Friends of Music Recitals 2010
20 July 2010 - London Song Circle
The art song is not a big crowd-drawer in Durban, judging by the attendance at this recital given at the Durban Jewish Centre by three outstanding performers.
Music-lovers who stayed at home missed an evening of beautiful music presented by gifted and committed artists Mark Nixon (piano), Margriet van Reisen (mezzo-soprano) and Erica Eloff (soprano). They call themselves the London Song Circle, presumably because they often appear in London, but they are originally from South Africa (Mark and Erica) and from Holland (Margriet).
In a programme ranging from the seventeenth century (Henry Purcell) to the twentieth (Benjamin Britten) they gave consistently fine performances, with Mark Nixon participating in every item. He is a music graduate of the University of Cape Town who now lives in London and has built a considerable reputation as a piano soloist and as an accompanist, and at this Friends of Music concert he excelled in both roles.His solo contribution was Chopin’s Scherzo No. 2 in B flat minor, taken at high speed and with a rather flamboyant keyboard style.The technical difficulties posed no problems for the pianist. His interpretation was exciting, and he produced a beautiful cantabile tone in the work’s main theme, one of Chopin’s finest inspirations.
Vocal duets are unusual outside the field of opera, but the programme opened with three such items, songs by Purcell arranged by Britten, plus two solo songs by this composer.One was immediately struck by the close and sympathetic liaison between the two singers, and between them and the pianist, and this empathy continued throughout the evening.
Four songs by Schumann, including two famous ones, Widmung (Devotion) and Der Nussbaum (The Nut Tree) followed, and in them Magriet van Reisen showed that she is a mezzo-soprano of the first rank.She covered a wide range of emotions, from gentle calm to dramatic declamation.She has a splendid voice and it is allied to an acute perception of the meaning of the music.
Then came a rarity, four duets by Brahms in different moods, good-humoured, melancholy, wry and romantic.And then the South African sopranoErica Eloff came into her own with six songs by Rachmaninov, presented with lovely pure tone and expressive phrasing.Mark Nixon excelled in the all-important piano parts, many of them in Rachmaninov’s most rhapsodic style.It was a treat to hear these songs, which, inexplicably, are not often featured on concert programmes. The exquisite “Lilacs’ must be one of the most beautiful songs in the entire vocal repertory.
Finally, there were songs by two English composers, Roger Quilter and Benjamin Britten.
The audience was not large but those present were certainly enthusiastic.Prolonged applause and cries of Bravo indicated their enjoyment of an evening of exceptional music-making.
Michael Green (courtesy of ArtSmart)
29 June 2010 - Polina Burdukova (Cello) and Kerry Wisniewski (Piano)
These two musicians, South African notwithstanding their exotic names, played Beethoven, Grieg and Chopin in their last appearance for the Friends of Music, two years ago. This time they performed, in the Durban Jewish Centre, a programme that was, to put it mildly, well off the beaten track.
I have been listening to music for a long time, but there was only one item on the programme with which I was familiar: Schumann’s Fantasiestucke, Op. 73 (I have occasionally played the piano part, in my amateur way, for a friend who is a cellist).
The rest was terra incognita for me and, I suspect, for most of the audience, but interesting territory nonetheless. And the music was delivered with considerable skill and conviction by two gifted instrumentalists.
They opened with five pieces by the early eighteenth century French composer, Francois Couperin, Couperin le Grand, so called to distinguish him from the lesser musicians in his family. These were a delight: elegant, stately, melodious. The finest, I thought, was a simple, beautiful and melancholy composition called Plainte, Complaint. And the final Air de Diable (Song of the Devil) seemed to be more good-humoured than diabolical. What a splendid philosophy of life.
Then came the most advanced composition of the evening, a work called 4 Minim by Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph, who lives in Johannesburg and is generally regarded, at the age of 62, as South Africa’s foremost woman composer.
This consists of four pieces called Esrog, Lulav, Hadassim and Arovos. The cellist, Russian-born Polina Burdokova, gave some kind of explanation of the music before it was played, but it was inaudible to most of the audience, who no doubt were left wondering what it was all about. The explanation should have been given in the programme note, which was hopelessly inadequate.
Perhaps the Jewish members of the audience, or some of them, knew the answers. These four words refer to plants, including citron, palm leaves and myrtle branches, which are used for ceremonies in Sukkot, the Jewish harvesting holiday which follows Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement (Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph has been closely involved with Jewish music in Johannesburg).
The music seemed to me to be rather cryptic, strongly rhythmical and dissonant, in the modern idiom. For audiences, all part of the learning curve, I suppose, but the brief applause at the end suggested that these listeners were not very enthusiastic about it.
In very different mood was a Tarantella by the nineteenth century Bohemian cellist and composer David Popper, rapid, pleasant and lightweight.
After the interval came the three Schumann Fantasiestucke, fantasy pieces, written fairly late in the composer’s life and typical of his warm, romantic style. They were originally written for clarinet and piano, but they go very well for the cello and are most often played in this form. The performance was excellent.
Virtuoso playing was provided in Rossini’s Une Larme Variations. These variations are on a quiet, mournful tune called Une Larme, The Tear, but, as usual, Rossini’s high spirits take over and the work develops into something resembling an exuberant Rossini opera. All very enjoyable.
Finally we were given another South African composition, a “Concert Piece” by 61-year-old Allan Stephenson, who was born in England but has lived in Cape Town for nearly 40 years. He is a cellist and a prolific composer, ninety compositions, including three operas and concertos for various instruments.
His music is in a quite traditional style, and his concert piece turned out be jaunty, rhythmical and pleasant.
The prelude performer of the evening, funded by the National Lottery, was 16-year-old Keziah Peel, a pupil at Durban Girls’ College. An unusual first name; Keziah was one of the daughters of the suffering and patient Job of the Old Testament.
This Keziah is a versatile musician; she is a cellist, a saxophonist and a percussionist. With Jacques Heyns at the piano she played the saxophone concerto by the Russian composer Alexander Glazunov, written in 1934, two years before his death. It is terse (15 minutes, with no breaks), lively, quite tuneful and, I imagine, difficult to play. Keziah gave a very good performance. The piano arrangement is effective, but it is not really a substitute for Glazunov’s orchestration. Perhaps one of these days Keziah will be given the opportunity of playing the concerto with the KZNPO.
Michael Green (courtesy of ArtSmart)
8 June 2010 - Chun Wang (piano)
This was a truly remarkable recital in the Durban Jewish Centre. Chun Wang is a 20-year-old pianist from China. He has won prizes in international competitions, has played with some big orchestras, and is at present a student at the Julliard School in New York.
Some student. For one so young he is a player of enormous skills, power and confidence. His keyboard technique is spectacular. And his insight into the music he is playing is acute.
Listening to him I wondered about the amount of study and practice that must have gone into his twenty years. But then he is from the east, where the work ethic among gifted people is something else.
Whatever the background to his accomplishments, he delivered an evening of extraordinary pianism to the Friends of Music audience.
He opened a very taxing programme with Bach’s Toccata in D major, BWV 912, a work with which I am not familiar. This turned out to be an extended and brilliant piece. It was written about 300 years ago, and it is full of musical ideas that remain astonishingly modern today. The performance was excellent, with crisp, clear accents and well-judged phrasing.
Chun Wang followed with two big works by two supreme piano composers, Robert Schumann and Frederic Chopin, both born 200 years ago, in 1810. The choice of Schumann’s Phantasie in C, Op. 17, was particularly appropriate because this recital was given on 8 June 2010, two hundred years to the day from Schumann’s birth.
The fantasy is a beautiful three-movement work, a deeply felt personal utterance, and Chun Wang played it with perception and insight. It is difficult, especially the energetic second movement, and the technical problems were overcome with great dexterity.
Chopin’s Sonata No.2 in B flat minor, the one with the funeral mach, produced another virtuoso performance. The first movement was taken at high speed, too fast for my taste; there is some evidence that Chopin himself did not care for keyboard speed merchants. But there was some lovely cantabile playing in the slow section of the second movement and in the funeral march. And the ghost-like finale was performed with lightning-fast fingers.
Finally Chun Wang gave another extraordinary display of virtuoso playing in Stravinsky’s Trois mouvements de Petrouchka, the composer’s arrangement for piano of three movements from his celebrated ballet Petrushka, about a puppet who comes to life, with sad consequences.
This music was composed nearly a hundred years ago, for the pianist Arthur Rubinstein, and it sounds as modern and innovative now as it must have done then. Chun Wang played it with extreme brilliance, executing very fast scales, rapid jumps, glissandos, complex rhythms, with great confidence and control. At the end a good-sized audience gave him a standing ovation.
The prelude performer of the evening, funded by the National Lottery, was Caterina Reigl, a 15-year-old recorder player who is a pupil at the Fatima Convent at Durban North. Accompanied by Bobby Mills at the piano, she played eighteenth century music by Georg Philipp Telemann and Giuseppe Sammatini (he had a brother named Giovanni but I think this piece was by Giuseppe) and twentieth century music by the English composer Gordon Jacob. All very pleasant and well performed.
Michael Green (courtesy of ArtSmart)
11 May 2010 - Grigory Alumyan (Cello) and Rinko Hama (Piano)
The opening notes for solo cello in Beethoven’s Op. 69 sonata indicated that we were listening to a player of superior quality, and so it proved in this recital for the Friends of Music at the Durban Jewish Centre.
Grigory Alumyan is a Russian cellist and he was partnered in this recital by Rinko Hama, a Japanese pianist who has collaborated with him for the past nine years. She was born in Japan but seems to have spent most of the past 20 years in Europe. At the keyboard she matches his skills with the cello.
In Durban they presented a substantial and consistently enjoyable programme, beginning with the main item of the evening, the Beethoven sonata. This magnificent work in A major is the best of Beethoven’s five sonatas for cello and piano, and it brought forth splendid playing from the performers.
Here, as in the other compositions on the programme, the cello and piano are equal partners; the piano part is certainly not an accompaniment. The brief opening phase for the cello was played with great power and resonance, setting the standard for a memorable performance. The cellist’s broad and accurate tone was given to great effect in the short and beautiful Adagio cantabile, and the rapid final movement provided plenty of opportunity for the pianist to show her virtuosity.
They followed with arrangements by Paul Kochonski of Manuel de Falla’s Seven Popular Spanish Songs, playing six of the seven items. The original for soprano and piano is well known, and there is a good arrangement for solo piano by Ernesto Halffter, who studied with Falla, but this cello version was new to me. I felt that the cello was perhaps too weighty an instrument for some of these wild and captivating songs, but Grigory Alumyan produced a beautiful singing tone in the melancholy Nana lullaby and in Asturiana.
Incidentally, the programme note said that Asturiana was by far the best known of these songs. I would have thought that the best known was the very lively Seguidilla murciana, the one song omitted in this performance.
Schumann’s rarely played Adagio and Allegro, Op.70, made a good contrast, and the concert ended with Grieg’s sonata for cello and piano in A minor, Op. 36.
This is an extended three-movement work running for about 30 minutes. Grieg’s music is sometimes underrated. In fact he was a highly original and gifted composer, and the far-ranging subject matter of this sonata might have come as a surprise to some listeners. The players delivered it with great intensity and skill to complete an evening of outstanding music.
The prelude performer of the evening, funded by the National Lottery, was the soprano Lize Bothma, a 17-year-old pupil at Crawford College North Coast, who, accompanied by Ros Conrad, presented songs by Alessandro Scarlatti, Hugo Wolf and George Gershwin.
Michael Green (courtesy of ArtSmart
20 April 2010 - Quintet
Nishlyn Ramanna in the Sunday Magazine dated 25th April 2010.
Nishlyn Ramanna discovers vibrancy and talent. The Friends of Music concert at the Durban Jewish Centre on Tuesday, April 20, featured Simon Milliken (double bass), Boris Kerimov (cello), Liezl-Maret Jacobs (piano), Elena Kerimova (violin) and David Snaith (viola) playing Schubert's Concertante in F Major D 487 and his Trout Quintet, as well as Hummel's little-known Piano Quintet in E flat minor, Op 87. The ensemble was beautifully balanced and finely interwoven. Crisp and deliciously articulate, Jacob's piano was like a sparkling stream against the warm string textures.
It was truly a treat listening to music we don't get to hear often enough, played with such intelligence and vitality.
9 March 2010 - Konstantin Soukhovetski, piano
Konstantin Soukhovetski is a young Russian pianist who is not only a consummate keyboard technician but is also an artist with an acute understanding of the subtleties and nuances of the music he is playing.
He delighted his Friends of Music audience at the Durban Jewish Centre with a programme that was mainly off the beaten track and offered much to digest and enjoy.
He is a lean, good-looking young man, late twenties, I would guess, with a deeply committed approach to his music and a pleasantly informal manner with the audience. He was born in Moscow and his family still live there, but he speaks fluent English with a marked American accent. He commented on the music from the stage and was responsible for the highly literate and rather philosophical programme notes.
He opened with Chopin’s Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante, Op. 22. This was an appropriate choice to mark the bicentenary of Chopin’s birth. It was on the programme with which the 22-year-old composer launched his career in Paris as a concert pianist in 1832, and it was there again when he gave his last public performance in Paris 16 years later.
The polonaise is a dazzling showpiece and it was played here with great brilliance, but the Andante Spianato (written some years after the polonaise) is musically far superior, a beautiful extended nocturne with hints of impressionism that look into the future. Konstantin Soukhovetski captured the magic of Chopin’s music, revealing, as a good pianist should, what a great composer he was.
He followed with two works which showed, as he put it, “two very different Russias”. Tchaikovsky’s Dumka is, I think, something of a rarity. It begins with a melancholy folk-music type of tune and then livens up considerably later. It is effectively scored for the piano and was played with high skills.
Then came the Sonata in C minor, Op. 29, by Prokofiev, this composer’s fourth piano sonata, written in 1917. It is typically vigorous and abrasive, and the slow movement is highly original and evocative.
The pianist played these two Russian compositions without pausing to take a bow between them, and this caused some confusion in the audience, many of whom were under the impression that the Prokofiev was a continuation of the Tchaikovsky. Advanced Tchaikovsky. After a little time, of course, the penny dropped and they realised that they were listening to music of the twentieth century.
After the interval came Schubert’s long (45 minutes) and profound Sonata in B flat major, D.960. This is a great work, written shortly before Schubert’s death in 1828 at the age of 31. It was played with superb insight, especially the first two movements, in which the composer seems to ponder the mysteries of life and death. It was a privilege to hear this performance.
The programme note referred to Schubert’s last three piano sonatas as masterpieces that remain largely unknown. I would go further. Schubert wrote 18 piano sonatas, all of them of high quality and some of them absolutely outstanding, but they have been sadly neglected on the concert platform.
An encore was not really fitting after the sublime Schubert, but Konstantin Soukhovetski chose one that matched the mood: a piano transcription of Richard Strauss’s beautiful song Morgen, tomorrow the sun will shine.
The prelude performer of the evening was the well-known baritone Selby Hlangu, who is a Master’s student at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He showed good, confident delivery and expressive phrasing in four songs from Schubert’s Schone Mullerin. Danna Hadjiev was competent and sympathetic in the all-important piano parts.
Michael Green (courtesy of ArtSmart)
23 February - Moya trombone Quartet
The trombone is nothing if not assertive, as anybody who has heard it in action in an orchestra will confirm.
It is the brassiest of brass instruments and the last thing I would associate with chamber music, but in this concert four gifted trombonists showed that there is really no end to musical ingenuity and enterprise.
The players are from South Africa (Ross Butcher and Anthony Boorer, who comes from England but is now the principal trombone in the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra) and France (Christophe Legrand and Maxime Chevrot). They call themselves the Moya Trombone Quartet, and they presented a programme ranging from Verdi and Gershwin to, wait for it, Debussy, with a lavish helping of modern music and jazz. All of which was much to the taste of the Friends of Music audience at the Durban Jewish Centre.
The Moya Quartet was established four years ago and is based at Geneva in Switzerland. The name Moya comes from the Zulu word for the wind and spirit, highly appropriate for this group (some of you may remember a beautiful lady named Moya, and the name was appropriate for her too).
For this concert both the composition of the quartet and their programme were changed considerably from the advertised details. An Italian and a French member of the usual quartet were not present, and their places
were taken (very effectively) by Anthony Boorer and Maxime Chevrot. Perhaps this was why the programme was altered. Anthony Boorer stood in at two days’ notice and played with distinction.
The evening had an informal atmosphere. The players were dressed casually, and breezy announcements were made from the stage.
The trombone is not a very nimble or soulful instrument, and, in spite of skilful performance, I did not think it was well suited to arrangements of Verdi’s La forza del destina overture, Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana intermezzo or songs by Debussy.
But the players seem to come into their own in an interesting, three-movement suite called Wars by the American composer Joey Sellers, and in popular pieces by Gershwin, Thelonious Monk, Christian Lindberg and Queen (the British rock band).
I would guess that about 60 members of the audience of about 80 had seldom before attended a Friends of Music concert, and they obviously enjoyed themselves. Different strokes for different folks, as the rather peculiar saying goes.
This concert was a success. Would this audience return for an evening of Bach or Mozart? I wonder.
The evening’s prelude performer, funded by the National Lottery, was the 15-year-old violinist Yea Kyung Kim, a pupil at Durban Girls’ College. She is taught music by Isaac Melamed. Accompanied by David Smith, she played the chaconne attributed to the Italian composer Vitali (1663-1745), and she played it with confidence and competence.
Michael Green (courtesy of ArtSmart)
16 February - BENJAMIN SCHMID (violin) and LUIS MAGALHAES (piano)
This was an outstanding duo recital: lovely music played by two truly gifted performers, the Austrian violinist Benjamin Schmid and the Portuguese pianist (now based at Stellenbosch) Luis Magalhaes.
Over the past two decades Benjamin Schmid, who is now 41, has established a big international reputation, and listening to his playing at the Durban Jewish Centre it is easy to understand why. From his 1731 Stradivarius he produces a consistently full and beautiful tone, and he plays with a calmness, poise and control that make light of any technical difficulties.
Luis Magalhaes, who now teaches at Stellenbosch University, has been a concert pianist for many years, and he proved to be an admirable partner for the admirable Schmid.
The programme was devoted to Schubert and Beethoven, and the works played are all very much for violin and piano on equal terms; there is no question of the piano providing a mere accompaniment.
It was a treat to be given three compositions by Schubert that are not played too often: a graceful, flowing Sonatina and two big works, the Fantasy in C major and the Rondo Brillant in B minor.
Schubert is one of a handful of supreme composers in musical history, and this Fantasy, written in1827, is ample evidence of his powers. The opening is extraordinary, a prolonged tremolo on the piano with an expressive adagio melody from the violin. Then follows a wide range of ideas and emotions, the crucial theme being an adaptation, with variations, of one of Schubert’s most beautiful songs, “Angel of beauty”.
The performance was superb, and perhaps a special word of appreciation is due to Luis Magalhaes. Schubert’s keyboard music is often awkward and difficult to play, and this pianist handled the problems with aplomb.
The Schubert Rondo Brillant was likewise played with great skill, vigour and conviction.
The programme was completed with one of the greatest works for violin and piano, Beethoven’s Sonata in G major Op 96, the last and finest of the composer’s ten violin sonatas.
The programme note mentioned that this sonata is sometimes (not often, fortunately) referred to as “The Cockcrow”. Musical nicknames are often silly, but this one verges on the idiotic. Anybody who thinks that the sonata’s opening phrase resembles a cock’s crow (the apparent source of the nickname) must be tone deaf, in my opinion.
Be that as it may, the performance was first-rate throughout. It is a pity that wet, stormy weather reduced the audience in size, but those who braved the rain and lightning were richly rewarded.
The prelude performer of the evening, funded by the National Lottery, was yet another instrumentalist with eastern origins, this time Chia-Chi Chiang, known as Casey, a pianist who is a 17-year-old pupil at Northlands Girls’ High School.
She played Debussy’s Cathedrale Engloutie (sunken cathedral) and Rachmaninov’s Prelude in B minor, Op. 32, No. 10. These were ambitious choices, but she gave a creditable performance and showed a good sense of style and dynamics. She will no doubt continue to work hard and make good progress in the future.
--- Michael Green (courtesy of artSMart)