KLONDIKE SUN (Timothy Coonen)
A Classical Evening
Dawson City, Yukon, Canada
Nov 10, 2000

Dawson’s classical music event of the year may well have been Dawson’s best kept secret. 
On Sunday evening, October 22, South African pianist Petronel Malan performed a recital to a sold-out crowd.
Pianist playing: Pianist Petronel Malan dazzles the audience with her sold-out performance on October 22. Photo by Joanne Van Nostrand. Ms. Malan, who had performed the same program the evening before in Whitehorse, had been available to perform in Dawson, but on one condition: due to the technical requirements of the music, she required the superior action of a grand piano. 
Parks Canada has decided that the venerable Bechstein concert grand in the Palace Grand Theatre is an artifact (rather than an instrument) and may not be played. The Arts Society doesn't have a Grand...yet. That left one other instrument, a beautiful new Yamaha, worth about as much as a new truck, in Joanne Van Nostrand’s living room. 
Whitehorse Concerts contacted Ms. VanNostrand, who agreed to host the event. The 25 tickets (at $25 each) sold out by word of mouth before the booking was even confirmed. Ms. Malan’s talent and artistry is being recognized world-wide; this year alone she has won four Gold medals at four major competitions: the Missouri International Piano Competition, the Hilton Head International, the Louise MacMahon International, and the Web Concert Hall Auditions. 
These are added to many other awards won in previous years, including First Place in every competition South Africa could offer her before her departure in 1991. Since her European debut in Rome (1987) she has performed in Paris, London, Salzburg, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Chicago, New York, and now Dawson. Her performances have been broadcast on three continents; she has toured Colombia with the Colombian Symphony Orchestra. Her list of accomplishments goes on and on.
Displaying perhaps a bit of shyness at playing for a small gathering seated within 2 meters of her, she commented "This is like playing in a picture postcard." No wonder--the previous Monday evening she had played her debut recital in Carnegie Hall in New York! Ms. Malan, a tall slender woman, was wearing an elegant long black short-sleeved cocktail dress, decorated in small sequins set into medallions of silver thread. The dress had belonged to Joan Crawford. 
Ms. Malan introduced us to each piece of work, sometimes putting one knee up on the piano bench as she explained the history of the composer or of the work, occasionally reaching behind her to illustrate a theme or melody on the piano. And then she began to play.
The first work was Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E major, played with confidence and vigor, each voice cleanly articulated. She then continued with Mozart’s Sonata in D major, a deceptively light work of great intricacy which danced and shimmered. She made it sound easy, expressing the complex lines with brilliance and grace. Her third work was the Sonatina Seconda, by F. Busoni, an early 20th century work with dark and sombre dissonances, a good contrast to the previous two works.
She continued with Maurice Ravel’s La Valse. As she explained, this work was originally written as a ballet score for full orchestra, which was transcribed for solo piano by the composer himself. A piece of such complexity, the composer wrote it on three staves (instead of the traditional two), adding to the remarkable difficulty of the piece. Written in 1919 in Vienna, Ravel captured the spirit of the Viennese waltz (which he had always loved), but infused it with the pain and horror which the Great War had inflicted on the beloved city. 
After "setting up the work," Petronel sat at the keys, then quickly turned and stated, with a twinkle in her eye, "This is the most fun I have at the piano!" One caught glimpses of a ballroom filled with whirling dancers, yet the music became by turns dark, grim, filled with post-war despair. The piece exploded into a frenzy that was nearly satanic in its intensity, as Ms. Malan commanded the fullest dynamic and tonal breadth of the instrument, in a performance never to be forgotten by this reviewer--it was breathtaking. When it ended we all took a much needed intermission to recharge our glasses.
The second half began with a work by the South African composer Arnold van Wyk, the Ricordanza. Written in the 1970’s as the composer was dying of a lengthy illness, it expressed the pain and suffering he was experiencing, ending finally with the consonance of a perfect octave chord in both hands--the hand of death approaching, with release from pain. 
Ms. Malan continued with two transcriptions of well known works. (Transcriptions are works originally written for other instruments or groups of instruments, recreated as works for solo piano.) While technically demanding, these works were light and charming. She played a piece of Schubert lieder, the Heidenröslein, and the "Scherzo" from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 
Ms. Malan then concluded the formal part of the recital with the well known and very popular Rachmaninoff Sonata No. 2, a piece of such drama and intensity it threatened to take the paint off the walls. It was performed with great power, artistry, poetry and finesse. Realizing that our thirst had not yet been slaked, she performed three encore numbers, interspersing them with casual conversation with the audience. It seemed as though she was as taken by this small circle of Dawsonites as we were with her. She has offered to come back to perform and even to give a master class for pianists, claiming she may even bring her brother up --"He likes that canoeing stuff!" 
Her first CD is due to be released next year--Ms. Malan intends to complete a recording of piano transcriptions, many of which have never been recorded. In the meantime she is procrastinating finishing her Doctoral thesis; all other work is completed for her degree from North Texas State, a school well known for its music programs, and home to her piano teacher. It seems she would much rather perform, and we are all the richer for it.