KARACHI, Nov 17: Not many classical musicians can, wittingly or unwittingly, make their type of music accessible to the masses. There’s nothing wrong with that because their primary duty is to compose music. But if their compositions have even a modicum of mass appeal, one should consider it doubly delightful.

That’s the kind of flavour that music lovers had on Saturday evening during a classical piano concert by maestro Marco Giliberti and tenor Mariano Sanfilippo organised at a local hotel.

The programme was divided into two parts. The first comprised solo pieces and extracts from operas and the second constituted of Napolitan songs. Marco Giliberti first appeared on the stage and played F Liszt’s ‘Sogno d’Amore’. It became evident from the first key that he pressed that music lovers were in for a treat.

The cascading notes lent a dreamy feel to the whole composition transporting the audience into a different realm.

Sanfilippo joined Giliberti from the second performance which was taken from ‘L’Elisir d’Amore’ by G Donizetti. Like a true artist, Sanfilippo not just exhibited his great range as a vocalist with special command over the upper register, he also engaged the audience by looking at them narrating the story of the ‘love elixir’.

Then the two entertained the audience with G Verdi’s two arias from ‘Rigoletto’, the former was to do with pure love and the latter with a ‘flexible’ woman – two contrasting feelings and situations.

The highlight of the part one of the show was ‘Ch’ella mi creda’ from G Puccini’s ‘La Fanciulla del West’.

Both artists in the aria evoked the feeling of nostalgia for the beloved suffused with sadness. It was short, melancholic and melodious.

The second part of the concert was a presentation of nearly a dozen Napolitan songs. It lightened up the atmosphere because, as Giliberti himself said while introducing the songs, it depicted the tradition of Italian popular music.

The first piece, FP Tosti’s ‘Vucchella’, set the tone for the rest of the show with the ‘emotion of love’ being the dominant force of the whole segment. Giliberti and Sanfilippo were at the top of their game which was the reason that they were requested to perform a couple of more songs after they were done with the listed programme. Just when the audience thought the show couldn’t get better, the pianist played G Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blu’. It was a thoroughly entertaining and skillful performance. Giliberti masterfully shifted between different moods of the composition and effortlessly switched between different styles; especially the way he performed the jazzy bits of the tune was quite special.

The show was part of the ongoing Italian cultural week.