NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Linder Auditorium, Johannesburg
THE FIRST concert in this year’s Glaxo winter series was rather disappointing, mainly because so much more was expected of the young South African pianist, Daniel-Ben Pienaar.
In Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 5 (“the Emperor”) Pienaar had hardly any idea of the structure of the work, and showed a very suspect technique. His monochrome reading lacked subtlety and tonal colour, and so missed the epic grandeur of the first movement and the rapt purity of the second. And there were simply far too many slips and fluffs for a professional performance. Equally disconcerting, though, was a tendency to accelerate in mid-phrase, distorting the rhythmic structure in the process. Pienaar’s are not new failings; hopefully they can still be corrected.
In the first half, British visitor Denis McCaldin conducted a rather staid performance of Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess and an efficient, if uninspiring, performance of Haydn’s Symphony No 85 (“La Reine”).
* At 8pm on August 21 in the Linder Auditorium Richard Cock conducts the NSO in a baroque programme with Peter-Lukas Graf (flute) as soloist.
Coenraad Visser