(Nina Schumann &
Luis Magalhaes)
Husband and wife team perform brilliant and attractive work.
(Review by Michael Green)
A concerto for two pianos and orchestra was the unusual
feature of the latest concert of the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra, in the Durban
City Hall.
This was the Concerto in D minor by the 20th century French
composer Francis Poulenc. It is a brilliant and most attractive work, far
removed from the intellectual austerity of much modern music. Poulenc
(1899-1963) was, in the words of one critic, “a fizzing, bubbling mass of
Gallic energy”. His concerto is full of good tunes and catchy rhythms, and the
two pianists have plenty of virtuoso passages to display their skills.
The pianists in this Durban performance were Nina Schumann
and Luis Magalhaes, the Stellenbosch-based husband and wife team who met when
they were studying in the United States. They have established a significant
reputation in the rich field of two-piano music, and in the Poulenc concerto
they gave much pleasure to a big City Hall audience.
They presented the spectacular first and third movements
with great individual prowess and mutual understanding, but the high point was
the slow movement, a really beautiful piece of music in the style of Mozart,
the composer whom Poulenc admired above all others.
In response to much applause the pianists played a
delightful encore, the Hesitation Tango
written in 1951 by the American composer Samuel Barber.
The conductor was the Israeli-American Daniel Boico, a
regular and welcome visitor to Durban.
The concert opened with Paul Dukas’s famous The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, as enchanting
as ever, and ended with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 in E minor, one of the
great romantic works of the repertory.
Tchaikovsky’s music is belittled by some critics, perhaps
because of its popularity, but there is no denying its power and its ability to
tug at the heart strings. As I said in a pre-concert lecture, anybody who
really dislikes the slow movement of this symphony must have a tin ear.
The orchestra, about 70-strong, gave a splendid, resonant,
emotional performance. Boico’s vigorous, expressive conducting style extracted
optimum results from his massive orchestral resources, and the players were
rewarded at the end with prolonged applause. - Michael Green
Michael Green will be
giving the next pre-concert lecture (June 11). The venue for these lectures
before the symphony concerts of the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra has been
changed. They will now take place in the Durban City Hall (where the concerts
take place) and not at the Playhouse, as was the case before. The change has
been made to save those attending from having to walk from the Playhouse to the
City Hall. The time of the lectures remains unchanged at 18h15.
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