Second Cellibration programme for Friends
of Music a great success. (Review by Michael Green)
The cello has featured prominently in
classical music in Durban this year, and the pattern was maintained in the
latest concert of the Friends of Music in the Durban Jewish Centre.
Entitled Cellibration, an obvious play on
words, it featured six musicians from the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra, four of
them cellists.
This is the second time that a Cellibration
programme has been presented for the Friends of Music and, like the first, it
was a great success. The cello is, of course, a lovely instrument that speaks
eloquently in a wide range of musical moods and styles, and these expert
players provided a consistently enjoyable evening of music from the 16th
century to the 20th, from baroque to rock.
Boris Kerimov, the leader of the
orchestra’s cello section, leads this group as well, and he did so in this
concert with clear and good-humoured authority. The other cellists were
Alejandro Mariangel Pradenas, Marguerite Spies and Fiona Grayer, and the
outside support came from Elena Kerimova, violin (Boris’s wife) and Stephane
Pechoux, percussion.
There were 15 items on the programme, most
of them from South America (notably music by Astor Piazzolla, the tango king)
and from Eastern Europe. These were skillfully arranged for four cellos, and
were much appreciated by the audience.
There were two high points of the evening. One
was the performance of Bach’s famous Chaconne in D minor, a series of 64
variations on a brief, powerful theme, evidence again of the astonishing
modernity of Bach’s music to ears in the 21st century. In this programme the performance stood out
like a lighthouse in a sea of attractive wavelets.
The other high point was the appearance of
the violinist Elena Kerimova wearing a stunning short purple dress with a
transparent skirt below it, the entire outfit doing justice to her excellent
figure. A rhapsody in purple.
After her first item with the cellos,
somebody sitting near me said admiringly “She can play too”. Indeed she can. She
gave virtuoso performances of rapid showpieces by the Romanian composer
Grigoras Dinicu and of works by Piazzola. She and her husband Boris are
Russians who came to Durban 15 years ago and have made a very important
contribution to music here.
The Prelude Performer of the evening,
supported by the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund, was the baritone Ivo
Almond who is, I understand, an English exchange student currently studying at
Kearsney College. Accompanied at the piano by Bonita Ziegelmeier, he sang
excerpts from Songs of Travel by
Vaughan-Williams, and he displayed an accurate, well-controlled voice of high
quality. - Michael Green
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