(Andrew
Warburton. Photo by Val Adamson)
Bravo in delivering such a rewarding
evening of music. (Review by William Charlton-Perkins)
The South African Society of Music Teachers
launched its Centenary Conference in Durban with a gala concert, presented in
association with UKZN's School of Music, at Howard College Theatre last evening
(April 5, 2018). At the helm of the evening's stellar music-making was pianist
Andrew Warburton, who curated and performed a richly varied programme of music
by Beethoven, Brahms and Ravel.
Warburton opened with a superb account of
Beethoven's taxing Six Bagatelles Opus 126. Combining the deep tonal palette
for which he is celebrated with mercurial responses to the ever-changing mood
swings that typify late Beethoven, Warburton brought to life the miraculous
microcosm of a lifetime's musical outpouring contained in the great German
composer's final music he wrote for solo piano.
Shifting into collaborative mode, the
pianist was joined by Vanessa Tait-Jones who proceeded to enchant the audience
with a fresh-voiced rendering of Brahms's eight Zigeunerlieder Opus 103.
Informed by her engagingly gamine stage presence, and the glossy vocal patina
of her beautifully produced lyric soprano, Tait-Jones's performance was
enriched by Warburton's natural affinity for Brahms, and by his refined
expertise in partnering a colleague in performance which has long earned him
the status of a preferred accompanist for the UNISA international singing and
music competitions in Pretoria.
Such artistic prowess was further in
evidence in the vast and disturbing scapes of the two-piano version of Ravel's La Valse. This saw Warburton being
joined onstage by pianist Christopher Cockburn, who was magnificently on form
in the hair-raising first piano part.
The evening concluded with a rare encounter
with Brahms' sublime masterpiece, the Trio for Piano, Violin and Horn Opus 40.
The work runs an enormous emotional gamut, ranging from jocund exuberance and
puckish sprightliness in its second and fourth movements, to moments of
profound, elegiac reflection in its sombre third movement. The technical
command and relaxed confidence which Warburton, joined by his colleagues,
Violeta Osorhean (Violin) and Sorin Osorhean (French horn), brought to bear in
surmounting its challenges, earned the three musicians a well-deserved ovation.
Bravo in delivering such a rewarding
evening of music. - William Charlton-Perkins
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