(Shlomo Mintz)
Memorable
performance international celebrity soloist. (Review by Michael Green)
Music by
two very different German composers, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms,
opened the eight-concert spring season of the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra in the
Durban City Hall.
The
programme, and the appearance of an international celebrity soloist, the
Israeli violinist Shlomo Mintz, drew a big and appreciative audience.
Under the
direction of another visiting musician, the young Bulgarian conductor Rossen
Milanov, the orchestra opened with a sparkling account of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture.
This
irresistible music, written in 1826 when the composer was only 17, put
everybody in a good mood, and the happy atmosphere was accentuated when Shlomo
Mintz played the first notes of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor.
This work,
the peak of Mendelssohn’s output, is a perennial favourite and it has become a
kind of signature tune for Shlomo Mintz, who has played it in many parts of the
world.
The
concerto is a continuous flow of melody, and the violinist produced a beautiful
tone throughout, handling the many technical difficulties with consummate ease.
It was a memorable performance, and the audience gave him prolonged and excited
applause, to which he responded with an encore, a very difficult and
spectacular Caprice by Paganini.
Brahms’s
Symphony No 4, also in E minor, occupied the second half of the programme. This
is a great work, complex and serious, but with plenty of serenity, lyricism,
power, vitality.
Rossen
Milanov and the orchestra gave due emphasis to its many subtleties, especially
in the final movement, a set of 30 variations on an eight-note theme.
This music
is not exactly “popular” in the conventional sense but the audience showed
every sign of total enjoyment. An excellent start to the new season. - Michael
Green
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