(William
Charlton-Perkins)
Playing the classics of old anew. (Article
courtesy of The Mercury – October 27, 2017)
Following this week’s hiatus in our
symphony season (the KZNPO were in Johannesburg for their annual joint concert
appearances with the JPO), German maestro Justus Frantz returns to the Durban
City Hall podium on Thursday November 2 with a programme devoted to those
tragically short-lived giants of the early Viennese school, Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart (1756 – 1791) and Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828).
Proceedings start with the overture to
Mozart’s comic opera, Le nozze di Figaro,
a work of incomparable genius. The overture was written several weeks after the
rest of the miraculous score had been completed and rehearsals were already
underway. With the headlong rush of its D-Major presto hardly pausing to take
breath, it generates a pulse-quickening sense of anticipation that swiftly led
to its fame as a stand-alone curtain-raiser in the concert hall.
The evening’s centre-piece is the fifth and
last of the violin concertos Mozart wrote in Salzburg between 1773 and 1775. As
these fine works were conceived on a more intimate scale than the magnificent
series of piano concertos the composer wrote in Vienna a few years later, they
might be seen to occupy the foothills of his concerto oeuvre, rather than its
great mountain peaks. They are nonetheless works of superb intricacy and
balance, none more so than his A Major Concerto K219 which provides an engaging
platform to introduce widely admired violinist Rafal Zambrzycki-Payne, winner
of numerous prizes including the prestigious BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition.
The evening climaxes with a performance of
Schubert’s Symphony No 9 in C Major D944, often dubbed ‘The Great C major’ to
distinguish it from his so-called ‘Little Symphony’ (No 6 in C major). The
composer never heard his magnum opus performed: the work only had its
posthumous premiere more than a decade after Schubert’s death. In 1838 Robert
Schumann was shown the manuscript of the symphony by Schubert’s brother,
Ferdinand. He took a copy back to Leipzig, where the entire work was performed
publicly for the first time by Felix Mendelssohn at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on
21 March 1839. It soon went on to claim its rightful reputation as one of the
giants of the symphonic repertoire.
Maestro Frantz returns to the podium on November
9, for a programme of Czech and Russian classics, featuring music by Smetana,
Rachmaninoff and Dvořák. Smetana’s Má vlast, a suite of six symphonic poems composed
between 1874 and 1879, depicts some aspect of the countryside, history, or
legends of Bohemia. Šárka, the third piece, is named for the female warrior who
is a central figure in the ancient Czech legend of The Maidens' War. Šárka
deceives the princely knight Ctirad into believing she is an unwilling captive
of the rebelling women. After serving Ctirad and his comrades with drugged
mead, Šárka sounds a hunting horn, summoning to the other women. The poem ends
with the warrior maidens murdering the sleeping men.
Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No 2 in C
minor premiered in 1901 with the composer as soloist. The archetypal virtuoso
warhorse, emblazoned with late Romantic flourishes and passionate melodies, it
established Rachmaninoff’s fame as a concerto composer. It passed into popular
culture, featuring in the soundtracks of countless films, ranging from Grand Hotel (1932) starring Greta Garbo,
to Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter (2010).
Both on the concert stage and in the
recording studio, the work has been the calling card of the keyboard virtuosi
down the ages, from the composer himself, to modern day icons such as Britain’s
Stephen Hough, and our extraordinary guest soloist, the Ukrainian-American
Valentina Lisitsa. One of the new generation of superstars currently in demand
on the global classical music circuit, Lisitsa launched her career totally
unaided by agents, as is the norm, by becoming a sensation on Youtube, where
videos of her performances and recordings have attracted more than 50 million
hits. Her Durban debut is eagerly anticipated.
The evening ends with a performance of
Dvořák’s Symphony No.9, Op.95, E Minor ‘From The New World’, written in 1893
while he was director of the National Conservatory of Music of America. One of
the most popular of all symphonies, its premiere with the New York Philharmonic
at Carnegie Hall was one of the greatest public triumphs of Dvorak's career.
Musicologists have noted the composer’s
fascination with American musical influences that surface in the score,
including African American spirituals and plantation songs of the American
South, and, in the segments of the third movement scherzo, traces of the Native
American ‘Song of Hiawatha’, which evoke the Native American wedding feast.
The KZNPO’s symphony concerts start at
19h30. Booking is through Computicket. To secure season subscriptions at
reduced rates, call 031-369 9348, or email sales@kznphil.org
– William Charlton-Perkins
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