Récital de piano par Joanne Camilleri

Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen:

It is a pleasure to join you for what promises to be a wonderful evening.

We are grateful to Ambassador Terribile and the Permanent Mission of Malta for enriching our cultural landscape at UN Geneva with this concert.

And let me of course say thank you to Joanne Camilleri: it is not often that we have the opportunity to welcome such a distinguished virtuoso in the Palais des Nations.

Your playing has been described by one critic as “firm but delicate”; “passionate but never running wild”. Reading it, it occurred to me that this was in fact a pretty precise blueprint for how multilateral diplomacy should be conducted. Which makes your performance here tonight all the more fitting.

We will first hear the Italian concerto by Johann Sebastian Bach, to whom “music owes as much as religion owes to its founder”, as Robert Schumann once memorably put it.

But then we will also encounter pieces you might not often have the chance to hear - including by the two Maltese composers Christopher Muscat and Carmelo Pace.

This diversity is fitting in many ways: First, because it celebrates the enduring cultural richness of the beautiful archipelago in the center of the Mediterranean, which for centuries incorporated the most diverse influences. And second, because tonight’s concert also celebrates Malta’s Independence Day.

It is important to have evenings like this one. We all know that we live in an extraordinarily challenging time. A time in which the very future of our economic, social and ecological ways of life are called into question. A time in which every single one of us has to step up and redouble their efforts. Which is why I hope that tonight’s concert will offer us a moment of respite and inspiration to draw new strength for tomorrow.

Thank you once again and enjoy the music!