KZN Philharmonic predictably
skilful, supportive and sympathetic of youthful talent. (Review by Michael
Green)
Every year Lyk
Temmingh, resident conductor of the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra, searches South
Africa for youthful talent to participate in the annual National Youth Concerto
Festival.
The result of his and
their efforts was a most enjoyable concert in the Durban City Hall, the fifth
of the orchestra’s spring season. There were seven guest musicians, and Lyk
Temmingh himself conducted the orchestra with the exception of one item, which
was conducted by one of the young performers.
The programme was
ambitious, with the emphasis on 20th century music, and with no sign of the
Bach, Mozart and Beethoven that were the staple diet of an earlier generation
of students. The performances generally were of high professional standard.
Some members of the audience who have attended many of these youth concerts in
the past, felt that this was possibly the best of them all.
The concert opened
with a rousing account of Shostakovich’s Festive
Overture, a brilliant, noisy piece for big orchestra. Xavier Cloete, a
student conductor who is an advanced cadet with the KZNPO, was on the podium,
and he showed a firm grip of tempi, accents and dynamics, with the orchestra
responding enthusiastically.
The other young
performers were all instrumentalists, except for Caroline Modiba, a soprano who
was given an ovation for her singing of Sempre
libera, the famous aria from Verdi’s La
Traviata.
There were two very
good violinists, 16-year-old Jeffrey Armstrong from Wellington (playing two
movements of Max Bruch’s G minor concerto) and David Bester, a Stellenbosch
student (Ravel’s Tzigane).
Nathan Lawrence,
another KZNPO cadet, played the trumpet concerto that is probably the
best-known work of the Armenian composer Alexander Arutunian (1920-2012). Carla
van der Merwe, a Stellenbosch student, played Debussy’s Premiere Rhapsody for Clarinet, and Sulayman Human, also a
Stellenbosch student, played a movement of a piano concerto by another 20th
century Armenian composer, Aram Khachaturian.
With Lyk Temmingh
conducting, the KZN Philharmonic was predictably skilful, supportive and
sympathetic throughout the concert. - Michael Green
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