Remarkable cellist and gifted pianist
handle widely varied programme with brilliance and expertise. (Review by
Michael Green)
A remarkable young cellist from South
America and a gifted young pianist from South Africa were the performers at the
most recent concert of the Friends of Music at the Durban Jewish Centre.
Santiago Canon Valencia is from Bogota in
Colombia, a country which is about the size of South Africa and which has a
population of 47 million. He was born in 1995 and, after hearing him play with
astonishing maturity, I found it hard to believe that he is only 18 years old.
At the interval. I sought confirmation from the best possible source: his mother, who was in the audience. Yes, she
said, he turned 18 a few days ago.
Well, he was an early starter; he gave his
first concert performance at the age of six, and by the time he was 14 he had
played concertos by Haydn, Dvorak and Shostakovich.
The pianist José Dias is a little older, 31
this year. He was born in Portugal and moved to South Africa to study at
Stellenbosch and Cape Town universities, and he has since established himself
here and in Europe as a well-regarded pianist.
Their programme consisted of works in which
cello and piano are equal partners, and the pianist had a busy evening, with
many brilliant and difficult passages. It was, however, the cellist who
dominated the proceedings, from the opening notes of Tchaikovsky’s Pezzo Capriccioso, in which he displayed
a big bold tone and an impeccable display of virtuoso technique.
The high point of the concert was a lovely
performance of Beethoven’s Sonata in A major, Op. 69, the finest of the
master’s five cello sonatas. This is a wonderfully varied work, replete with
rich and joyous melodies, and with many ideas that must have been highly
original in 1808, when it was composed.
The players did full justice to it, showing a total grasp of the
architecture of the sonata.
The second half of the programme was
devoted to 20th century music: Dance of the Green Devil, a spectacular
novelty by the Spanish composer Gaspar Cassado; Debussy’s only cello sonata,
written in 1915, a terse work that runs for only 11 minutes; and the Sonata Op.
49 by the Argentine Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983).
This last, based on Argentine folk music,
was noisy, brilliant, dissonant, rhythmical, and very difficult for both
performers, who emerged triumphantly from it all. Some members of the audience
were in raptures about the music, others less so. As Abraham Lincoln wrote 150
years ago, when reviewing a book: “people who like this sort of thing will find
this the sort of thing they like”.
The Prelude Performers of the evening,
funded by the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund, were two pupils from
Durban Girls’ College, Barry Su and Si Jia Wu, pianists who are among the many
gifted children in Durban with an oriental background. Together and separately
they played several light pieces with pleasing composure and competence. - Michael
Green
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