KZN Philharmonic Orchestra World Symphony Series Winter Season Concert 3

ABOUT

CONCERT 3 - THURSDAY, 16 JUNE 2022

Conductor: Robert Moody,

Soloist: Bryan Wallick, piano

PROGRAMME

Mozart: Così fan tutte Overture

Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 26 in C Major

Beethoven: Symphony No. 7, Op. 92 in A Major

Just as Shakespeare provided glorious precedents in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Cymbeline, Lorenzo da Ponte’s libretto to Mozart’s opera buffa Così fan tutte follows the theatrical tradition involving the testing of a woman’s constancy, in which two pairs of lovers trade partners for a while, then are reconciled by the final curtain. The sublime quality of Mozart’s music renders the work a nuanced tragicomedy of incomparable beauty. With the young American conductor Robert Moody on the podium, the wit and energy of Così’s quicksilver Overture paves the way for his compatriot Bryan Wallick to put his stamp on Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Famously difficult for the dexterity and stamina it requires, this alldemanding work stands near the top of the list of ultra-virtuosic showpiece concertos. But this is no mere “show-off” concerto; it’s a work of passionate expression, and flies from the keyboard with what sounds like bursts of spontaneity.

Prokofiev began writing it 1917 and completed it in October 1921. In composing it he drew on material he had sketched through the preceding decade. The work’s première took place in Chicago on December 16, 1921, with the composer the soloist, and Frederick Stock conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

After intermission, maestro Moody and his KZN Philharmonic players bring the evening to an exhilarating close with Beethoven’s mighty Seventh Symphony. Richly imbued with a feeling of true spontaneity, the work’s notes seem to fly off the page on a floodtide of inspired invention. Beethoven spoke of it fondly as “one of my best works…” Incredibly, it stemmed from one of the most painful periods of his life, when his dreaded deafness was rapidly progressing. Yet he drove into one of the most creative periods of his lifetime, to pen one of the most dramatic thrillers in his repertoire.

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