JOHANNESBURG PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

PROGRAMME: Music by Barber & Beethoven

CONDUCTOR: Horia Andreescu

SOLOIST: Mirijam Contzen, violin

VENUE: Linder auditorium, Parktown

RATING: ****

As a rule Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings too often overshadows the extent of his output. This danger was cleverly avoided due to the JPO’s choice to follow it up by another famous work by this American composer, his Violin Concerto, Opus 14.

Romanian Horia Andreescu, the guest conductor, gives us an unusually tender, nobly restrained interpretation of the said Adagio, totally in keeping with its chamber-music origins. By not being over-sumptuous and avoiding a near-static tempo, the climax’s dramatic power is not impaired.

One could say that Barber’s voice here is one of conservatism, or one which conserves affirmative ideas of the value of beauty in its own right. Taken in isolation, there is probably not a chord in the piece that was not somewhere written by Brahms, yet the value, as in all good music, lies in the architecture of the piece from such serviceable materials. The JPO strings’ textural transparency and the sheer poise of Andreescu’s reading is remarkable.

Violinist Mirijam Contzen, firm of tone and technically far more than just secure, gives us a performance of Barber’s concerto where an easy flowing spontaneity is combined with unforced eloquence. She and the conductor, who proves himself to be as stimulating a creative partner in the proceedings, catch the undimming memorability of the work.

Contzen’s playing has the unforced naturalness which pinpoints to the various aspects inherent to this concerto: its seemingly effortless lyrical flow through which she marvellously captures its world of feeling and youthful rapture.

This is evident in the opening Allegro’s sublimely expansive G major tune, followed soon by the smiling second subject which is first heard on the clarinet. This movement’s abiding mood of song like serenity is brilliantly captured.

In the central Andante a feeling of nostalgia is evoked, but the vein of bitter-sweet yearning never becomes sentimental. After the more agitated central section, the original theme introduced by the oboe, returns in the hands of the soloist. Contzen convinces us that this is one of the most lusciously romantic passages in any concerto. In the short moto perpetuo finale she applies pinpoint articulation combined with quicksilver lightness to the rushing triplets. A memorable achievement.

Joseph Kerman, an American musicologist, wrote tellingly about Beethoven’s “determination to touch common mankind as nakedly as possible”. History has triumphantly vindicated him. Andreescu and the JPO gives us an alternative reading of the composer’s Symphony No 5. Perhaps it didn’t fully materialise as the maestro has wished, but it is one which proves that it can be interpreted in different ways.

Andreescu gives us a gutsy reading full of electricity, but it became one which couldn’t be realised with the JPO – an orchestra he hasn’t worked with before. Nevertheless, the phrasing is fluent within the swift tempos, but he seems scarcely able to marry tempos productively or convincingly which an older generation often did achieve with magical results.

The couple of blemishes in the orchestral playing were hopefully just opening- night nerves.

• This concert will be repeated on Sunday at 3pm in the ZK Matthews Hall, Unisa, Pretoria.

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