KZN Philharmonic Orchestra 2024 WINTER Symphony Season Concert 1

ABOUT

Concert 1: 6 June 2024

Playhouse Opera Theatre

Conductor: Brandon Phillips

Soloist: Jan Bartos (Piano)

Haydn: Symphony No 59 ‘Fire’

Mendelssohn: Piano Concerto No 2 in D minor

Beethoven: Symphony No 5 in C minor Op 67

Cape Town conductor Brandon Phillips returns to the KZNPO podium, to open the orchestra’s 2024 World Symphony Series Winter Season. His ‘curtain-raiser’, Joseph Haydn’s up-beat Symphony No. 59, represents an innovative stroke of curating. Dubbed the ‘Fire Symphony’, this relatively early work was composed under the auspices of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy in the mid 1760s. It is sure to delight our concert goers, with its delicious scoring for two oboes, bassoon, two horns and strings. Making his local debut, the distinguished Czech pianist Jan Bartoš – lauded by BBC Music Magazine as ‘an ideal interpreter, providing abundant brilliance without sacrificing poetry’ – takes centre-stage in a performance of Mendelssohn’s bravura Piano Concerto No. 2 in D minor. Written in 1837, this dazzling piece, with its luscious orchestration for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings, premiered at the Birmingham Festival on 21 September that year. A second performance followed at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, in early November, and the work was finally published in the summer of 1838 after extensive revisions. Beethoven’s towering Fifth Symphony, one of the cornerstones of Western music, brings the evening to a rousing climax in the second half of the evening. Dubbed the ‘Fate Symphony (German: Schicksalssinfonie), the mighty work premiered in Vienna's Theater an der Wien in 1808. It begins with a distinctive four-note "short-short-short-long" motif, often characterized as ‘fate knocking at the door’ The symphony, and the four-note opening motif in particular, are known the world over, with the motif manifesting in popular culture, from disco versions to rock and roll covers, to uses in film and television. Like Beethoven's Eroica and Pastorale, his iconic Fifth took on an identity enhanced by its own explicit name besides the numbering, though none of these nicknames emanated from the composer himself.