(Zuill
Bailey)
A night to remember (Review by William
Charlton-Perkins)
Concert goers who thronged the Durban City
Hall to near capacity for the opening concert of the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic
Orchestra’s Late Spring Season of its 2017 Word Symphony Series last evening (October
19) were treated to a grand night out.
Conducted by Lykele Temmingh, the event
featured the Grammy Award winning American cellist Zuill Bailey as the
evening’s soloist.
Appropriately, this World Symphony Series
event, which marked the 30th anniversary of conductor Lykele Temmingh’s first
appearance on the KNPO podium, proved a stellar affair from first to last. It
opened with a cracking account of Reznicek’s Donna Diana Overture.
A favourite curtain-raiser of the
orchestra’s founder, Dr David Tidboald, for many years Temmingh’s mentor, it is
geared to set pulses racing. I like to think the overture’s presence on the
programme was in honour of Dr Tidboald.
Expectations ran high when it came to the
evening’s soloist, the Grammy Award winning American cellist, Zuill Bailey.
These were more than fulfilled by the distinguished soloist’s thrilling,
nuanced performance of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto in B minor. One of the concert
repertoire’s most passionate and challenging show-pieces for a virtuoso
cellist, it stands as an extraordinary evocation of the biographical elements
that were at play in the composer’s life at the time of its composition towards
the end of his sojourn in America. This was a time when increasingly he yearned
to return to his beloved homeland, a longing intensified by news of the illness
and subsequent death of his one-time love, Josefina Kaunitzova.
Following the high drama of the first movement,
in which the soloist’s valiant presence is offset by the great Czech composer’s
masterly command of his orchestral forces, the work becomes shot through with
nostalgia and emotional depth in its elegiac second movement Andante. The
searing beauty of Bailley’s performance was tenderly matched by the consolation
of the winds, luminously caressed here by the orchestra’s principal
clarinetist, Junnan Sun. A heart stopping moment, this was dispelled by the
buoyancy of work’s famous finale, which ultimately gave way to the soloist’s
melancholy, before the orchestra’s exhilaratingly upbeat final tutte brought
the work to resounding close.
Despite the Durban City Hall’s long-defunct
pipe organ remaining merely a scandalously silent backdrop to the concert stage
of South Africa’s largest and most magnificent acoustic venue, Temmingh
ingeniously brought his programme to a climax after intermission, with a work
long absent from our local repertoire - Camille Saint-Saëns’s splendid Symphony
no 3 in C minor - popularly known as his ‘Organ Symphony’, as two of its four
sections feature interpolations by a grand scale pipe organ.
This was accomplished by compromising, and
deploying an Allen digital organ console played by Durban’s leading organist,
Dr Christopher Cockburn. If the solution did not fully compensate for the lack
of the real thing, it nonetheless offered many moments worth treasuring.
The grand old man of late French
romanticism, Saint-Saëns regarded this work as the summation of his career. He
created a lavish score that abounds with thrilling sonic effects, ranging from
shimmering seas of strings and winds, glistening across distant horizons, to
towering sonic utterances by massive brass and timpani, not to mention the
celebrated organ interpolations themselves.
The whole experience is a crowd pleaser par
excellence, delivered by an extravagant complement of orchestra musicians
including extra players in all its sections, as well as parts for two pianists
in duet at a concert grand, played here to dazzling effect by Andrew Warburton
and Liezl-Maret Jacobs.
The KZN Philharmonic, to a man and woman,
did the event and their audience proud. It was heartening to see and hear the
musicians playing their hearts out in support of Maestro Temmingh who,
honouring the composer and the work he adores, gave it his all.
Bravi to all concerned. - William
Charlton-Perkins
(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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