The Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra has announced its programme for the Spring Season 2019 and I’m delighted to see some of the works that are coming up. I unfortunately missed the last season, due to a number of inescapable priorities, but I’m too excited to miss a single one of the upcoming concerts for the rest of the year.
In the first week, selections from Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess have been programmed; the accomplished Cape Tonian soprano Linda Nteleza and the veritable international star baritone Musa Ngqungwana will be singing solo parts. Porgy and Bess resides in the very top tier of operas composed in modern times — in any time, in fact — and has also risen to eminence as one of the most popular contemporary musical theatre showcases. It’s a prime example of great, ground-breaking art that also has mass appeal, and it’s exactly the right vein for the JPO to strike. The second half of the week’s programme is just as exciting: we’ll hear the First Symphony of Gustav Mahler, a staple composer in the programmes of overseas orchestras, whose work the JPO has never played before. Mahler was no less a genius than Gershwin; it’s a spectacular finish to a promising evening. The conductor will be Wolfram Christ, a longtime principal violist in the Berlin Philharmonic.
The second week brings back Daniel Boico, the de facto principal guest conductor of the JPO, for his sixth engagement in two years. He’ll be conducting Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre, Chopin’s early First Piano Concerto in E minor, and Borodin’s Second Symphony in B minor. The solo pianist will be the young Russian Dmitry Shishkin. The programming for this week is pretty standard, but Boico always brings a rousing energy to the core classical repertory.
In the third week, the marquee names alone are enough to spike my enthusiasm. Roderick Cox, formerly an associate conductor at the Minnesota Orchestra, hasn’t been seen in Joburg since the night of the JPO’s relaunch, in August 2017, when he led an explosive evening of Tchaikovsky. The young Chinese pianist Antonio Chen Guang has been stacking up prizes from prestigious competitions around the world, including Olga Kern’s namesake. Together, they’ll perform Prokofiev’s Third Piano in C major. The programme starts off with Mozart’s exuberant overture to Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and ends with Brahms’s Fourth Symphony in E minor. The symphony rounds out a cycle of Brahms symphonies that the JPO has performed over a number of seasons now, the first of any composer’s to be completed. This has me especially gratified, since Brahms is my favourite symphonist, and his Fourth Symphony is perhaps the greatest final symphony ever written, and a thrilling work to hear at the end of a rich year.
The fourth week features my other favourite symphonist, Haydn, but with a concerto. The British trumpeter Matilda Lloyd will play his bright and joyful Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major, under South African-born conductor Conrad van Alphen. (Last time van Alphen was here, he conducted a particularly memorable evening for me of Sibelius and Dvořák). The concerto will be book-ended by two interesting and enduring suites from England: Handel’s Water Music, premiered in 1717 on the River Thames at the request of King George I, and Holst’s The Planets, premiered 200 years later in London.
If you were thinking of one day venturing out and exploring a JPO concert, I think that this Spring Season is a superb time to do it. Information on dates, times, and tickets can be obtained from the Computicket page. See you all there!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Enter your unrestrained arguments here