Robert Mitchell brings highly individual
approach to familiar music. (Review by Michael Green)
An all-Beethoven programme attracted a big
audience to the Durban City Hall for the fifth concert of the KZN Philharmonic
Orchestra’s spring season; after 200 years, the master still has unmatched
drawing power.
The concert was unusual in various ways. Before
the start, the guest conductor of the evening, En Shao, chatted to the audience
informally while perched on the piano stool. En Shao is from China, is a
regular visitor here, and is rightly admired for his conducting and his
cheerful attitude. This time he pointed out that all three works on the
programme started in the key of C, and added that as a child he had located
middle C by identifying it as the note above the piano keyhole.
Also unusual was the inclusion of two piano
concertos on the programme, a challenging task for the soloist. And even more
unusual was the fact that the soloist, the young American pianist Robert
Mitchell, played both concertos from the scores, without benefit of a page
turner, a sometimes hair-raising spectacle as he turned the pages while playing
rapid passages.
The pianist’s interpretations of
Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major and Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor
were also distinctly unusual. Robert Mitchell is obviously a highly
accomplished player, and he seems to be a determined personality whose
interests, according to the programme note, “are embedded in the here and now
of music”.
He brought to this familiar music a highly
individual approach, with sometimes unfamiliar tempi and dynamics. For example,
the beautiful slow movement of the C minor concerto was played too fast for my
taste. But this pianist has a certain charisma, and the audience enjoyed his
playing immensely, giving him an ovation at the end, to which he responded with
two encores.
En Shao and the orchestra were in good form
throughout, and the opening item, Beethoven’s Coriolanus overture, was played with power and precision. - Michael
Green
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