Top artists, conductors set for KZNPO Spring season

THE KZNPO has launched a fourconcert Spring Symphony Season, featuring an exciting programme with some of the world’s top artists and conductors.

Daniel Boico takes the podium for the first concert on October 6, followed by acclaimed Polish conductor Michał Dworzynski.

German conductor Justus Frantz makes one of his many return appearances to the KZN Philharmonic stage for the third concert of the season, and Noam Aviel commands the podium for the finale.

Soloists feature accomplished South African pianist Nina Schumann, the London-based Australian pianist Jayson Gillham, and two dazzling young Latvian virtuosos: violinist Kristine Balanas and cellist Maja Bogdanovic.

In the opening concert Boico conducts Kodály‘s dramatic Dances of Galánta, while Schumann performs the perennial crowd pleaser, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Extracts from Handel’s Judas Maccabeus complete the programme featuring local vocalists and choirs.

On October 13 Dworzynski conducts the orchestra with Gillham at the piano in Grieg’s Piano Concerto, while Brahms’s massive Symphony No 1 in C Minor completes the picture.

On October 20, Balanas, described by The Times as a musician of “eye-popping virtuosity”, and who has played with most of the world’s best orchestras, leads the charge with Tchaikovsky’s dazzling Violin Concerto in D Major with Frantz at the helm. The evening concludes with Beethoven’s bucolic pastoral Symphony No 6 in F Major.

In the finale, Serbian-born Dutch cellist Maja Bogdanovic has been described as playing with “an uncommon tonal beauty of distinctive character”.

On October 27, she tackles two works, Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No 1 in A Minor and Fauré’s Élégie for Cello and Orchestra, with Aviel on the podium. Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides Overture and Schubert’s Symphony No 5 in B-flat Major complete the programme.

All concerts are in the Playhouse Opera Theatre and start at 7pm.

Discounted season tickets are available from marketing@kznphil. org.za or call 031 369 9438. Single tickets R114 to R240, with a 10% discount for pensioners, are available online via Quicket.