(Olga Kern)
Virtuoso piano performance by a beautiful blonde. (Review by
Michael Green)
A virtuoso piano performance by a beautiful blonde created
scenes of great enthusiasm in the Durban City Hall at the second concert of the
KZN Philharmonic Orchestra’s summer season.
Olga Kern comes from Russia and now lives in the United
States. In recent years she has built an international reputation as a pianist.
She has appeared in Durban before, demonstrating her extraordinary abilities.
This time she played Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 1 in F sharp minor,
with the visiting German conductor Wolfram Christ on the podium.
This concerto was written in 1891, when the composer was
only 18 years old. He revised it extensively 26 years later, and in its final
form it is not a juvenile work but a brilliant piece with the sweeping melodies
and spectacular pianism that have made Rachmaninoff’s concertos No. 2 and No. 3
concert favourites all over the world for the past hundred years.
Olga Kern, a tall, slender young woman, gave a performance
of non-stop virtuosity, with thundering octaves and rapid runs. Many listeners
were amazed that so slight and feminine a physique could produce playing of
such power. And it was not all power. She showed a lovely limpid tone in the
expressive slow movement.
The result of all this was a standing ovation from an
excited audience. In response to the prolonged applause she gave two Rachmaninoff
encores, the second his arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumble Bee, played at breathtaking speed.
The other big work on the programme was Antonin Dvorak’s
Symphony No. 7 in D minor. This is a very fine work by the Czech master,
dramatic, solemn, lyrical and, in the end, triumphant. The orchestra were in
splendid form, with top-quality playing all round, and with much credit going
to Wolfram Christ, the conductor.
The concert opened with Rachmaninoff’s symphonic poem The Rock, written when the composer was
20. It is serious and rather sad, but vividly orchestrated. - Michael Green
For more information
on the KZN Philharmonic, click on the orchestra’s advert at the top of this
page to link to their website
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