(Peri
So)
William Charlton-Perkins reviews the second
Early Spring Season concert of the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2018
Word Symphony Series on August 30, 2018, in the Durban City Hall.
One of the hallmarks of Parisian musical
life in the 1860s was the role that political satire played on the city’s comic
opera stages. This was never more in evidence than in the writing of Jacques
Offenbach, whose prolific output of operas bouffes included hits such as La Vie Parisienne, La Belle Hélène, La
Périchole and Orphée aux enfers
(Orpheus in the Underworld), famed for its iconic can-can sequence.
If the composer’s lesser known L’ile de Tulipatan is not quite in the
hall of fame league of the titles mentioned above, its sparkling Overture
certainly makes for a delightfully off-beat piece of programming - as
Thursday’s Durban City Hall audience discovered when visiting conductor Peri So
introduced it as his opening item of the KZN Philharmonic’s second Spring Season
concert. The young Hong Kong born maestro brought out the perfect touch of insouciance
in this delicious piece, which he clearly communicated with his players.
(Alissa
Margulis)
I confess to having been less receptive to
the performance of Mendelssohn’s E minor Violin Concerto - in which a sense of
control was paramount throughout the ‘soft-focus’ performance by the acclaimed
young German soloist Alissa Margulis. To my ears, she seemed to skim along the
surface. Silken tone there was aplenty, but a sense of lagging momentum seemed
to set in during the short second movement. And despite the fleet pace at which
it was played, I waited in vain in the Finale for that sense of exhilarating
abandon at the end, where the soloist must dig deep into the thrilling
sequences of double stops, before soaring triumphantly in the final ecstatic
leap of passion that crowns Mendelssohn’s last large-scale orchestral work.
Judging by the enthusiasm of those around me, my reservations were a personal
response.
At any rate, all was forgiven in the second
half. A sense of contentment settled throughout the house as Mr Po, displaying
an appropriate sense of gravitas, drew from his players a finely wrought
account of Brahms’s wonderfully benign Symphony No 1. The muted sense of
melancholy that pervades the opening movement was touchingly conveyed, as was
the air of serene stillness in the second movement’s consolatory Andante
sostenuto.
The glow of the Orchestra’s wind ensemble,
exquisitely pointed from the principal Oboe and Clarinet desks respectively,
was well to the fore, as was the luxuriantly textured playing of the strings,
and indeed the richly focused contributions of brass and timpani sections
throughout those lovely pages that abound in the work’s third movement, with
its famous, Lutheran hymn-like melody, which must surely count among the most
memorable Brahms ever penned.
The grandeur of the great work’s closing
pages, resplendently enacted in force, sent us home happy and replete. Thank
you. – William Charlton-Perkins