(Mariam Batsashvili)
24-year-old pianist performed with extraordinary skill, judgment
and maturity. (Review by Michael Green)
Music from the 19th century drew a big audience to the
Playhouse, Durban, for the fourth concert of the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra’s
summer symphony season.
With Daniel Boico conducting, the orchestra maintained a
uniformly high standard in works by Mendelssohn, Liszt and Brahms, but the star
of the evening was undoubtedly a 24-year-old pianist from Georgia, in Eastern
Europe.
Her name is Mariam Batsashvili, she has a slight figure and
an unpretentious stage manner, and she plays the piano with extraordinary
skill, judgment and maturity.
Three years ago she won first prize in an international
Franz Liszt piano competition held in Holland, and here in Durban she played
Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major, a challenging task by any
measurement.
She handled the flying octaves and dazzling runs with great
confidence and superb technique, but what impressed me most was the lovely
tonal quality she produced in the concerto’s lyrical passages.
The audience gave her an ovation, and in response she played
as an encore a famous period piece, the Minuet
by Ignacy Paderewski, the only pianist I know of who became a prime minister
(of Poland).
The orchestra opened the programme with Mendelssohn’s
Hebrides Overture (Fingal’s Cave),
one of the composer’s best works, written in 1830 after he had visited
Scotland.
The big composition of the evening was Brahms’s monumental
Symphony No. 1 in C minor, a work written over a period of 20 years, with the
spirit of Beethoven always looming over the composer.
The orchestra presented an opulent performance, with the
strings eloquent and powerful, with notable contributions from the brass and
woodwind in their many important passages, and with eye-catching skills from
the timpanist, Stephane Pechoux.
It was another major success for conductor Boico. - 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)
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