(Alexandra Dariescu)
Impeccable technique and virtuoso
performance from Alexandra Dariescu. (Review by Michael Green)
Two outstanding Number Fours, Beethoven’s
fourth piano concerto and Mahler’s fourth symphony, drew a big audience to the
Durban City Hall for the penultimate concert of the spring season of the KZN
Philharmonic Orchestra.
The soloist in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto
in G major, Op. 58, was 27-year-old Alexandra Dariescu, a rapidly rising star
on the musical horizon. Born in Romania and educated largely in England, she
has in the past three or four years established herself as an unusually gifted
pianist with a wide repertory, and she gave a virtuoso performance here in
Durban of this most subtle of all concertos.
She has an impeccable technique and her
tonal gradation was first-rate, especially in the middle movement, one of the
most original pieces of music ever written.
The orchestra,
under the direction of the visiting conductor Arjan Tien, was in good form,
with bright string tone in the dialogue with the piano.
The
performance was exciting, rather than contemplative. Alexandra Dariescu played
at high speed, as many modern pianists do, and the audience was highly
enthusiastic. Would Beethoven have played at this tempo when he gave the first
performance two hundred years ago? here
are no recordings of course, but I somehow doubt it. That’s progress, I
suppose.
After the
interval the orchestra gave us Gustav Mahler’s hour-long Symphony No. 4 in G
major. This work is replete with lovely melodies, and the orchestra made the
most of them, with fine playing from strings, brass and woodwind.
The final
movement is a long soprano song about a child’s vision of heaven, and the
singer here was Zandile Mzazi, a young South African who has done very well
here and in Europe and the United States. She was excellent, with pure
intonation, sensitive phrasing and a dignified, unfussy stage presence. When,
at the end, she eventually took a bow the audience gave her prolonged and
deserved applause. - Michael Green
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