French pianist’s visit

Press, 16 April 1986, Page 24

French pianist’s visit

Internationally acclaimed pianist Monique Duphil will be the featured soloist at this month’s final concert of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra’s 1985/86 subscription series. Bom in Bordeaux, in the south of France, Miss Duphil studied in Paris at the French National Conservatorium of Music and by the time of her graduation at the age of 16 she had gained the conservatorium’s first prize for piano and the grand prize in chamber music. She went on to further studies with Russian and American teachers.

Monique Duphil made her concert debut in Paris when she was only 15. Since then she has travelled to 20 different countries and has received the highest praise from audiences and professional critics. As a concerto performer she has built up an extensive repertoire and has played with such

orchestras as the Philadelphia and Cleveland in the United States, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Mexico State Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony and Quebec Symphony. Miss Duphil lived for some years in Venezuela but more recently she and her American cellist husband, Jay Humeston, have based themselves in Hong Kong. She has visited New Zealand previously, to play with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and to present programmes for Radio New Zealand but this is her first engagement with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. She joins the orchestra for a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, better known popularly as the “Emperor” Concerto.

The concert will take place in the Town Hall Auditorium on Saturday, April 19 and the orchestra

will be directed by its principal guest conductor, John Curro from Brisbane.

At the concert the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra will present the great Symphonic Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. This work, completed in 1830 when the composer was only 26, created a sensation at its early performances. Some of its musical ideas were too radical for contemporaries of Berlioz to accept and one noted musician of the day, writing of Berlioz, said with horror, “He belives in neither God nor Bach.”

The composer called this work “Episode in the Life of an Artist” and insisted it was entirely autobiographical in intention. It is claimed the symphony was inspired by a then unrequited love for an Irish actress, Harriet Simpson, whom Berlioz later married.