KZNPO CONCERT: MARCH 10, 2011

Beethoven masterworks attracts biggest crowd of the year to date. (Review by Michael Green)

Two great masterworks by Beethoven attracted the biggest crowd of the year, to date, to the Durban City Hall for this penultimate concert of the summer season of the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra.

The soloist in the Emperor Concerto (No. 5 in E flat major) was Christopher Duigan, who has for many years been a pillar of classical music in KwaZulu-Natal. He is a fine professional pianist who has shown ceaseless energy and enterprise in arranging concerts in Pietermaritzburg, Durban and elsewhere. He sometimes plays to relatively small audiences, and it was only just that on this occasion he should have the opportunity of displaying his talents before a large attendance.

The Emperor Concerto is of course one of the most magnificent pieces in the entire repertory, and it was given a suitably grand performance by Christopher Duigan and the orchestra, conducted by the gifted Emil Tabakov, a visitor from Bulgaria. The tempo of the first movement in particular was rather too fast for my taste – I feel that its majestic proportions require a more deliberate pace -- but this did enable the soloist to give a thrilling show of technical expertise. And his perceptive musicianship was evident throughout, especially in the beautiful slow movement.

At the end he was given a well-merited ovation. For an encore he played Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu in C sharp minor, Op. 66, and the middle section prompted at least one member of the audience to give, during the interval, a well-judged informal rendition of “I’m always chasing rainbows”, the 1940’s pop song based on Chopin’s melody.

The second half of the concert was occupied by Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, the Eroica, conducted by Emil Tabakov without a score, a considerable feat of memory. The orchestra were in fine form, delivering Beethoven’s first movement hammer blows with robust precision and extracting full value from the eloquent slow movement, which is not as mournful as its title, funeral march, would suggest.

The orchestra’s full complement is about 70 players, but for this work there were only about 50 on the stage --- strings, eight woodwind and five brass instruments, as Beethoven instructed. They produced an opulent, full sound carrying to the far reaches of the City Hall, showing once again that the way the orchestra is used by the composer is more important than the number of players. - Michael Green