(Father-and-son
duo, Alexander Baillie (cello) and Max Baillie (violin), memorably captured the
genius of Brahms in their collaboration with the KZNPO and Arjan Tien)
Incomparable musical discourse – (Review by
William Charlton-Perkins)
Fourth
and final Summer Season concert of the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic’s 2018 World Symphony
Series:
Conductor: Arjan Tien
Soloists: Max Baillie (Violin), Alexander
Baillie (Cello)
Venue: Playhouse Opera
Date: Thursday March 15, 2018
Conductor Arjan Tien brought the KZN
Philharmonic’s 2018 Summer Season to a close with a dynamic programme of three
contrasting masterworks. A dark-hued and sinisterly foreboding performance of
Mozart’s Don Giovanni Overture superbly set the scene on Thursday evening in
the Playhouse Opera, before father-and-son duo, Max Baillie (violin) and
Alexander Baillie (cello) took the stage to perform Brahms’s A minor Double Concerto.
The introspective nature and finely nuanced
characteristics of this great work, the composer’s final orchestral
composition, offer a deeply rewarding experience for listeners privileged to be
privy to its many subtleties. Despite his proverbial anxiety in writing for two
instruments he himself did not play, Brahms brought a lifetime’s experience to
this score with which he crowned his orchestral oeuvre. He offered it as a
peace-making token to his erstwhile friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim, who
first performed it in 1887 with his colleague, the cellist Robert Hausmann, the
composer himself on the podium.
Never once, listening to the concerto, does
one get a sense of the soloists striving to make themselves heard, such is the
composer’s masterly control of dynamic ebb and flow while marshalling his
orchestral forces in their interplay with the solo duo – a feat all the more
remarkable considering the work’s pedigree as a carry-over of the classical
Sinfonia Concertante genre, in which the writing for solo instruments was
closely enmeshed within the music’s orchestral fabric.
Clearly, both the evening’s engaging
soloists relished this piece, as they shared their mastery of it with their
colleagues under Maestro Tien’s lithe baton. Alexander Baillie’s benign
affection for Brahms and his mellow musical milieu was palpable as he treated
his audience to the delight of his big, burnished sound. His interplay with his
son’s sweet-toned, at times nervously-jagged, violin was electric, as they
engaged in musical discourse that was alternately rigorous and gentle. Richly
rewarding music-making at its finest.
Sibelius’s Second Symphony concluded the
evening’s musical fare. Mastering the epigrammatic exigencies of this
much-loved work, which marks the end of the great Finnish master’s early
Romantic period, is a feat in itself for any conductor. Maestro Tien triumphed
with a magisterial performance that teamed with stand-out moments too numerous
to single out.
Exercising a powerful architectural grip
over the challenging work’s constantly shifting terrain, riding its far-flung
sound scapes, its sudden mood swings and its massive sonic gestures, the
conductor paced himself and his players to take on the ultimate ascent of the
great climactic finale, for which the symphony is famed. This had the entire
orchestra ablaze in a splendour of sound.
What an end to the season. – William Charlton-Perkins
(To
link direct to the KZN Philharmonic’s website click on the orchestra’s banner
advert on the top of the page)
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