Season in full flower

The overture made a delightful start to the second Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra (JPO) concert. It was played with a wide dynamic range under the baton of Daniel Boico, who was here for only two concerts.

The next work was Mendelssohn’s sparkling Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, with the talented Jan Hugo as the exciting soloist. An excellent technique is a sine qua non for this work, which is all too often dismissed as a piece for students. It is actually a work pointing to the future with its absence of a long introductory tutti and a complete integration of the piano part into the whole fabric of the music.

Hugo played the difficult runs, arpeggios and octaves with total command of the technical resources required. The piano scintillated under those nimble fingers. Apart from a few sentimental touches like slowing down for a more lyrical theme (unwarranted in the scheme of things), his playing was rhythmically compelling, and his tone was bright but never harsh. Ensemble with the orchestra was perfect.

There was a huge ovation at the end, to which Hugo responded with not one but two encores, the first a rarely heard Etude-Tableau by Rachmaninoff, and then the first prelude from Six Preludes and Fugues, opus 35, by Mendelssohn, both lovely pieces (the second taken perhaps slightly too fast for the melody in the middle of the keyboard to make its full effect).

The concert closed with a vibrant account of the most famous symphony ever written, Beethoven’s Fifth in C minor. This drew fine playing from the JPO, no more so than in the central Trio of the Scherzo, where the augmented cello section together with the double basses made light of their difficult C major theme.

There were a few oddities in Boico’s approach, the most glaring being the exaggerated slowing down several times in the Scherzo proper: the composer asks for only a little slowing-down. What Boico did almost stopped the music.

Overall, though, a highly creditable interpretation, culminating in a shower of emotional light at the close of the Finale.