KZNPO SYMPHONY CONCERT NO.3: REVIEW

 

Conductor, Emmanuel Siffert’s perfect choice of tempi enabled the orchestra to excel, coaxing fine playing, in particular, from the woodwinds.  (Review by Barbara Trofimczyk)

 

KZN Philharmonic Concert No.3 at The Playhouse Opera Theatre

Thursday March 7, 2024.

Conductor - Emmanuel Siffert

Soloist -Jan Jiracek von Arnim

Programme:

Ravel - Le Tombeau de Couperin

Mozart - Piano Concerto K488

Tchaikovsky – Symphony No 2, “Little Russian”

 

It was an interesting choice of music for this week’s concert, the three works very different in character and style.

Le Tombeau de Couperin is a kind of dance suite inspired by dance forms of the Baroque era, but its original, somewhat modal textures belong to more recent times.

The four movements selected from the original six for piano solo, provided the best potential for exploring the wonderful and varied instrumental colours found in the orchestra. Ravel’s scoring of these dances is simply stunning, effectively tossing the melodic and rhythmic patterns in colourfully imitative gestures around the orchestra, chamber music in style.

Conductor, Emmanuel Siffert’s perfect choice of tempi enabled the orchestra to excel, coaxing fine playing, in particular, from the woodwinds.

In complete contrast, Tchaikovsky’s “Little Russian” is considerably more symphonic, characterised by distinctive melodies and development, rich in orchestration and wide-ranging dynamics, and the four movements conceived as a whole. There were many memorable moments in this performance.

To mention but a few: the opening horn solo announcing the start, the march-like ostinato rhythm of the slow movement, the quirky rhythmic changes between 2 beats and 3 beats in the Scherzo, and above all the exciting build-up of orchestral forces to a powerful climax at the end. That certainly stirred the audience! Conductor and orchestra seemed to enjoy this experience!

Nestled between these two extremes was the performance by Jan Jiracek von Arnim of Mozart’s beautifully lyrical, and ever popular Piano Concerto in A Major.

Essentially ‘melodic’ in character, the elegant scale and arpeggio passages which provide light and shade as well as harmonic flow and direction in the music, a deeply expressive slow movement in the minor key, followed by the vivacious final movement with its often-delightful interchanges between soloist and woodwinds the soloist always the protagonist, was all captured perfectly by pianist Jan Jiracek von Arnim in his fine performance of this concerto. Also very beautiful was his encore, Chopin’s well known Raindrop Prelude. - Barbara Trofimczyk

 

There are two concerts left in this season – March 14 and 21. For more information, go to the KZNPO’s website or link directly by clicking on the KZNPO advert to the top right-hand side of this article.