CLASSICAL MUSIC: Coenraad Visser
OVER the past few years it has become increasingly rare for the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) of the SABC to give performances worthy not only of its status as the official orchestra of a national (publicly funded) broadcaster but also of the undoubted abilities of its members. One often suspected that this sorry state of artistic affairs was due mainly to the seemingly endless stream of lesser conductors (”misconductors”, as the legendary Walter Legge once called them) inflicted on the orchestra by its management.
It is perhaps ironic that this suspicion should be confirmed by the playing of the orchestra in its final season (if the SABC management has its way) for three conductors.
First came the young Danish star, Thomas Dausgaard. Not since Charles Dutoit conducted in the Cape Town decades ago were local audiences privy to the early career of someone who seems destined to take his place in the front rank of international conductors.
Dausgaard is not merely a mindless human metronome. Rather, he is a complete musician who constantly inspires the orchestra to transcend the limits of its technical ability. His performances of two of the centrepieces of the symphonic repertoire will be hard to better.
Tchaikovsky’s fourth symphony, so often a brash and obvious affair in lesser hands, was given a carefully considered reading, full of attention to the smallest detail but without any distortion of its overall structure. Rarely, if ever in Johannesburg, have we heard a reading that combined, with such confidence, searing excitement and gentle wistfulness, sparkle and wit. The orchestra clearly relished the chance to show its true form, with Gary Roberts (oboe) and Paul Rodgers (bassoon) particularly outstanding.
A week later Dausgaard’s unerring sense of musical architecture again manifested itself in a provocative performance of Bruckner’s massive eighth symphony. Again this was a powerful reading, but not cheaply so. For that Dausgaard’s vision and perspective are too pervasive. The performance was almost perfect in its romantic proportions, mixing nobility and grandeur with clarity of texture. The only blemish, slight though it was, was the lack of weight in the string sound.
Dausgaard was a hard act to follow. Romanian Nicolae Moldoveanu was more of a timekeeper than Dausgaard but produced lesser musical results. In his first concert Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings and Brahms’s first symphony were marred by sloppy ensemble and a lack of a unifying structural vision. As a result these towering works, especially the Tchaikovsky, fell apart.
In his second concert, though, Moldoveanu gave a lithe and perfectly weighted reading of Mozart’s Haffner Symphony. Articulation was neat and ensemble crisp, a far cry from the styleless Mozart dished up by Richard Cock, the orchestra’s music director. Moldoveanu also perfectly judged Schubert’s miniature Mass in G, in which the SABC Chamber Choir, meticulously trained by Cock, gave its customary immaculate performance.
Finally came Michael Christie, an American conductor still completing his studies. Christie has a keen intellect, as was shown by his meticulously executed miniatures by John Adams. But in larger works, such as Stravinsky’s Firebird, he lacked the experience to do full justice to the rich tonal colours of the composer’s palette.
Perhaps his best work in the more conventional repertoire came in his accompaniment of Brahms’s second piano concerto (with Alexander Lonquich an accomplished, if rather flatfooted, soloist). Here he showed himself to have an innate sense for the tradition of the romantic movement.
About Nothing for Orchestra. The first two words of the title of Peter Louis van Dijk’s work premiered by the NSO reflects not only the musical invention of the composer’s latest San-inspired work, but unfortunately also the NSO’s commitment to local musicians and composers.
In this season, not one South African instrumental soloist was contracted and, as usual, only one short South African work was performed. If this is the best deal the NSO can offer local musicians and composers with taxpayers’ money, then perhaps its transformation from a publicly funded national broadcasting orchestra into a privately funded city orchestra is appropriate.