S YMPHONY CONCERT, October 22. At City Hall; CPO conducted by Perry So, soloists Goitsemang Lehobye (soprano) and Pallavi Mahidhara (piano); Ndodana-Breen: Three Orchestral Songs on Poems of Ingrid Jonker; Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No 2 in C minor, Op 18; Prokofiev: Symphony No 7 in C sharp minor, Op 131. Deon Irish reviews
THE opening concert of the spring season was a sold-out affair, and one which generated a deal of enthusiasm – not least because of the first performance of a significant addition to the catalogue of South African orchestral works.
I concede that the inclusion of a “top of the pops” concerto to counter possible resistance to a new work and to a relatively seldom performed symphony is sound marketing, but I would have thought one of the many examples of the genre long overdue for local exposure would have served as well as yet another Rachmaninov.
The more so since this work is not really suited to Mahidhara’s delicate tonal palette. She lacks the sheer physicality required to invest the work’s tumultuous passages with the required sonorities and, each time one of the more delicate episodes did allow opportunity to demonstrate a purity of execution and subtlety of attack, one wished she was playing a work more appropriate to her pianistic strengths.
So’s account of the Prokofiev symphony was uniformly engrossing and demonstrated a fine understanding both of its formal architecture and of the underlying musical imperatives of a work frequently dismissed as being of slight inspiration.
It was the composer’s final symphony, written shortly before his untimely death and after sustaining a recurrent bout of frigid Stalinist criticism.
If this work really is another Soviet artist’s “response to just criticism”, it nevertheless constitutes an engaging and attractive riposte, even if the composer’s humour might be a little less acerbic than customary, his harmonies less morbid, his orchestration less droll. The very opening showcased the violins’ soaring subject and their contribution remained uniformly excellent.
So brought out the quasi-fugato elements in the accompaniment with subtle emphasis and revealed the transfigured thematic elements with neat precision. The second subject – it always seems very maritime to me – set sail with the grave majesty of a Transatlantic liner in placid waters, and the quirky march provided a characteristic foil. The bittersweet allegretto provided whimsical glimpses of a lost world, until interrupted by the deliberately vulgar outbreak of percussion and lower brass. No sentimental waltzes tolerated in this brave new world! There followed the rather fragmentary musings of the andante, which So managed to weld into a reasonably cohesive meditation, sensibly concentrating on the musical picaresque in the absence of formal cohesion.
Finally the vivacious finale, its character very urban in the busy writing; the juxtaposed tonalities; the quirky wind solos. Perhaps the nearest that Prokofiev got to capturing the spirit of a Gershwin. The audience loved it and So and the orchestra well deserved the lengthy ovation.
It was a night for ovations, since the work that opened the programme also garnered a storm of applause for composer, soloist, conductor and orchestra. Ndodana-Breen has written an important suite of orchestral songs based on three of Ingrid Jonker’s poems ( Die Kind, Ek herhaal jou and Met hulle is ek), to honour this important South African artist 50 years after her death in the sea at Three Anchor Bay, on 19 July, 1965.
The writing is assured and the inspiration apparent: in which regard, one is struck by the concept being less overtly socio-political than might have been expected, given much of Ndodana-Breen’s recent oeuvre. The first of the poems is, of course, reactive to a specific and highly political event, the shooting of a child in Nyanga and the music is, entirely appropriately, the most overtly Africanist in its careful synthesis of expressly Xhosa-derived musical elements. But the latter poems are more concerned with Jonker’s existential responses to her personal circumstances: the sense of alienation in Met hulle is ek; the lost intimacy mourned in Ek herhaal jou.
This central movement was, I thought, the loveliest of the three: a dreamy evocation of the sensually tactile, commencing with a languorous, intertwining canonic duet for bassoon and flute and exploring the emotional sub-text in writing that was surprisingly satin, given the angularity of its five beat time signature. The vocal line captures the mood in its repetitive, falling sequences and, despite the considerable climax the overall impression remains languid.
The final poem is pure despair, penned not long before the author’s suicide. It is written, paradoxically, in an urgent 9/8 pulse, employing recurring rising figure that has the structural regularity of a passacaglia, but hints at the obsessive repetition of the manic.
Ndodana-Breen expressed himself delighted at the careful preparation demonstrated by So and the fluent performance of his piece by all concerned.
For those experiencing it de novo, the work was engrossing, but marred by Lehobye’s incomprehensible Afrikaans diction. A great pity, for the voice is warm and flexible.