KZNPO CONCERT: FEBRUARY 5, 2009

Audience at first concert of 2009 rewarded with an excellent programme. (Review by Michael Green)

This first concert of 2009 given by the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra drew a large crowd to the Durban City Hall, and they were rewarded with an excellent programme, a glamorous soloist, a vigorous conductor, and consistently good playing from the orchestra itself.

Two composers from the nineteenth century, Antonin Dvorak and Camille Saint-Saens, provided musical fare that was both appetising and satisfying. The orchestra opened with Dvorak’s Carnival Overture, a splendid mixture of excitement and lyricism, and the visiting Japanese conductor Yasuo Shinozaki made an immediate impression. He is short, by western standards anyway, but he has abounding energy and a kind of ceaseless enthusiasm that communicates itself to players and listeners. The concert as a whole was a great success, and much of the credit for this must go to the conductor.

The soloist in Saint-Saens’s fine Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor was 21-year-old Pallavi Mahidhara. As her name and appearance suggest, her origins are Indian but she is actually an American from Bethesda, Maryland, which is almost a suburb of Washington, and she is at present an advanced music student in Philadelphia.

Clad in a gorgeous gold, black and deep pink evening gown, she was a picture of slim grace and elegance on the platform, but at the keyboard she showed unexpected power and strength in Saint-Saens’s difficult score. This is a virtuoso concerto, and she was not found wanting in any respect. She played with a composure and maturity surprising in one so young, and the result was a lovely and often thrilling performance.

At the end she was rewarded with a foot-stamping ovation and she responded with an encore, Liszt’s Liebestraume (Dreams of Love) No. 3, a piece so familiar that some of the weaker elements in the audience were softly crooning an accompaniment to her playing.

The major work of the evening was Dvorak’s New World symphony, another familiar work but one of which I never tire. Dvorak’s brilliant and varied orchestration was given loving tender care by conductor and orchestra, and there were notable solo passages by Stella Martin (cor anglais), Sabine Baird (flute) and Ian Holloway (clarinet).

Altogether a distinguished performance of great music, and again there was prolonged applause at the end. - Michael Green