(Thomas
Sanderling)
Thomas Sanderling’s conducting a study in
control and concentration. (Review by Michael Green)
The pianist Francois du Toit gave a skilful
and artistic account of Robert Schumann’s Concerto in A minor in the latest
concert, in the Durban City Hall of the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra.
The distinguished German conductor Thomas
Sanderling was again on the podium, for a programme of music by Schumann and
Brahms.
The audience was rather small, the result
no doubt of the load-shedding blackout in many parts of Durban that night. Older
people in particular may be reluctant to venture forth into the darkness.
Francois du Toit, a music professor at the
University of Cape Town, is a mature, experienced pianist who has been
performing in public for about 25 years. He handled the technical difficulties
of the Schumann work, which dates from 1845 and is one of the great piano
concertos, with absolute confidence, and he brought a fine cantabile tone to
the warm, lyrical passages.
Much of this concerto is a dialogue between
pianist and orchestra, and the KZNPO were in good form, with conductor Sanderling
giving due emphasis to the many subtleties in the score.
The audience showed their appreciation with
enthusiastic applause.
The concert opened with Brahms’s Symphony
No. 3 in F major, written in 1883 when the composer was 50 years old. It is a
lengthy work and it gives all sections of the orchestra an opportunity to show
their skills. In particular the horns excelled in the first movement and the
woodwind in the second. Thomas
Sanderling’s conducting was a study in control and concentration.
Brahms’s Academic Festival Overture brought
the concert to an end, and the audience went home with the rousing strains of
the universal student song, Gaudeamus
Igitur, let us therefore rejoice, ringing in their ears. - Michael Green
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