Pawlu Grech

The life of Mro Chev. Pawlu Grech (b. in Valletta in 1938), painter and musician, can be seen as developing over five distinct but mutually overlapping phases. The first phase, set in Malta and spanning the first fifteen years of his life, sees his awakening to an inner inclination towards the visual and aural arts. The second phase is his formation both as an artist and musician, a phase that lasts ten years and takes place in Rome. The third phase, extending over twenty-one years, sees Grech’s fruition chiefly as a composer and conductor but also as a visual artist in London. Grech then returns to Malta to embark on a phase of consolidation of his achievements in the two artistic disciplines. Finally, Grech’s life enters a fifth and final phase of retrospection, a bespoke portmanteau word that conveys the sense of Grech now resting from and retrospecting on his artistic travails.

The first impulse to Grech’s musical awakening came from his father’s role as principal timpani player in Malta’s national orchestra. 

As a boy, his imagination and curiosity also awoke to the contemporary sounds of composers like Stravinsky and Schoenberg broadcast on radio from abroad. The discord of these aural experiences with the conservatism of his early musical education is resolved in his early compositional endeavors, notably Fantasia, which show a strong inclination to think beyond the narrow confines of his academic musical education, and in his determination to further his artistic formation overseas.

The opportunity for such a breakthrough came his way when he was awarded an Italian scholarship to study music at Rome’s prestigious Conservatorio Santa Cecilia. The Italian capital’s domed traditions trembling under the pressure of an insurgent modern culture was an ideal backdrop for the mutual tension and synergy between the classical and avant-garde elements that characterized Grech’s artistic formation. In terms of the former element, Grech’s formation was marked by his success in obtaining the piano diploma and in following private tuition in painting at the then Scuola Galli. The latter element came to the fore mostly through his early endeavors in musical composition, notably Due Movimenti and Quaderno I & II, and culminated in his initiatory encounter with the master Stravinsky who etched his vocal endorsement of one of the student’s compositions with a written personalized dedication to “Pawlu Grech”. Grech’s close involvement in the artistic avant-garde of the time was further enriched by his interactions with key figures in the music scene of the time, such as Bruno Maderna and Luciano Berio, as well as in the modern theatrical scene, namely the Italian-Jewish actress Carla Bizzarri, with whom he was intimately associated.

On the strength of a scholarship to pursue further training in conducting and composition, Grech left Rome for London driven by a clear awareness of his vocation as a contemporary artist. His formation as a conductor flourished in his victory of the ‘Ricordi’ prize for conducting and in an invitation to conduct and record with the English Chamber Orchestra. In London, Grech came to fruition also thanks to his long and deep association with the renowned Austrian-Jewish musicologist, Hans Keller, in whom Grech found a most enlightened musical mentor and a strong resonance in the man’s emphatic call “Composers disunite!”. Grech’s training in composition under the tutorship of Keller bore its fruits in the form of several compositions, like Differentiations and Tetrad I, that were broadcast on London BBC radio and premièred in London’s most important musical venues, such as the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Purcell Room. Grech flourished also as a visual artist with a display of his paintings in the halls of the Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey.

Despite crowning moments like these, Grech was also sorely aware of the growing artistic decadence around him. For this reason, he decided to return to his native Malta to lead a somewhat esoteric life of quiet reflection and creative activity, especially in painting. His fruition as a visual artist continued with among others a number of solo exhibitions in Malta and with two participations in an annual international collective exhibition of small-sized paintings (‘In Praise of Small Format in Contemporary Art’) in Paris. Grech achieved consolidation of his creative expertise through his activity as a pedagogue of music and visual art. His reputation as an artist was further consolidated through the spontaneous unsought conferment of the title of ‘Chevalier Academique’ by the Accademia Internazionale Greci Marino Accademia del Verbano di lettere, arti, scienze of Vinzaglio in Italy, and through the publication ‘Pawlu Grech – The Visual Artist’ by the late Maltese art critic Emmanuel Fiorentino.

Although his artistic achievements are still being celebrated through concerts, recitals, and exhibitions of his musical and painterly compositions, Grech’s creative activity has now reached a point of retrospection. From this point, Grech, now an octogenarian, generously recounts the trials and triumphs of his dual artistic career to friends, strangers, and acquaintances, interpreting its truths and conclusions as a compass for navigating the complexity and uncertainty of today’s world.

© Nicholas Vella Laurenti