(Madeline Adkins)
Madeline Adkins’s appearance with the KZNPO was a great
success. (Review by Michael Green)
The spring season of the KZNPO has a geographical touch,
with each of the eight concerts in the Durban City Hall labelled for the home
territory of the composers involved.
We started with “Russian Jewels”, and the second concert was
called “German Craft”. This title sounds vaguely like a type of beer or a spy
novel, but it is fitting. The composers on the programme – Richard Wagner, Max
Bruch and Johannes Brahms – are all quintessentially German in their very
different ways, and their music gave much pleasure to the audience.
The popular Israeli-American conductor Daniel Boico was in
charge again, and the soloist was an American violinist, Madeline Adkins,
playing Bruch’s Violin Concerto No 1 in G minor.
Madeline Adkins toured South Africa four years ago, but I
don’t think she has played in Durban before. She comes from Texas and is a
member of a remarkable family born to musicologist parents. Seven of the eight
children are musicians – four violinists, two cellists and a soprano singer –
and it seems that six of them are professional performers.
Adkins, who is married and is now somewhere in her 30’s, has
been a solo violinist and orchestra player in many parts of the United States.
She was until recently concertmaster of the orchestra in Baltimore, not far
from Washington. This month she takes up a similar position in the Utah
Symphony Orchestra, based in Salt Lake City.
Her appearance with the KZNPO was a great success. Max Bruch
(1838-1920) was a prolific composer who is remembered today only by his first
violin concerto, by a delightful Scottish Fantasy and by a Kol Nidrei
commissioned by the Jewish community in Liverpool (Bruch himself was not
Jewish).
His melodious and emotional first concerto is one of the
high points of the entire violin repertory, and Madeline Adkins gave a
beautifully eloquent performance of it. The surpassingly sweet slow movement
was played with a full rich tone that captivated the audience, and the virtuoso
outer movements were handled with immaculate technique.
The orchestra, as elsewhere in the concert, responded
admirably to Boico’s sympathetic conducting.
The big work of the evening was Brahms’s Symphony No 4,
which dates from 1884. This is grand music, solemn and serious but never
mournful, and the KZNPO performance depicted splendidly the massive structure
of the work.
Another imposing composition, Wagner’s Tannhauser Overture, opened the concert, with some fine playing
from the brass instruments in particular.
An unexpected feature of the evening was the appearance of a
local radio announcer in the role of cheerleader (“Give them some Durban
applause”) and bearer of old news (“There will be an interval of 20 minutes”).
Inappropriate and unnecessary, and more suited to the music hall than the
concert hall. - Michael Green
(To link direct to the
KZN Philharmonic’s website click on the orchestra’s banner advert on the top
right hand of the page)
Posts
