The KZN Philharmonic Orchestra continues its World Symphony
Series with the KZNPO Spring Season offering two concerts. These will take
place on November 6 and 13, 2025 at 19h00 in the Playhouse Opera Theatre.
CONCERT 1: NOVEMBER 6
Conductor: Daniel Boico
Soloist: Jack Liebeck – violin
Programme:
Mozart: Don Giovanni Overture
Vaughan Williams: The
Lark Ascending
Saint-Saens: Introduction & Rondo Capriccioso, Op.28
Beethoven: Symphony No 3 ‘Eroica’
Daniel Boico opens the KZNPO Spring Season 2025 on November 6
with powerful drama from Mozart and Beethoven, bookending interludes of
serenity and bravura from Vaughan Williams and Camille Saint-Saëns,
respectively.
The tragi-comic tension of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, pivoting around a ghostly statue and an unrepentant libertine, is superbly captured in the opera’s powerful overture. As a concert curtain-raiser, its impact is riveting – in stark contrast to the sublime piece that follows in its wake.
Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending, with its glorious solo violin, depicting the lark's soaring song, while the orchestra portrays the English countryside and its people.
Gear change, and the programme conjures up a virtuosic showcase for the violin, written for the great Spanish violinist Pablo de Sarasate. Renowned for his dazzling prowess, the British-German violinist Jack Liebeck is sure to wow Durban concertgoers as he essays the formidable challenges of Saint-Saëns's Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso.
And so to the magnum opus of the evening, Ludwig van Beethoven’s mighty Eroica Symphony. Originally dedicated to Napoleon before being renamed to honour a "Great Man" after Napoleon's imperial ambitions emerged, the Symphony revolutionised Western music with its unprecedented length, depth, and heroic character. With those two thunderous E-flat chords that open the symphony, Beethoven becomes a new man - and the creator of a new music. Generations down the ages have been awe-stricken by the rugged grandeur of the work’s panoply of wonders. Those opening two cannon blast. the cellos intoning what seems to be the main theme ... the iconic second movement dirge, evoking ‘the emotions of someone watching the funeral procession from afar, passing by, and then fading in the distance.’ (Paul Bekker). And so to the incomparable finale – the giant work culminating in a stirring, relentless march melody. The symphony ends, fittingly, on a note of fiery triumph.
CONCERT 2: NOVEMBER
13
Conductor: Michael Repper
Soloist: Sandra Lied Haga - cello
Programme:
Elgar: Serenade for Strings in E minor
Haydn: Cello Concerto in D major
Mendelssohn: Symphony No.
American conductor Michael Repper, acclaimed on six continents, makes his KZN Philharmonic debut with a programme of English, Austrian and German classical gems. He opens with Elgar’s enchanting Serenade for Strings.
In the summer of 1933, just months before his death, Elgar conducted a recording session at London’s Kingsway Hall. The pieces he recorded were both works for strings – the Elegy written in 1909, and the composer’s beloved Serenade, composed in 1892. Its first movement, with its dance-like opening theme, gives way to a central adagio, swathed in nostalgia, before the audience succumbs to the third movement’s wistful conclusion, unexpectedly coming full circle in the finale to meet up with the spirit of the opening movement’s rhythmic dance fragment.
Haydn's joyous D major Cello Concerto, is one those works which makes the listener glad to be alive. The Norwegian cellist Sandra Lied Haga’s interpretation is eagerly awaited as she puts her stamp on its wealth of melodies and bravura passages.
The evening climaxes with Mendelssohn's youthful First Symphony, Its London première on May 25, 1829, with the composer conducting, was reviewed in The Harmonicon. KZNPO concert-goers will delight in the reviewer’s precise assessment of Mendelssohn's musical prowess:
The 19th century music commentator George Hogarth remarked: “Though only about one or two-and-twenty years of age, he has already produced several works of magnitude, which, if at all to be compared with the present, ought, without such additional claim, to rank him among the first composers of the age.... Fertility of invention and novelty of effect, are what first strike the hearers of M. Mendelssohn's symphony; but at the same time, the melodiousness of its subjects, the vigour with which these are supported, the gracefulness of the slow movement, the playfulness of some parts, and the energy of others, are all felt.... The author conducted it in person, and it was received with acclamations.” A feat Maestro Rapper is sure to repeat.
Both concerts take place at 19h00 in the Playhouse Opera
Theatre. Tickets available at Webtickets.
NB: For more
information on the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra, click on the advert to the top
right of this page to visit its website.
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