(Yulianna Avdeeva)
Melodious music, soloist brilliance, exuberant
and romantic music. (Review by Michael Green)
Melodious music from the 19th century and
an exceptionally gifted pianist gave much pleasure to a good-sized audience in
the Durban City Hall at the latest concert of the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra.
The soloist was Yulianna Avdeeva, a
27-year-old Russian pianist who is making a big name for herself in Europe and
the United States. It is easy to hear and see why. She is a slim, trim figure
with a keyboard presence that is calm and refreshingly free of affectation. Her
technical prowess is outstanding and she must have considerable stamina. She
played two major works, one after the other, and was on stage for about an
hour, with enough zest left to deliver a virtuoso encore.
The concert opened with Cesar Franck’s Symphonic Variations, written in 1885
and one of this composer’s most attractive works, less solemn than some others.
The first notes showed Yulianna Avdeeva to be an expressive and sensitive pianist,
with admirably controlled and delicate gradations of tone.
This impression was reinforced in Chopin’s
Piano Concerto No 2 in F minor, which dates from 1830, when Chopin was 20. Here
again there was plenty of brilliance, but the lasting memory is of the lyrical
quality of her playing. In the cantabile passages she really made the piano
sing, especially in the exquisite slow movement.
The conductor, Daniel Boico from New York,
was an admirable partner, and the orchestra excelled. Chopin’s orchestral score is often criticised
(somewhat unjustly, in my opinion) as being inadequate, but the KZNPO made the
most of it.
The audience response was highly
enthusiastic, with even the orchestra players applauding the pianist at the
end. As an encore she gave a glittering account of Chopin’s Waltz in A flat
major, Op. 34, No 1.
Finally, the orchestra performed Georges
Bizet’s lively and tuneful Symphony No. 1 in C. Bizet is, of course, best known
as the composer of Carmen and other
operas. He died in 1875 at the age of 36 following respiratory and heart
problems; he was a heavy smoker. His Symphony in C was written at the age of
17, and it was not performed until 1935, when Felix Weingartner conducted it in
Basel, Switzerland.
Daniel Boico is a dynamic kind of
conductor, and his vigorous approach was particularly well suited to this
exuberant and romantic music. - Michael Green
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