(Conductor:
Daniel Boico)
Daniel Boico, Associate Guest Conductor of
the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic, makes a dynamic return to the podium to round
off the Spring Season on Thursday, November 22, 2019.
He opens his programme with Felix
Mendelssohn’s popular “Scottish Symphony”, composed intermittently over 15
years. Mendelssohn was initially inspired to compose the work during his first
visit to Britain in 1829. After a series of concert performances in London he
embarked on a walking tour of Scotland, visiting the ruins of the chapel at
Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, where he received his initial inspiration for the
piece. He struggled to complete the symphony due to a series of interruptions
caused by other commitments, setting it aside in 1831. By 1842, however, he had
eventually completed this fifth and final masterwork of his symphonic oeuvre, which unfailingly evokes the
composer’s close association with the wild romantic landscapes of Britain’s
northern region.
Maestro Boico’s choice of Balakirev’s
rarely heard Overture on Three Russian Themes, as the evening’s centrepiece is
an inspired piece of programming. Written in 1858, this first purely orchestral
work to be based on Russian folk songs is a remarkable composition for a young
man in his early 20s. Not merely a pot-pourri of folk themes but the earliest
example of the successful reconciliation of Russian folk materials with sonata
structure, it represents something which Balakirev’s predecessor, Glinka, never
achieved but which inspired his successor, Rimsky-Korsakov, to accomplish a
similar creative feat.
(Soloist:
Olga Scheps, piano)
Claiming centre stage the celebrated young
German-Russian pianist Olga Scheps is set to take the Durban City Hall audience
by storm as the evening peaks with one of the international concert-going
public’s best loved war horses, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in c minor.
Composed between the autumn of 1900 and April 1901, this enduringly popular
work established his fame as a concerto composer.
The concert takes place at 19h30 on
November 22, 2018, in the Durban City Hall. Booking is through Computicket.
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