himself said of his work: " Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest. It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience.”

For me, the Requiem speaks of the eternal law of nature.  Gabriel Fauré composed the Requiem between 1887 and 1890 and it was premiered in its first version in 1888 in Paris.

Since I have been to the rehearsal I know of the enormous effort to bring the orchestra and the choir together in sound intensity, in tune and colour, I would say in the language of art, because there are many tender passages to be sung, but the fears were groundless, although I could see from my first row how George Ward was forcefully holding the reins.

It was a full success, a feeling of joy went through the audience; the choir with the two guest soloists have wonderfully transported the message of Fauré’s Requiem.