7:30pm  Durban City Hall

Brahms : Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat, Op. 83

Valent : Pangaea Overture

Turina : La Oración del Torero

Piazzolla :Tres Movimientos Tanguísticos Porteños

Falla : La vida breve: Spanish Dance No. 1

Soloist : Bryan Wallick, piano

Conductor : Josep Vicent

The KZN Philharmonic’s Winter Season opens with an eclectic programme, starting with one of Romanticism’s greatest concertos followed by a group of shorter works of more recent vintage from more southerly climes.

We welcome the return of American pianist Bryan Wallick to perform Brahms’ enormously demanding Piano Concerto No. 2 in collaboration with Spanish maestro Josep Vicent.  

Brahms’ engrossing four-movement work finds the composer at times integrating the soloist’s role into the orchestral writing. In other instances he causes his two titanic forces of piano and orchestra to rise up against each other in groundswells of thrilling energy, demanding of his soloist an extraordinarily sonorous powerbase of sound in order to combat the orchestra’s massive assaults. By contrast the work’s 3rd movement Andante conjures up an atmosphere of intimate tenderness as soloist and orchestra meld into a dreamlike trance. Not least of this epic concerto’s triumphs is the easeful way Brahms resolves the work’s early climactic peaks into the endearing playfulness of its 4th movement.

After the interval maestro Vicent introduces local concert-goers to the novel experience of a contemporary work he has espoused, Joan Valent’s Pangaea Overture. This refreshing addition to our musical landscape is followed by exotically-tinged works evoking a rich Hispanic musical milieu: La Oración del Torero; followed by the engaging Argentinian ‘Tango King’ Ástor Piazzolla’s Tres Movimientos Tanguísticos Porteños; and concluding with the sultry Spanish Dance No. 1 from Falla’s short opera La vida breve, first performed in 1913.

Durban City Hall  7:30pm

Wagner : Lohengrin: Prelude to Act I

R. Strauss : Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs)

Rachmaninoff : Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27

Soloist : Sally Silver, soprano

Conductor : Jeremy Silver

The quintessential 19th century German Romantic opera, Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin, was first performed in Weimar in 1850. Its three-act libretto devolves around the story of the protagonist of the medieval romance, Parzival, by the 12th century poet and knight, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and its sequel, Lohengrin. While the most celebrated musical excerpt of Wagner’s famous score is its ubiquitous ‘Bridal Chorus’, its Prelude runs a close second as one of the concert repertoire’s best-loved curtain-raisers. Its performance here marks the return of the versatile British conductor, Jeremy Silver, to the KZN Philharmonic’s podium.

Concert-goers will also be happy to welcome back the London-based South African-born soprano, Sally Silver, who joins her husband and the KZN Philharmonic on stage for Richard Strauss’s sublimely beautiful Four Last Songs as the centre piece of the evening’s programme. The swan song to the composer’s lifelong love affair with the soprano voice, these orchestral songs are entitled Frühling, September, Beim Schlafengehen and Im Abendrot. Miraculously, these final works of the great German composer’s entire oeuvre, composed in 1948, rank amongst his loveliest and most haunting music. In performing them, Sally Silver joins a royal line of great sopranos, including Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Gundula Janowitz, Kiri Te Kanawa and Renée Fleming, to name just four among many, who have made these songs their own since their 1950 premiere by Kirsten Flagstad.

Jeremy Silver concludes his programme with Rachmaninoff’s early magnum opus, his Symphony No. 2 in E minor, a cornerstone work in the young Russian master’s development. Its successful premiere in February 1908 in St Petersburg caused the musical establishment of the composer’s homeland to bestow on him a Glinka Award. This did much to boost the notoriously diffident composer’s confidence, and helped set him on the path to fame and fortune.

Durban City Hall   7:30 pm

Brahms : Tragic Overture, Op. 81

Barber : Violin Concerto, Op. 14

Brahms : Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68

SOLOIST : Philippe Graffin, violin

CONDUCTOR : Thomas Sanderling

For the third programme of the season we welcome the distinguished German conductor Thomas Sanderling as we return to two further masterworks by Johannes Brahms, along with one of the more frequently performed pieces of mid-20th century classical Americana.  

Brahms’ two concert overtures, his Tragic Overture, and a companion work, his Academic Festival Overture, both date from 1880.  The two works inhabit opposite poles of the emotional spectrum. Brahms’ pithy epithet "one laughs while the other cries" carries the point. While the Tragic Overture does not follow any specific dramatic programme, its titular epithet, "Tragic", underscored by its D minor key, clearly denotes the turbulence of its subject’s tormented character.

The inevitable allusion to the giant shadow cast by Beethoven is evident as we turn to an earlier work in the Brahms canon, his Symphony No. 1. This took all of three decades to create from initial sketches to the finished masterpiece. By common consent Brahms’ fiercely self-critical approach to his work, which led him to destroy successive drafts, was cruelly compounded by public expectation that he would carry the flag of Beethoven’s heritage into the future. Notwithstanding the symphony’s agonising gestation, however, its eventual premiere in Karlsruhe justified its hard-won reputation as a proud new-generation beacon of German symphonic writing.

The creative genesis of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto is another tale of multiple efforts before it eventually established itself in 1939 as an American classic. The fine French violinist Philippe Graffin’s collaboration in performing this distinctive three-movement work with maestro Sanderling and the KZN Philharmonic is not to be missed.  

Webern : Passacaglia, Op. 1

Berg : Violin Concerto

Schreker : Intermezzo, Op. 8

R. Strauss : Tod und Verklärung, Op. 24 (Death and Transfiguration)

SOLOIST : Joanna Frankel, violin

CONDUCTOR : Arjan Tien

Arjan Tien, a regular orchestra guest artist for more than a decade, makes a welcome return for the next two concerts of the season. Noted for his innovative programming, the Netherlands-born conductor’s first programme espouses music of four contemporaries whose careers spanned the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Franz Schreker and Richard Strauss.   

Opening the programme are two works from the Second Viennese School: Webern’s Passacaglia, the ground-breaking young Austrian composer’s 1908 graduation piece. Webern’s early mastery of orchestration is apparent in the variety he achieves with a repeating musical idea.  This is followed by Alban Berg’s last completed work, the hauntingly beautiful Violin Concerto, dedicated “To the memory of an angel”. This 1935 masterwork will be played by the noted young American soloist, Joanna Frankel, hailed by The Washington Post as “an uncommonly fine young violinist”.

Franz Schreker’s stunningly radiant Intermezzo for string orchestra, another early 20th century musical beacon, was the Austrian composer’s first success, winning an important prize sponsored by the Neue Musikalische Presse in 1901 while the composer was still a student at the Vienna Conservatory.

Richard Strauss’ mesmerising Tod und Verklärung rounds off the programme. Composed in 1889, Death and Transfiguration was an early example of the composer’s increasingly ambitious tone poems, among them Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Don Juan, Also sprach Zarathustra, Ein Heldenleben, Sinfonia Domestica and Eine Alpensinfonie: each virtuoso work constituting a superb vehicle for the post-Wagnerian symphony orchestra.

Durban City Hall 7:30pm

Mozart : La Clemenza di Tito: Overture, K. 621

Mozart : Violin Concerto No. 4, K. 218

Mozart :   Requiem, K. 626

Soloist : Avigail Bushakevitz, violin

Vocal Soloists & Local Choirs [TO BE ANNOUNCED]

Conductor : Arjan Tien

Arjan Tien’s all-Mozart programme on 14 June opens with the Overture to the great composer’s penultimate opera, the two-act opera seria, La Clemenza di Tito, composed for Prague in 1791. The composer interrupted his work on the creation of The Magic Flute in Vienna to take up its composition in response to a commission to compose an opera in celebration of the coronation of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, as King of Bohemia. He concluded The Magic Flute after the premiere of La Clemenza on 6 September. Its Overture exhibits all the pomp and grandeur called for by the occasion of its royal commission.

The evening’s solo piece is the youthful Violin Concerto No. 4 in G Major, a sunny work whose lilting grace and elegance exhibit all the fresh qualities of Mozart’s early maturity during his career as a composer attached to the court of the Archbishop of Salzburg. Its soloist, Avigail Bushakevitz, was first prize winner in the 2009 UNISA National Strings Competition, and is currently completing her graduate studies at the Juilliard School of Music in New York.

The programme concludes with another sublime masterpiece from Mozart’ final year, the Requiem in D minor, which occupies a place among the highest water marks of Western choral music. The work was composed in Vienna in 1791 and left almost finished at the composer's death on December 5. Completed by Franz Xavier Süssmayr, Mozart’s pupil, it was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who had anonymously commissioned the piece for a requiem mass to commemorate the February 14 anniversary of his wife's death. Other scholars have since attempted their own completions of this magnificent work based on Mozart’s sketches.

Durban City Hall 7:30pm

Saint-Saëns : Danse macabre, Op. 40

Saint-Saëns : Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22

Dukas : Symphony in C major

Soloist : François du Toit

Conductor : Daniel Boico

Consolidating his popular standing with KZN Philharmonic audiences over the past two seasons, the young American conductor Daniel Boico brings the Winter Season to a climax on 21 June with a crowd-pleasing programme of French classics. He opens proceedings with Saint-Saëns’ virtuosic tone poem, Danse macabre.  The work’s extraordinary evolution traces back its origin in 1872 when it began life as an art song for voice and piano, set to a French text by the poet Henri Cazalis which was based on an old French superstition. In 1874 Saint-Saëns expanded and reworked his piece into a tone poem, replacing the vocal line with a solo violin. Its dazzling orchestral manifestation has sustained its popularity as one of the mainstays of the symphonic repertoire.  

Likewise the composer’s G Minor Piano Concerto holds its head up high among the most spectacular showpieces of the 19th century, taking pride of place among its composer’s five keyboard concerti.  Written in 1868, it premièred with the composer as its soloist, performing under the baton of Anton Rubinstein.

The work’s eclectic changes in style are said to have provoked a contemporary to quip that it "begins with Bach and ends with Offenbach”. Cape Town pianist François du Toit allies himself to a proud tradition of master pianists who have pitted themselves against its formidable challenges to the delight of audiences all over the world. Numbered among them are keyboard giants of the calibre and finesse of Artur Rubinstein and Steven Hough, to name just two among many.

Paul Dukas’ Symphony in C major was written in 1896 when the composer was 30. It was premiered on January 3, 1897, with Paul Vidal, its dedicatee, conducting.  Like its counterpart, César Franck's only symphony, Dukas' rarely heard work is cast in three movements rather than the conventional four. Performed with gusto by the KZN Philharmonic, this symphonic gem brings Daniel Boico’s programme, and our Winter Season, to a rousing close.