SYMPHONY CONCERT REVIEW. Thursday, 13 April 2023. At The Cape Town City Hall. CPO conducted by Bernhard Gueller, soloist François du Toit; Pärt: Fratres; Dvorák: Czech Suite in D; Brahms: Piano Concerto No 2 in B flat, Op 83. DEON IRISH reviews
This was the first concert to be given by the CPO at the new starting time of 7.30pm, which of course meant that I arrived a good way into the Dvorák Suite, with little else to do than resign myself and consign my guest to an early interval.
Of course, with the Brahms B flat concerto in the second half of the programme, one could not feel overly deprived. This work is inevitably the focal point of any concert programme on which it features: and a performance of this concerto by our own much-loved François du Toit made it even more than a mere passing curiosity.
Reflecting on the performance after the concert, I turned to a work I haven’t consulted in a considerable while: Donald Tovey’s Essays in Musical Analysis, a great collection of essays by one who remains an unparalleled commentator on much of the standard concert repertoire. In his commentary on this magnificent concerto, he makes several telling comments relating to its sheer scale.
Wiry athleticism
Its first movement is not a large as that of Beethoven’s Emperor (not even as large as Brahms’ own D minor concerto); and its slow movement cannot surpass Beethoven’s C minor in length, although it does come close. But the point is that, in classical concerti, the first movement is generally pretty much as big as the second and third movements taken together.
This work has four movements, each of almost equal substance as the other three. They combine to form what is (leaving aside a few curiosities rarely encountered in the concert hall) the largest concerto in an extended classical form.
Now that is not merely for idle noting. For the soloist, it portends an ultra-marathon of extraordinarily taxing mien, not only in length, but enormous physical and mental challenges along the way.
Du Toit has been heard over the years in many concertos in this hall: I recall, in more recent times, a Liszt E flat with Yampolsky, the Scharwenka 4th with Gueller; a Tchaikovsky B flat minor also with Gueller; a cycle of all five Beethoven concertos performed over two nights; and the Schumann and Chopin F minor concertos, both with Boico. There were a string of earlier appearances, dating all the way back to his student years. Most featured the Romantic repertoire, although I would personally love to hear him in late Mozart.
One knew, before a note had been sounded, that he would bring to the solo task an integrity of musical purpose that would serve the music well and a wiry athleticism that would – even if not like those who subdue the score – give full effect to its varied textures and pianistic demands.
This expectation was, in large measure, fully realized, although there were moments along the way in which a few textual inaccuracies (of no real moment, other than for one rather confused entry) intruded. Less easily ignored was an occasional seeming lack of agility which did render a few of the really athletic leaps, in particular, a little imprecise.
Magisterial opening fantasia
The great opening movement with its serenely delivered B flat horn solo started in evocative manner, the dreamy arpeggio-derived piano musings leading through the increasingly magisterial opening fantasia to the triumphant adoption of the horn theme as the orchestra’s first sonata subject. The succeeding piano derivation did display some unevenness of execution, the left-hand bass line remaining rather unintegrated.
However, the immediately succeeding important episode – based on the first three notes of the first subject and featuring bounding upward leaping triplet chords – was delivered with an assured panache and led to a beautifully winsome bridge passage.
Du Toit developed the material in absorbing fashion until the declamatory solo piano statement in A flat finally pulled one, with the seeming inexorability of a vortex, into the whitewater rapids of the bouncing and surging F minor broken chords, to discharge in a welter of extraordinary piano double trills into the large waters of the concluding orchestral assertion.
The development was full of interest but there was some textual difficulty in the arpeggiatic writing preceding the gorgeously understated reappearance of the horn theme and the marvellous recapitulation of the movement.
Delivered with real brilliance
The storming scherzo – if one can apply such nomenclature to so assertive a movement at all – was a great reading by soloist and conductor alike. It captured the headlong energy that lies at the heart of the conception and that gave even the central tonic major section, despite its trio-like function, a triumphantly jubilant status, quite the match of its forerunner. The fugal writing was delivered with real brilliance and the concluding coda was a perfect marriage of solo instrument and orchestra.
The lengthy Andante is one of the composer’s most exquisite confections and one of the very greatest of concerto slow movements. It commences with one of those haunting middle voice themes which the composer seemed so drawn to – in this case, assigned to the cello and played with distinction by principal cellist, Peter Martens.
Deeply reflective pool
Du Toit delivered the solo line with ravishing beauty, building to a significant crescendo at the declamatory passage of trill dotted-rhythm ornamented arpeggios, before leading us to the quietest and most deeply reflective pool of this musical garden, in which sheer serenity is disturbed only by those drop-like upper tenths which fall, sequentially, quite limpid in their beauty, have almost no sense of rhythmic or of weight.
Well, what to put after that? Brahms came up with a concoction that might structurally be termed a Rondo, but which is really a set of variations of such an innocent, gracious and infectiously carefree character that it at once surprises and fascinates. Having followed the stormy D minor scherzo with an Andante back – in rather resolutive fashion – in the tonic key. What follows might have given this finale – in the same key – a somewhat tacked-on feel, a bit of an unnecessary fourth movement. Except that Brahms creates a series of intriguing variations of considerable tonal ambiguity and wide-ranging modulation almost right until the end, when all eventually romps home in a quite unmistakable B flat major.
Du Toit, Gueller and an orchestra that appeared to be thoroughly enjoying itself all romped home accordingly and were met by the delighted applause of the audience crammed into a sold-out house,
What: CPO first season concert
Reviewer: Deon Irish
WS
