KZNPO CONCERT: JUNE 25, 2009

Under the baton of the visiting American conductor Victor Yampolsky, the KZNPO was excellent and contributed notably to a memorable performance. (Review by Michael Green)

The twentieth century English composer Benjamin Britten used to say he played a recording of Brahms’s music once a year to remind himself of how bad a composer Brahms was.

Well, we are all entitled to our opinions, and on this particular issue Durban concertgoers have shown theirs in no uncertain terms. On 18 June a large and enthusiastic audience in the City Hall attended a performance of Brahms’s first piano concerto. A week later, there was a dismally small audience for this KZN Philharmonic Orchestra concert in which the central item was Britten’s Violin Concerto in D minor.

In my section of the hall, the lower gallery (which is admittedly the most expensive part of the house), about 50 of the roughly 400 seats were occupied, and the audience downstairs was also sparse. One of my fellow-subscribers upstairs remarked on this and added grimly: “Benjamin Britten”.

The other side of the coin is that the orchestra should sometimes play unfamiliar music as well as the old favourites. And Britten’s violin concerto is a fine and consistently interesting work. And it was very well played by Zanta Hofmeyr, a South African graduate of the Juilliard School in New York who now teaches at the universities of Pretoria and the Witwatersrand.

This music, written in the late nineteen-thirties, is slightly enigmatic in character, often bright and brilliant externally but with an underlying sense of melancholy. Much of it has an obviously Spanish influence and it is said to reflect Britten’s sadness over the Spanish civil war (he was a lifelong pacifist, spent part of the Second World War in America and was a conscientious objector when he returned to Britain).

The rhapsodic solo violin part bristles with technical problems and at this concert the difficulties were handled with aplomb by Zanta Hofmeyr, a tall, slim and elegant figure and an impressive player. The composer has given the soloist some beautiful lyrical passages (in one instance accompanied only by the soft tapping of a drum) and there is a long, meditative cadenza.

The orchestra, under the baton of the visiting American conductor Victor Yampolsky, was excellent and contributed notably to a memorable performance.

The concert opened with Weber’s Euryanthe Overture. This opera is very seldom performed, partly because the story is absurd even by operatic standards, but the overture survives as an orchestral showpiece, and it was played here with skill and panache.

Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 in D minor brought the concert to a close. Schumann’s four symphonies are all outstanding works, in my opinion, but they have never achieved great popularity. Perhaps this one was something of an eye-opener for some of the loyal supporters of the orchestra in the City Hall. - Michael Green