(Boris Kerimov)Exceptionally large audience responds with great enthusiasm to cello programme. (Review by Michael Green)
The cello is a majestic instrument and it has many admirers in Durban, judging by the crowd that turned up at the Durban Jewish Centre for a Friends of Music concert entitled Cellibration.
This was an evening dominated by the cello, and an exceptionally large audience, about 180 people, responded with great enthusiasm to a programme offering a wide variety of music.
The nine performers, all members of the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra, were six cellists, plus important contributions from the violin, viola and percussion. The leading figure in all this was Boris Kerimov, principal cellist of the KZNPO, who took part in all 13 items on the programme and made many of the arrangements for cello on that programme.
He opened the concert with a 15-minute Suite for solo cello, unaccompanied, by the 20th century Spanish composer Gaspar Cassado, a challenging work for the performer and, to some degree, for the audience. It is Bach-like in form and style but very Spanish in content, with obvious references to folk music. It was played with great skill and assurance.
Boris Kerimov was joined by his wife Elena Kerimova (violin) and David Snaith (viola) for a performance of Beethoven’s String Trio in D, Op. 9, No. 2. The five Beethoven string trios are lovely works, not played very often, written by the composer when he was quite young but having the unmistakable imprint of his genius. This one was beautifully played, with precise and accurate ensemble and some lovely sounds from Elena Kerimova’s violin.
After the interval it was all cello, with the addition at the end of a percussion element. The cellists were Boris Kerimov, Jennifer Cox, Nina Watson, Fiona Grayer, Marguerite Spies, and Ralitsa Todorova. They played 11 short pieces ranging from Vivaldi, Handel and Bach to Astor Piazzolla and the contemporary South African composer Allan Stephenson. It was all most enjoyable, and the exceptional tonal range of a cello was amply demonstrated, especially in an arrangement of a well-known song from Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras.
Stephane Pechoux of the KZNPO’s percussion section joined the cellists for the last three items and almost stole the show at the end with a virtuoso hands and fingers performance on an extraordinary basin-shaped drum.
The audience rewarded the players with a standing ovation.
The Prelude Performers of the evening, funded by the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund, were Il Signori, a quartet of young Zulu male singers, who beguiled the audience with skilfully harmonised songs, the best being Tula Tula, a compilation of Zulu lullabies. - Michael Green
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