As well as “demons of energy,” is the feeling with which they left me at the end of their concert. Physically the are two graceful, slender, young women, but be not deceived. They are highly talented, formidable, very well-prepared performers who know very well what they want from the music, AND get it.

As I said to a friend after the concert, Mussorgsky’s great masterpiece Pictures at an Exhibition always drowns me in a dilemma. My very first acquaintance with it in my very early teens, was via Ravel’s magnificent orchestration of 1924. It was to be a few years before I first heard the original version for piano. Since then I have heard both versions in Malta and abroad and now I hear it thanks to the VIAF in yet another version according to an arrangement by the contemporary Belgian composer Piet Swerts.

For a while I was in the grips of the old dilemma. That is until I decided to banish all internal attempts which threatened to distract my attention from what the ladies were doing at the keyboard they shared.

For “Pictures,” Joanne Camilleri took the upper half of the keyboard, Gabi Sultana took the lower one. Four hands, one piano and ONE mind. ONE goal: to bring to life each and every one of Viktor Hartman’s paintings which Mussorgsky viewed in 1874. MusIc was Mussorgsky’s paint brush, one he wielded well: so much so that one could, with eyes closed taste the visual flavour of each picture. The perky if at times also quite grandly pompous “Promenades” introduced them down to the least nuance. Difficult as it to decide which is the most evocative my pick of favourites includes The Old Castle, the Catacombs, the bustling Limoges market and the pompous Goldenberg and sniveling Schmuyle. Crowning them all is the wildly exciting Baba Yaga leading without a break to the emotionally exhausting but glorious Great Gate of Kiev.

The delivery was perfectly timed. Only the actual presence of the two pianists sitting side by side made one recognise the fact that it may have sounded like one compact body of sound. Yet, it was one which proceded with the fusion of two hearts and two minds which successfully reached the desired goal.

Needless to say a roar of approval and applause greeted the pianists. When the atmosphere became more relaxed, the ladies exchanged sides for their performance of Gershwin’s jazz classic and very iconic Rhapsody in Blue.

The two pianists displayed a remarkable versatility, already clearly manifest in the “Pictures”. Joanne Camilleri is well-known for her passion and expertise in the Baroque idiom especially J. S. Bach. She is a well-known harpsichordist too. Gabi Sultana is synonymous with the avant-garde and the latest trends in serious music, a truly formidable exponent of the genre. The pair got along fine and very often a kind of mischievous complicity surfaced when they performed certain passages. The same kind of well coordinated playing and shifting, often laid-back moods which prevail in the Rhapsody. This work is slightly less than half the length of “Pictures”. Neither were powerfully interpreted passages lacking and It finished with a great flourish.

Inevitably an encore was conceded the satisfy the audience. This was a brief movement from Györgyi Ligeti’s Sonatina.

Albert George Storace.