KZNPO CONCERT: FEBRUARY 12, 2009

Soloists and conductor performed with distinction at highly enjoyable concert. (Review by Michael Green)

The KZN Philharmonic Orchestra is playing a good deal of Mendelssohn this season to mark the two hundredth anniversary of the composer’s birthday, and the opening item was a work that I don’t think has been played before in Durban, a novelty that aroused great enthusiasm in the big audience.

This was Mendelssohn’s Concerto for Violin and Piano in D minor, written in 1823 when the composer was 14 years old. It is an amazing achievement for one so young - a full-scale 35-minute concerto with poise, elegance, expert writing for the two soloists, and a constant flow of melody.

Mendelssohn and the audience were well-served by the soloists - German-born, London-based Florian Uhlig (piano) and South African-born Zoë Beyers (violin) - and by the visiting Israeli conductor Omri Hadari. All three performed with distinction.

Mendelssohn, with his usual impeccable judgment, wrote this concerto for string orchestra, taking into account the delicate balance with piano and violin. This City Hall performance was, however, given by the full orchestra, in an arrangement of the original score. I can’t think why. No explanation was given in the programme. The concerto sounds better for strings alone.

Be that as it may, the vivacity and virtuosity of Florian Uhlig and Zoë Beyers carried us all along in irresistible fashion. That plus some beautiful playing in the concerto’s lyrical passages. A long duologue between piano and orchestra in the first movement seemed to have the audience spellbound; you could have heard a pin drop.

Zoë Beyers played with excellent intonation and phrasing, and I must make special mention of Florian’s keyboard part. He is a virtuoso, a young lion of the piano, as was demonstrated earlier in the week when he played some Mendelssohn piano works for the Friends of Music. But his playing in the concerto was a model of discretion and control. There were big virtuoso passages, to be sure, but when it was desirable to do so he deferred sympathetically to the solo violin, a fine example of good ensemble playing.

And it was a pleasure to see two accomplished professionals go about their demanding task with a minimum of fuss and no flamboyance. Their playing said all that needed to be said.

All the players deserved the ovation that an appreciative audience gave them at the end.

The concert began with Rossini’s overture to his opera An Italian Girl in Algiers and ended with an old favourite, Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony, one of the composer’s happiest inspirations. All highly enjoyable. - Michael Green