(Conductor Yasuo Shinozaki)Resplendent performance highlight of concert. (Review by Michael Green)
A resplendent performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 5 in E minor was the high point of this concert, but there were also outstanding presentations of a little known and very attractive work for trombone and of opulent music by Richard Strauss.
The visiting Japanese conductor Yasuo Shinozaki ended his brief stint with the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra with prolonged applause from the Durban City Hall audience after a quite overpowering performance of the Tchaikovsky symphony. This is, of course, a celebrated work. Some highbrows tend to sneer at Tchaikovsky, but there is no doubting the compelling power of his music and his gift for memorable melodies.
Yasuo Shinozaki’s flamboyant but disciplined style of conducting is well-suited to this kind of music, and under his direction the orchestra gave a lovely, integrated, emotional performance. At the end the principal horn player Sorin Osorhean was singled out by the conductor for his impeccable playing of the famous main theme of the second movement, and the orchestra as a whole well deserved the audience’s foot-stamping applause.
Another example of rich and lush orchestral music, Richard Strauss’s Don Juan, opened the programme, with the horns and the wind instruments in general showing good form.
The novelty on the programme was the Concertino for Trombone and Orchestra by the 19th century German composer Ferdinand David. This turned out to be a delightful, concise composition rather in the manner of Felix Mendelssohn, who was a friend of David’s.
The soloist was the orchestra’s principal trombonist, Anthony Boorer. He is a Welshman with a trim, upright military figure, as befits a man who started his musical career in the Royal Marines Band. In this pleasant and melodious music he displayed a strong technique (trombone playing is almost as good to watch as it is to listen to), and a lengthy first movement cadenza explored to the full the capabilities of the instrument and of the player.
As an encore he played, unaccompanied, I’m getting sentimental over you, an old favourite that the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra made popular about 80 years ago (Tommy Dorsey himself was a trombonist). A little unusual for a symphony concert, but it was very well played and very well received by a happy audience. - Michael Green
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