CLASSICAL MUSIC: Coenraad Visser
AS so often in the past, this year’s Glaxo season of the National Symphony Orchestra has contained much to delight classical-music lovers caught idle between the main seasons. Even more refreshing is the fact that most of the outstanding performances have come from local artists.
Peter Jaspan gave a sparkling performance of Bach’s Concerto for oboe d’amore, a beautiful arrangement of the composer’s solo keyboard concerto BWV 1055. Jaspan’s idiomatic reading was carefully proportioned and imbued with an infectious sense of fun. Robert Pickup and Edouard Miasnikov made the most of Krommer’s Concerto for Two Clarinets, although not even their spontaneous-sounding performance could entirely rescue this rather predictable and uninventive work.
Grieg’s piano concerto showed Italian visitor Francesco Cipoletta in top form. His was a dramatic reading, strong on technical display and bravura, just short on poetic feeling and warmth.
By contrast, Zimbabwean import Jeanette Micklem’s inept performance of Schumann’s piano concerto was disgraceful. Distorted phrases and tempi in a misguided search for expressiveness, scores of wrong notes, and no feeling for this composer’s unique romantic style, characterised a performance that would shame a final- year music student. Why do we need to import players of this standard and deny many local pianists the chance to perform with our national radio orchestra?
Speaking of which, in the absence of acting concert master Sergey Riabov, the NSO strings sound better than they have done for a long time. The deterioration in their playing when Riabov occupied the leader’s chair for a Handel Concerto Grosso was remarkable.
Of the conductors, Graham Scott has been the pick, with David Tidboald solid as usual and Richard Cock enthusiastic but short on style.
Richard Cock conducts the final Glaxo concert — a programme for children — in the Linder Auditorium on August 26 at 3pm