CLASSICFEEL Magazine October by Desklink Media

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10010

SA R29,95 - October 2010

classicf eel

LANG LANG

SIR SIMON RATTLE CAVERSHAM

The classical superstar signs with a new label

The South African tour for 2012 has been confirmed

Celebrating 25 years of the iconic press

Mbaqanga meets Classical

This spectacular musical recording blends the music of the highly successful traditional South African mbaqanga group, Soul Brothers, with the sweet and well choreographed melodies of the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra. The resulting product is a compulsive listening experience that is both truly mbaqanga and authentically orchestral. AVAILABLE NOW

cover & music features

44 44 The Bow Project An introduction to the Bow Project, and the tradition that inspired it – composers from a spectrum of musical traditions draw on the Xhosa bow tradition to create compelling new compositions for string quartet

Cover image: Lang Lang, Image courtesy of Sony Music

28 28 Lang Lang – A Classical Superstar The phenomenal success of this pianist stands out among classical musicians today as something of a rarity. Lang Lang successfully straddles two worlds – as a serious classical musician and a star with unprecedented universal appeal 2

october 2010

34 Berlin is coming to Johannesburg Confirmed! Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra are to do a three-city tour of South Africa in 2012 39 Conductors ‘in excelsis’ A new book examines the careers of ten of the greatest figures in the central European conducting tradition 42 Sweet Music in Salt Lake City The15th Gina Bachauer International Artists Piano Competition 46 Five:20 Operas Made in South Africa CTO stages a local production of five 20-minute operas written by some of South Africa’s leading composers 48 SAMRO crowns SA’s top young composers The winners of the 2010 Overseas Scholarships for Composers 52 Surendran Reddy, 1962 – 2010 Prof. Christine Lucia pays tribute to this unconventional musical genius 56 The Black Tie Ensemble The opera company has found a new home for their Sunday concerts at the Brooklyn Theatre

art culture lifestyle 70

60 Dance InSPIRAtion – a tribute to Phyllis Spira

80 Exhibitions and Evolutions: Caversham at 25 Celebrating

Our dance history is blessed with several unique success stories. One of them, shining brightly for 20 years for scores of historically disadvantaged children and youth in greater Cape Town, owes its existence to two ballet dancers.

25 years of printmaking history the Standard Bank Gallery presents People, Prints and Process: Twenty-Five Years at Caversham in October. CLASSICFEEL spoke to founder Malcolm Christian, about the ongoing evolution of Caversham Press.

76 58 Crossing cultures, choreography and continents Catching up with Vincent Mantsoe while he was in the country to take part in Crossings 64 Music, mystique and money Musical instruments, whether they are owned by collectors or practising musicians, are highly prized possessions 66 Glorious history, engaged present, bright future The Market Theatre Foundation grapples with the past, the present and the future 74 Thank you and goodbye Throughout his artistic career, Sam Nhlengethwa has simply been inspired by jazz 76 Timeless Discover a truly timeless experience at the Karkloof Spa Wellness and Wildlife Retreat just outside of Pietermaritzburg 78 Magnificent Berlin Berlin is far more than just the city of ‘the wall’ 80 Ecofriendly five-star luxury ‘Life is too short to waste it on anything but the best’

regulars 6 Classic Print 10 News and Events 20 On Stage Fiona Ramsay provides insight into Joburg’s theatrical highlights 24 Cape Town Letter Capetonian Rodney Trudgeon keeps us up to date with developments in the ‘Mother City’ 26 Durban Smarts Caroline Smart brings you the latest cultural news and developments from Durban 54 Backstage with tenor Musa Nkuna An insider’s look at the world of opera from our resident tenor 82 Victor Strugo on Wine Le GastroGnome gives us his expert opinion on the finest wines the country has to offer 84 Movie reviews 88 Author Interviews 91 Book, DVD and CD Reviews 96 Encore Bronwen Forbay, one of South Africa’s foremost sopranos

giveaways 11 Set of four RPO CDs 22 Three double tickets to Stellenbosch at Summer Place

88 Copies of Moxyland and Zoo City

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editor

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Editor’s Note

We have recently heard that the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra has made arrangements for a 2012 visit to South Africa by the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle. Although the event is still over two years away, we just couldn’t wait to break the news, as we know our readers will be just as excited about it as we are. Congratulations to Shadrack Bokaba and the JPO team on this classical music coup. We are really proud to be associated with this orchestra, which seems to get better and better each season, and also with South Africa’s two other world-class orchestras, and co-hosts for the tour, the Cape Philharmonic and the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic. With this story we had a wonderful opportunity to return to our roots. CLASSICFEEL started off as a dedicated classical music magazine. We have since branched out into all areas of arts and culture in South Africa, but it was wonderful to put together an issue with a classical music focus – real fun for the whole team. Classical music is often seen as an archaic, staid and traditional genre. We are happy to disprove that perception whenever we can. On our cover we have the incomparable Lang Lang, who is living proof that classical music can be vibrant, relevant and can have star appeal. Although he is perhaps not as well known here as he is elsewhere in the world, in Europe and the United States he is a wildly popular performer and in his home country of China, he’s a bona fide superstar – selling out massive concert halls, getting mobbed by fans and inspiring an entire generation of children to take up the piano. What impresses one most about Lang’s career is that he has never tried to ‘water down’ classical music or to increase his commercial appeal by crossing over into the world of pop – his record and ticket sales attest to the fact that he has never needed to. He remains a successful, uncompromising classical performer. Revisiting our classical music origins, I was reminded of how far CLASSICFEEL has come and it’s all thanks to our regular readers, subscribers and supporters. Thanks to you we have grown from a niche classical music magazine to become the arts and culture publication in South Africa. Our footprint has grown consistently over the years and we can now boast a readership of some 50 000 people nationwide. However, as with all endeavours, we need to grow in order to move forward and it is only by growing our readership and financial support base that we can carry CLASSICFEEL onward and upward. Thanks and enjoy! Lore

classicf eel magazine

EDITORIAL & PRODUCTION EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Lore Watterson; lore@desklink.co.za; editor@classicfeel.co.za PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Chris Watterson; chris@desklink.co.za ASSISTANT EDITOR Warren Holden; warren@desklink.co.za FEATURE WRITER Natalie Watermeyer; natalie@desklink.co.za SUB-EDITOR AND STAFF WRITER Emily Amos; emily@desklink.co.za ART DIRECTOR Luthuli Nyathi; lulun@desklink.co.za DESIGNER Sizakele Shingange; sizakele@desklink.co.za CONTRIBUTORS Fiona Ramsay Caroline Smart Victor Strugo Rodney Trudgeon Musa Nkuna Adrienne Sichel Christine Lucia John Roos

MEDIA MARKETING DIRECTOR Rudolph Pieterse; ruds@desklink.co.za MARKETING AND SALES EXECUTIVE Sunette Kotze; sunette@desklink.co.za

SUBSCRIPTIONS & CIRCULATION Debbi Gregory; debbi@desklink.co.za Tel : 011 787 1599

PUBLISHING PUBLISHER Lore Watterson; lore@desklink.co.za CO-PUBLISHER Chris Watterson; chris@desklink.co.za FINANCIAL DIRECTOR Debbi Gregory; debbi@desklink.co.za RECEPTION Angelina Ramano DISPATCH Khumbulani Dube Published by DeskLinkTM Media PO Box 3670, Randburg, 2125 Tel: 011 787 0252 Fax: 011 787 8204

Editor’s Pick

www.classicfeel.co.za

Shadrack Bokaba, Managing Director, of the JPO with Sir Simon Rattle

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PRINTING ColorPress (Pty) Ltd © Copyright DeskLinkTM Media The opinions in this publication do not necessarily represent the views of the publisher.

SAMRO Southern African Music Rights Organisation

Lang Lang

For 26 years we have sponsored the Young Artist Awards at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. Join us in wishing the winners of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award 2010 success in their careers. We are honoured to have the privilege of contributing to the promotion and enrichment of South Africaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s artistic heritage. For more information, visit www.standardbankarts.co.za. TM

Moving Forward

7 SBSA 58206 08/10 Moving Forward is a trademark of The Standard Bank of South Africa Limited

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news /events

I, Claudia Image Guy de Lancy

Black Tie Ensemble Erratum

Nominated for a Fleur de Cap for her performance in 2008, Susan Danford stars in Lara Bye’s production of I, Claudia at the Kalk Bay Theatre from 20 October to 13 November. Written by Canadian playwright Kristen Thomson, I, Claudia makes ingenious use of masks; this production features masks by Melani-Rene Louwrens. This extraordinary story combines humour and pathos to map the raw but beautiful interior world of an irrepressibly funny, misfit adolescent, through four wonderfully exaggerated comic characters. Danford uses expressive masks to masterfully represent the quirky pre-teen, her grandfather, her father’s new girlfriend and the immigrant school caretaker. Claudia is reeling from the after-effects of her parents’ divorce, dealing with school assignments and coping with the emotional transition of puberty, and takes refuge in the school caretaker’s room. Her journey presents moments of humour and magic as well as painful honesty. With her refreshing performance, Danford has been described by the Sunday Independent as ‘spellbinding’ and ‘a onewoman tour de force’. I, Claudia will be performed Wednesdays to Saturdays from 20 October to 13 November at 20h30 at Kalk Bay Theatre. Tickets cost R100. Doors open at 18h00 and theatre-goers can enjoy a light meal before the show. To book and for further information, contact 073 220 5430 or visit www.kbt.co.za.

october 2010

CLASSICFEEL magazine would hereby like to extend its apologies to The Black Tie Ensemble for the incorrect attribution and use of photographs in a news item in the August 2010 edition. The correct picture attributions are as follows: Goitsemang Lehobye (soprano) of The Black Tie Ensemble

Members of The Black Tie Ensemble and Black Tie Opera Chorus

Making HERstory Women of the Sun, in conjunction with the Goethe Institute, the Gauteng Film Commission (GFC) and the Department of Arts and Culture (DAC), put African women filmmakers on the map with the launch of a seven day film festival to celebrate African Women Filmmakers in Johannesburg this September. The Women of the Sun Film Festival (WoS Film Festival) was the first African women’s film festival to take place in South Africa, featuring 25 films by 23 talented women filmmakers from 15 African countries with 15 of the filmmakers present at the screenings. The festival showcased some of the best examples of the filmmaking craft, crossing a diverse range of genres and styles, from family drama to social justice documentaries to experimental films. ‘The time is ripe to change the widely held belief that filmmaking is a male domain,’ said Eve Rantseli, Director of Women of the Sun. ‘Women in film have much to say and are saying it with unique vision and flair. The launch of this annual women’s film festival will be the start of getting women filmmakers and their works part of the mainstream.’ The Women of the Sun Film Festival ran alongside the African Women Filmmaker’s Forum, hosted by the Goethe-Institut, and gathered a delegation of 25 women filmmakers of all levels of experience from sub-Saharan Africa, the USA and Germany to network with and gain inspiration from colleagues. This event promises to become one of the biggest gatherings of women in film and television within the African continent.

Royal Philharmonic

Give Away The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is acknowledged as one of the UK’s most prestigious orchestras. It has an international reputation for bringing first-class performances to audiences throughout the world and has the highest possible standards of music-making across a wide range of musical repertoire. The RPO has just released four new CDs: Abba, Best of Pop, Music from the Movies and The Musicals. Paying homage to world favourites Abba, the Abba CD includes the eternal hits ‘Waterloo’, ‘Mamma Mia’, ‘Gimme, Gimme, Gimme’ and ‘SOS’. Best of Pop features Queen’s rock classic, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, ‘Three Times a Lady’ and The Temptation’s ‘My Girl’. Phil Collins’ ‘A Groovy Kind of Love’ and Barbra Streisand’s ‘The Way We Were’ feature on Music from the Movies. The Musicals features the classic Cats song ‘Memory’, ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You’ from Grease among others.

WIN! WIN! WIN! Twenty CLASSICFEEL readers stand a chance to win a Royal Philharmonic Orchestra CD pack including all four of these titles. To enter, simply send your name, contact details and the answer to the question below to CLASSICFEEL/ RPO Giveaway, PO Box 3670, Randburg 2125, or fax to 011 787 8204. Regrettably only one entry per person. Closing date: 31 October 2010. Question: What are the titles of the four CDs?

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news /events

UJ ARTS CENTRE

On at the Baxter Theatre in October

Shows.... Can’t Buy Me Love 6 – 9 OCTOBER 2010 UJ Dance Company The UJ Dance Company will take to the stage in an exciting new dance production, titled, Can't Buy Me Love – A Tribute to The Beatles, directed and choreographed by Owen Lonzar. Book at Computicket.

Intertwined 2 OCTOBER 2010 A bellydance spectacular that takes you on a journey through the history of dance. Watch as the ancient dance styles of the desert oasis meet the edginess and drama of modern urban dance forms in a show that traverses the globe in search of the exotic, the magical and the extraordinary.

Dada Masilo’s Carmen

Ian van Rensburg – Paganini Duo – violin and guitar.

Of Carmen, leading chorographer Dada Masilo says: ‘I began with the idea of unravelling Carmen the woman – to search beneath the surface presented in the ballets and operas – to find the vulnerability beneath the cold, heartless exterior. In the process of research, there was so much to unravel. I searched for Bizet and found Shchedrin; I discovered many existing narratives. Ultimately, I have created a narrative which allows me and the dancers to do what we love most – to dance.’ 5 – 10 October; tickets cost R85 (R65 preview on the 5 October)

MONDAY 25 OCTOBER 2010

Beautyfull

Wessel van Wyk (piano)

Beautyfull, a work directed by Ina Wichterich, is an edgy, lifeaffirming and poignant dance piece with a trademark sense of humour, which seeks to challenge preconceived ideas and stereotypes while elegantly reminding the audience that disabled people are still people. It showcases Remix Dance Company, Jazzart Dance Theatre and the SA Circle of Dance Academy. Baxter Theatre from 13 - 16 October. Tickets cost R120 from Tuesday to Thursday; R130 for Friday and Saturday

Concerts... MONDAY 4 OCTOBER 2010 Russian male quartet – details to be announced.

MONDAY 11 OCTOBER 2010 UJ Choir

MONDAY 18 OCTOBER 2010

Exhibitions... Thuthuka Jewellery Exhibition 7 – 28 OCTOBER 2010 South Africa’s emerging young jewellers will be represented at the annual Thuthuka Jewellery Competition finalists exhibition which will take place at the University of Johannesburg Art Gallery.

UJ Arts Centre:

Kingsway Campus, Corner Kingsway and

University Road, Auckland Park | www.uj.ac.za/artscentre

For more information contact: Ehllené Bekker - UJ Arts Publicity Officer

Tel: 011 559 3058 | Fax: 086 605 7501 | Email: artscentre@uj.ac.za

october 2010

Raiders of the Lost Aardvark Raiders of the Lost Aardvark, with Nicholas and Luke Ellenbogen, forces short-sighted, flat-footed and sunken-chested pilot Salty Hepburn to fly an unstable and cantankerous Tiger Moth from Cape Town to Cairo. Set in the Second World War, the story centres on the plight of the Congolese gorillas, which are being used by the Nazis for scientific research to win the war effort. Even Mata Hari makes an appearance. 12 October - 6 November. Tickets: Preview R90, Mondays R70, Tuesday to Thursday R100, Friday and Saturday R120 Also at the Baxter Theatre in October, catch Yasmina Reza’s God van Chaos (19 - 30 October) and Trevor Noah, Live in Cape Town (13 - 16 October). For more information, visit www.baxter.co.za.

Moving into Dance Mophatong October Dance Season Moving Into Dance Mophatong will present a programme of works created by both old and new Moving into Dance choreographers from 21 - 24 October, at The Dance Factory in Newtown. Viewers will have the opportunity to watch the unique company perform Hanano, an award-winning work choreographed by Vincent Sekwati Mantsoe, as well as the Johannesburg premiere of a solo created by acclaimed international choreographer Michel Kelemenis, for Fana Tshabalala, and other dance works that premiered earlier this year at the Dance Umbrella. For more information contact 011 838 2816 or book at Computicket (www.computicket.com) or 083 915 8000.

The Annual Lipizzaner Ball ‘A Touch of Gold’ will be the theme of this year’s ball, held in order to raise funds for the safety and welfare of the Lipizzaner stallions. This promises to be a glittering evening, beginning with champagne cocktails in the courtyard as the sun is setting, and featuring displays by the white stallions around the central fountain. The indoor hall, transformed into a ballroom, will echo the theme of ‘A Touch of Gold’, with exciting décor by Anovate. Sumptuous food from Absolute Food will complete the evening of dining and dancing. Date: Tickets: Enquiries: E-mail: Website:

Saturday, 6 November 2010 R650 per ticket or R6 500 per table of 10 083 601 2104 or 082 457 9725 tarragon@mweb.co.za www.lipizzaners.co.za

Around the world with Petersburg Quartet The Petersburg Quartet promises South African audiences a oncein-a-lifetime whirl around the world from 29 September to 21 October 2010. ‘We love surprising audiences with our combinations of famous classics, barbershop style a cappella and Russian folk, jazz and spiritual music. We have a passion for inspiring others with music that has influenced us,’ says conductor and bass for the Petersburg Quartet, Igor Krushelnitsky. For more information, including dates and venues go to www. petersburgquartet.co.za.

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CPO to tour the USA in 2011

WHATâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S ONâ&#x20AC;Ś OCTOBER 2010 WitsMusic presents: FREE WEDNESDAY LUNCH-HOUR CONCERTS 2010 3ECOND 3EMESTER H p H /CTOBER \ 7ITS 'REAT (ALL Mbasa Matyila (B Mus IV) voice Grant Mowatt (B Mus IV) percussion /CTOBER \ 7ITS 'REAT (ALL Jean-Louise Nel (B Mus IV) jazz viola Mary Tennant (B Mus IV) violin /CTOBER \ 4HE !TRIUM Camron Andrews (B Mus IV ) saxophone Zarcia Zacheus (B Mus IV) jazz voice Susan Harrop-Alli (staff) piano Donato Somma (staff) voice

MOTSWAKO: THE MIX /CTOBER \ H | 7ITS 'REAT (ALL An exciting evening of music; presented and performed by Wits Music students. SOUND US OUT .OVEMBER \ H \ 4HE !TRIUM AND THE !MPHITHEATRE A series of short concerts and presentation as part of the assessment for final-year composition students. Wits School of Arts / Dramatic Arts presents EDWARD II Adapted by Tracey Human /CTOBERp /CTOBER \ 7ITS $OWNSTAIRS 4HEATRE Deemed by many to be Marloweâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s crowning achievement, Edward II features the playwrightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most nuanced characters. MASTERS IN DRAMATIC ARTS (MADA): DIRECTORSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; FESTIVAL Various productions /CTOBERp /CTOBER \ .UNNERY AND THE !MPHITHEATRE Wits Dramatic Art Masters students present their final directing presentations. $ETAILS SUBJECT TO CHANGE )NFO \ WWW WITS AC ZA WITSTHEATRE

ALMA OOSTHUIZEN, MINETTE DU TOIT- PEARCE AND MALCOLM NAY IN CONCERT /CTOBER \ H \ 4HE !TRIUM A rare opportunity to hear two Cape songsters in Johannesburg. JPO ACADEMY ORCHESTRA /CTOBER \ ,INDER !UDITORIUM The JPOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s training Academy Orchestra presents works by Dvorak and Bernstein plus a selection of new compositions by senior composition students from WitsMusic.

news /events

The Cape Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO) has been invited to undertake a concert tour along the East Coast of the United States from 10 February to 10 March 2011. The tour will consist of 18 concerts, and it is estimated that it will attract almost 30 000 people at top venues. CEO of the orchestra, Louis Heyneman says, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The CPO is the first orchestra from the African continent to ever be invited to undertake such a tour, which attests to its good reputation and excellent performance standardsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. The touring orchestra will consist of 65 members, of which some will be development musicians receiving a unique opportunity to travel, play with the professional orchestra, and gain invaluable experience and exposure. The conductor will be Martin Panteleev and the soloist will be the Russian-born American violinist, Philippe Quint. The repertoire during the tour will include Bernsteinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Candide overture, Waltonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Johannesburg Festival Overture, Tchaikovskyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Violin Concerto, Korngoldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Violin Concerto, Barberâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Adagio for Strings and Rimsky-Korsakovâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Scheherazade. Bulgarian violinist, conductor and composer Martin Panteleevâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s debut as conductor with the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra was a highly acclaimed performance of Mahlerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Symphony No.1 in 2004. Panteleev has worked as conductor with such orchestras as the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra, Schleswig-Holstein Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Symphonica di Lecce, Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia of the Nations, Ukraine National Symphony Orchestra. In October 2007 he performed at the opening of the season of the Berliner Symphoniker at the Berlin Philharmonic Hall. Highlights of his 2010/ 2011 engagements include concerts with the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra and the Berliner Symphoniker. As a composer, he was awarded the Davidoff Prix for his Symphony No.1. In October 2007 he performed at the opening of the season of the Berliner Symphoniker at the Berlin Philharmonic Hall. Two time Grammy award nominee violinist Philippe Quint has emerged in recent years as one of the few young soloists to combine a remarkable degree of lyricism, poetry and impeccable virtuosity. Highlights of his 2010/ 2011 season include debuts with Berlin Komische Oper Orchestra for their New Yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Concerts with Carl St. Clair, Chicago Symphony with David Afham, San Diego Symphony with Bromwell Tovey, a tour of Germany with Nordwestdeutsche Symphoniker and this US tour with the CPO. The CPO, South Africaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;orchestra for all seasonsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, is a financially and culturally sustainable, multi-functional orchestra delivering a worldclass musical experience to all communities of the Western Cape. The CPO is one of only three full-time professional symphony orchestras in South Africa. For more information visit www.cpo.org.za. Potential local sponsors, corporate and individual donors for the tour can contact CPOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Fundraiser and Corporate Executive, Karin Blumer at 021 410 9826 or e-mail karin@cpo.org.za.

The Cape Philharmonic Orchestra, South Africaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;orchestra for all seasonsâ&#x20AC;?,

embarks on a historical concert tour 2011

MARTIN PANTELEEV (guest conductor)

PHILIPPE QUINT (soloist)

THE CAPE PHILHARMONIC $ !

! " $ #

www.cpo.org.za

FOURTH SEASON 2010

PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

Wednesday 6 & Thursday 7 October Conductor Alessandro Crudele ROSSINI Il Signor Bruschino Overture TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concerto, op.35, D major DVORÁK Symphonic variations, op.78 BRAHMS Haydn variations, op.56a DANIEL ROWLAND violin Wednesday 13 & Thursday 14 October + (Sunday 17 Oct – ZK Matthews - UNISA at 3pm) Conductor: Alessandro Crudele WEBER Symphony no.1, op.19, C major VIVALDI Concerto for two guitars RODRIGO Concierto madrigal (2 solo guitars) BRAHMS Hungarian dances nos.1,2,3,7,10 Jonathan Crossley & James Grace guitars Wednesday 20 & Thursday 21 October + (Sunday 24 Oct – ZK Matthews – UNISA at 3pm) Conductor: Alessandro Crudele RESPIGHI Fontane di Roma (Fountains of Rome) CHOPIN Piano Concerto no.2, op.21, F minor CHOPIN Variations on “La ci darem la mano”, op.2 TCHAIKOVSKY Francesca di Rimini, op.32 Melvyn Tan piano Wednesday 27 & Thursday 28 October Conductor: Bernhard Gueller SIBELIUS Legends,op.22, No.2, The swan of Tuonela (solo – English Horn) RAVEL Piano Concerto, G major RAVEL Pavane pour une infante défunte BEETHOVEN Symphony no.8, op.93, F major Mariangela Vacatello piano Wednesday 3 & Thursday 4 November Conductor: Bernhard Gueller SCHUMANN Manfred: Overture MOZART Sinfonia concertante, K.364 (320d), E-flat major SCHUMANN Symphony no.1, op.38, B-flat major (Spring) Priya Mitchell violin, Daniel Rowland viola Wednesday 10 & Thursday 11 November + (Friday 12 Nov – ZK Matthews – UNISA at 8pm) Conductor: Allessandro Crudele RAVEL Ma Mére L’Oye (Mother Goose) SAINT- SAËNS Cello Concerto, no.1, op.33, A minor SIBELIUS Symphony no.2, op.43, D major Jerome Pernoo cello

Concerts are held at 8pm at the Linder Auditorium, Wits University Education Campus (formerly JCE), 27 St Andrews Road, Parktown. The JPO reserves the right to alter scheduled programmes or artists as necessary. Season tickets are available immediately from the JPO. For further information contact: Tel (011) 789-2733 Fax (011) 789-7256 E-mail: info@jpo.co.za Booking to the general public can be made through Computicket.

october 2010

Johannesburg

news /events

Daniel Rowland to perform two concerts with the JPO The Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra (JPO) starts its fourth and final season of 2010 on 6 October. Conducting duties will be shared by Bernhard Gueller and Alessandro Crudele. Among the soloists set to feature in the spring season are Italian pianist Mariangela Vacatello, Cape Town-based guitarist James Grace and English violinist Daniel Rowland. Rowland’s work with the JPO is particularly interesting; not only will he be appearing twice in the same season, but will be playing different Daniel Rowland instruments in each performance. On 6 and 7 October, he will perform the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D major, op. 35. Then, on 3 and 4 November, he will exchange his violin for a viola for Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major, K.364. For the latter performance, he will be joined by Priya Mitchell on violin. Rowland has already made news in the South African classical music world; earlier this year, his collaboration with the Stellenbosch University Camerata – a recording of both the Vivaldi and Piazzolla Four Seasons – won the South African Music Award (SAMA) for Best Popular Classical Album. However, he is perhaps best known as a member of the British string band, the Brodsky String Quartet, which is famous both for its renditions of traditional string quartet repertoire, and its work with popular music artists such as Björk, Sting and Elvis Costello. Born in London in 1972, Rowland was raised in the Netherlands, and learned his art at the Amsterdam Conservatoire and the Royal Conservatory in Brussels. He has built a varied career as a soloist, ensemble member and orchestra leader. In the latter capacity, he has worked as a guest concert master with London’s Philharmonia and BBC Symphony Orchestras, performing with conductors such as Bernard Haitink and Riccardo Muti. It is extremely unusual for a musician to be sufficiently competent on two different instruments to perform as a soloist on both. It will be very interesting to see how this highly qualified and experienced musician will acquit himself as a multi-instrumentalist.

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Fiona Coyne

In memoriam: Fiona Coyne

Image courtesy of hswallpapers.com

Many South Africans were deeply saddened to learn of Fiona Coyneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s suicide on 18 August 2010. A TV celebrity thanks to her role as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;quizmistressâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; on The Weakest Link, she was a well-known and talented theatre practitioner too. Coyne originally studied drama at Pretoria Technikon and then went on to work as an actress with CAPAB for seven years. From 1992 to 1996 she worked with the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. Her first outing as a playwright, As the Koekie Crumbles (1998), was based on the years she spent in Kenya working with the trust. Later she wrote Glass Roots which won the 2000 Fleur du Cap Award for Best New Indigenous Script. This popular show featured at both the National Arts Festival (NAF) in Grahamstown and at the Hilton Arts Festival. Her next play Dearly Beloved premiered at the 2001 NAF, once again showcasing her immense talent for writing tight comedy and drama. 2004 saw her play The Shadrack Affair staged at the Baxter Theatre. Directed by Lara Bye, it starred David Butler and Kate Normington. Recently she wrote Careful, which received a nomination for the Oscar Wilde Best New Writing Award 2009 at the Absolut Dublin Gay Theatre Festival in 2009. Later in 2009 she played the role of Katarina the Cat in Pinochio, Janice Honeymanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s endof-year pantomime at the Joburg Theatre Complex. Coyne also served on the Theatre Advisory Panel for the National Arts Council for a period of time. Creatively versatile, Coyne also wrote the book, Who Moved my Ladder? (Penguin SA, 2007) and worked in the corporate arena as a communications specialist. In the days following her death, many of South Africaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s theatre luminaries paid tribute to her as a warm, wonderful person with a wealth of talent.

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Opera South Africa at Casta Diva

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The recently formed Opera South Africa (OSA), the country’s first 100 percent black-owned and community-managed opera company, will return to the Vissi d’ Arte Theatre at Casta Diva on the 24 October 2010 with a music programme that promises to be enthralling. Following a very successful Afternoon of Song programme in August, OSA will present a mix of lighter songs and opera arias, duets, trios and quartets.

A unique venue, nestled high on the Northern slopes of the Magaliesberg amidst peaceful and tranquil surroundings that offer stunning views and an unsurpassed setting of natural beauty and elegance in an oasis of peace and serenity in the city.

Date: 29 August 2010 Venue: Vissi d’ Arte – Casta Diva Time: 15h00 Price: R100 An afternoon not to be missed. Contact Casta Diva on 012 542 4449 or info@castadiva.co.za for bookings. Interested patrons can book for lunch before the concert or dinner after the concert at Casta Diva’s Charisma Restaurant.

14th Poetry Africa The Centre for Creative Arts (University of KwaZuluNatal) will present the 14th Poetry Africa, an international poetry festival, from 4 to 9 October 2010. The evening events will take place from 4 to 8 October at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre (19h30), University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, and at the BAT Centre on 9 October. Workshops and seminars will be held in venues across Durban. Poetry Africa has a long-standing commitment towards nurturing a culture of reading and writing poetry, especially amongst the youth. To this end, the festival runs a schools programme which allows learners to interact with poets as well as a schools poetry writing competition. School visits bring established poets to schools to share their expertise while the poetry competition affords learners the opportunity to actively participate in this craft. Poetry Africa (Centre for Creative Arts, University of KwaZuluNatal) is funded by the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund (principal funder), HIVOS, the City of Durban, Arts and Culture Trust, and French Institute of South Africa. For more information on the festival or the competition, please contact the Centre for Creative Arts on 031 260 2506 or visit our www.cca.ukzn.ac.za.

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On Stage

with Fiona Ramsay Lena Farugia in We and Them

ctober pipes in ‘darling buds’ that blossom in the spring sunlight and trumpets in a bevy of divas strutting their stuff on stage! After the focus on men, sport, lager and World Cup festivities it is refreshing to see ladies with art, style and sass in venues around Gauteng. An ever-popular word that has mutated from being a noun to an adjective to a verb is ‘diva’. A ‘diva’ was defined as a female opera singer, but now also refers to a popular female performer of nonoperatic works. The term was originally used to describe a woman of rare, outstanding talent and derives from an ancient Italian word meaning ‘goddess’, which in turn derives from the feminine form of a Latin word divus – ‘divine one’. Time magazine observed: ‘By definition, a diva was originally used to describe great female opera singers, almost always sopranos’. Certainly the legendary Maria Callas embodied all that

october 2010

Saxophonist Barbara-Anne Puren in Casual Sax. Image David Batzofin

word embraced both in her public and private life. Today ‘diva’ extends its ambit and may be used to illustrate any extremely independent and wildly talented woman, while still applying to classical arts. As with the earlier word ‘prima donna’ (also an operatic term), it has slipped from its trade origins and is used in any theatrical or performance setting. In particular, because of marketing efforts, the word ‘diva’ is now applied to many popular female performers, including opera divas, pop divas, jazz divas, divas of the dance including ballet – Beyoncé, Madonna, Darcy Bussel and Alicia Keyes are a few modern icons who are referred to as divas. In order to qualify as a diva there must be one, or both, of two dominant traits present: a broad and expansive voice and/or a thoroughly captivating and commanding presence and behaviour like ‘la prima donna’ or ‘first lady’. Of course the ‘first lady’ means

Charl du Plessis

Sunday 3 October, 16:00 ZK Matthews Great Hall Symphony concert Richard Cock (conductor) Charl du Plessis (piano) Unisa Music Foundation Orchestra Programme The Moldau – Smetana Rhapsody in Blue – Gershwin New World Symphony – Dvorˇák Tickets at COMPUTICKET

Daniel Rowland

Sunday 10 October, 16:00 Enoch Sontonga Conference Complex Violin and piano duo recital Daniel Rowland (violin) Pieter Jacobs (piano) Programme Sonata in A minor, Op 105 – Schumann 3 Romances – Clara Schumann Sonata for solo violin (1947) – Bartok Sonata Op 47 Kreutzer – Beethoven Tickets at the door: R75, R55 Sunday 24 October, 16:00 Enoch Sontonga Conference Complex Piano recital Tinus Botha Programme Toccata in C minor, BWV 911 - Bach Sonata in A flat major, Op 26 - Beethoven Nonyana, the ceremonial dancer - Grové Sonata in G minor, Op 22 - Schumann Etudes Op 10 no 3, 4 & 5 - Chopin Tickets at the door: R75, R55

Tinus Botha

something different in the political arena and although Michelle Obama has a commanding presence, she has yet to exhibit temperamental behaviour! In short, ‘diva’ refers to a feisty, talented woman! Frequently complimentary, suggesting the lady in question is confident, knows what she wants and how to get it, it can be critical and imply rather demanding, histrionic behaviour and a proclivity towards mercurial moods. A frayed temper or outspoken remark can illicit the response of ‘Ooooh what a diva!’. There are many permutations on the word that have been coined: diva-esque – meaning diva-like in style; divalicious – meaning as delicious and fabulous as a diva; divette – a devotee of the diva who often has two or three ‘apprentice diva’s in tow, and to be ‘diva’d’ - meaning to be dressed like a diva or indeed meaning to be the butt of a diva’s wrath! There are a lot of divas performing this month. The Sandton Theatre on the Square sees Lena Farugia revive her successful portrayal of the extravagant diva that caused an acrimonious and well-documented rift in Britain’s royal stable, in Farugia’s play, We and Them – the diminutive, inimitable Mrs Wallis Simpson. The divadivorcee stole the heart of young David (Edward VIII) who married her despite threats of excommunication and exile, and he was forced to abdicate. Rules have relaxed over the years; heir apparent Prince Charles took Camilla Parker-Bowles as his bride divorcee, sanctioned by the royal community. At Montecasino’s Main Theatre, the Argentinean diva Evita Peron stakes her claim to sainthood in Evita starring Angela Killian, while diva of cabaret and corporate theatre Tonya Koenderman, explores the vagaries of life in showbiz in Diary of a Down and Out Diva at the Studio. Musical diva Barbara-Anne Puren, follows in this intimate venue with Casual Sax – examining dreams, dilemmas and diversions from divorce to dating. Later in the year the Mzanzi Dance Company presents Divas of Music and Dance, with choreography by Mari-Louise Basson inspired by the songs of Streisand, Bassey and Makeba among some of the singing divas. At the Teatro overlooking the piazza, it is the international hit Mamma Mia with an array of local divas in the title roles: Gina Shmukler, Ilse Klink and Kate Normington. Based on the singingsensation, glam, pop divas of ABBA, the musical is celebrating ten years on the West End and still wowing audiences at the Winter Garden on Broadway. It has been seen by 40 million people in 200 major cities around the world and localised in each. A feel-good, sing-along show! On at The Market Theatre is the ninth revival of John Kani’s Nothing but the Truth, now a set work book in literature in many schools, and resident Literary Manager, Craig Higginson’s play The Girl in the Yellow Dress. Both deal with a different debate around the First and Third worlds colliding. The State Theatre in Pretoria has a revival production of the hit musical The Buddy Holly Story, which launched the career of divo (a term coined for a male diva) Craig Urbani in the title role – he now returns to play the Big Bopper! The Joburg Theatre has comedy in abundance in all venues to get audiences honed and ready for ‘panto’ season and perhaps the divolicious Johnny Depp may pop in to see how Robinson Crusoe and his Caribbean Pirates are doing! CF

Unisa Music Foundation October Concerts

Enquiries: 012 429 3311/3336 joubeae@unisa.ac.za

news /events

New Mike van Graan Play Stellenbosch at Summer Place

Image courtesy of 3TELLENBOSCH 7INE 2OUTES

Sanlam Private Investments CEO Daniel Kriel with Annareth Bolton (CEO) and Ken Forrester (Chairman) of the Stellenbosch Wine Routes Board

Anele Matoti as Farai in Is It Because I'm Jack Image credit Jesse Kramer

Is It Because I’m Jack? is the latest play from the pen of awardwinning South African playwright Mike van Graan, author of Green Man Flashing, Two to Tango and the hit satirical franchise Bafana Republic. A very dark comedy about life, friendship and survival, Is It Because I’m Jack? explores what happens when four young friends in the prime of their lives are forced to confront their mortality after one of them – a stand up comic – is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. Is it all just a bad joke? A comedy about mortality? If anyone can tackle that, it’s van Graan, who has never shied away from controversial and provocative themes. ‘Is It Because I’m Jack? is my first largely character- (rather than issue-) driven dark comedy. It still raises provocative questions that will hopefully have audiences thinking for some time afterwards, but it allows – and challenges – me to grow as a writer, while having some fun.’ Jack has a stellar cast of young actors with established theatrical and television backgrounds. In the title role is Clyde Berning, Anele Matoti plays the terminally funny character of Farai, Morne Visser plays the businessman Marty, while Andrew Laubscher is Tim – a recently ordained Catholic Priest. The cast is directed by the multi-talented arts producer, director, writer and actor, Yvette Hardie. Is It Because I’m Jack? opens in Cape Town at On Broadway on 5 October and runs to 16 October. From 18 to 30 October it plays at The State Theatre in Pretoria. For further information visit www. mikevangraan.co.za. Tickets available from Computicket (www. computicket.com) or 083 915 8000.

october 2010

South meets north for an exclusive wine, food, music and art extravaganza when the Stellenbosch winelands’ finest descend on Gauteng for an unrivalled celebration of the finer things in life at Stellenbosch at Summer Place in Hyde Park on 10 November 2010. Teaming up with Sanlam Private Investments, the inaugural Stellenbosch at Summer Place brings grapes, glitz and glamour to the ‘City of Gold’ to showcase the finest wine, food, art and the crème de la crème of the Stellenbosch winelands. ‘Jozi’ socialites will have the rare opportunity of savouring the true spirit of Stellenbosch in style and rubbing shoulders with 50 top Stellenbosch winemakers. Delight in 200 of the finest wines from the country’s premium wine region and experience awardwinning signature dishes from Stellenbosch’s leading chefs. The elegant rooms and spaces at Summer Place will be transformed into a unique wine and gourmet rendezvous for guests to linger and indulge all their senses. Talented Stellenbosch music sensation Zamar will add rhythm to this glamorous affair and art aficionados will be able to feast their eyes on select pieces exhibited by Stefan Hundt, curator of the Sanlam Art Collection – one of South Africa’s oldest and most extensive corporate art collections. Tickets for Stellenbosch at Summer Place cost R395 per head and early booking is essential. The evening starts at 18h30 for 19h00. For more information and ticket sales contact Christa on 021 886 8275 or visit www.wineroute.co.za.

WIN! WIN! WIN! CLASSICFEEL readers stand a chance to win three double tickets to Stellenbosch at Summer Place. To enter, simply send your name, contact details and the answer to the question below to CLASSICFEEL/ SSP Giveaway, PO Box 3670, Randburg 2125, or fax to 011 787 8204. Regrettably only one entry per person. Closing date: 31 October 2010. Question: What date does Stellenbosch at Summer Place take place?

CT Rodney Trudgeon’s

CAPE TOWN LETTER O ctober is opera month in Cape Town. Donizetti’s hugely popular opera Lucia Di Lammermoor is being presented by Cape Town Opera from the 16th to the 27th at the Artscape Opera House, with Bronwen Forbay in the title role. Made famous by the likes of Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland, the role is certainly a challenge for any soprano, and climaxes in the famous Mad Scene. It’s certainly been a good year for Cape Town Opera after successful stagings of Der Rosenkavalier and African Songbook. I’ve always been impressed at how much energy the company puts into marketing its products. It has certainly made opera vital, relevant and aspirant – especially for young people in the Cape. Also in October, the Cape Philharmonic begins its Fourth Symphony Season, the Spring Symphony Season. This opens on 28 October and continues to 2 December. Among many highlights are performances of the Brahms Symphony No. 4, Bruckner’s Third, Elgar’s First and Prokofiev’s Fifth. We also have Avigail Bushakevitz playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. It promises to be a splendid season, bringing a year of great music making to a close. Another concert worth taking note of is the one taking place in Stellenbosch, at the Endler Hall, on 2 October. Here, the University of Stellenbosch Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Corvin Matei, will give the world premier of the Violin Concerto by Thomas Rajna. Suzanne Martens will be the soloist. I’m so looking forward to hearing that. Having got to know, like and admire Thomas Rajna since I’ve been living in Cape Town, I know how excited he is about the performance and how long he’s waited to have it played. The concert includes the Symphony No. 1 by Brahms. The Cape Town Concert Series, which I told you about in some detail last month, has a concert on 23 October, featuring the violinist Daniel Rowland with Pieter Jacobs on piano. Rowland is a huge favourite with audiences here and it will no doubt be a

treat to hear him at Green Point’s Old Presbyterian Church. Watch out for madcap comedy at the Baxter in October with Nicholas and Luke Ellenbogen’s Raiders of the Lost Ardvaark. Their offbeat humour and crisp scripts always ensure theatrical entertainment that is different, original and above all, entertaining. Isn’t it amazing to think that we seem to be hurtling towards the end of 2010? At Fine Music Radio here in Cape Town, we have also been having an exciting year. Perhaps the most exciting event that has happened to us is that we were awarded a new transmitter in Hout Bay. This has extended our broadcast footprint enormously and listeners can now pick us up in Hout Bay and as far afield as Llandudno, Noordhoek, Kommetjie and parts of Fish Hoek and the Atlantic seaboard. All these areas have never received us before because we’ve always had just one transmitter on the top of the Tygerberg Mountain Range – this gave excellent coverage to the Northern Suburbs, the Southern Suburbs, the City Bowl and parts of Green Point. The problem was Table Mountain, believe it or not! Our signal hit the mountain and didn’t go over to spill into the Atlantic Seaboard. As a community radio station, we’re somewhat restricted by the number of transmitters we’re allowed and the huge transmitter on the top of Table Mountain is apparently full. But now, thanks to endless requests and submitting endless documents, we’ve persuaded ICASA to give us Hout Bay. The frequency there is different. You need to tune to 94.7 – a well-known commercial frequency in Gauteng, but not in Cape Town. So we now broadcast in FM Stereo on 101.3 and on 94.7. And we’re thrilled. Talking of the Baxter, there are a number of concerts during October which are part of the 100th anniversary celebrations of the South African College of music this year. It is well worth finding out the details each week and going along to enjoy vibrant, youthful performances. CF

Visit Cape Town’s vast winelands, magnificent beaches

and world class restaurants with over 70 return flights a week, from Johannesburg

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KZN

Durban Smarts Mariangela Vacatello appears with the KZNPO on 21 October

his month the focus is on poetry with Poetry Africa 2010, the 14th international festival, featuring poets predominantly from South Africa and elsewhere on the African continent, running from 4 to 9 October. While operating at various venues, the festival will be based mainly at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre where an extensive week-long programme includes performances, readings, music and book launches. Day activities feature seminars, workshops, open mic opportunities, and school visits, while the Durban SlamJam and festival finale at the BAT Centre will be held on 9 October. This month also features the Playhouse Company’s New Stages programme which includes four productions. Stand by for a laugh-a-line experience from one of South Africa’s funniest comedians, KZN’s Afzal Khan, appearing in his first ever, full-length one-man stand-up comedy show, Who’s Your Mamoo?. Weaving together elements of magic realism, shadow puppetry, Afro-Kabuki and live percussion, Neil Coppin’s Tin Bucket Drum follows the story of Nomvula, a child born into a silent dictatorship with a revolutionary heartbeat. Performed by Mpume Mthombeni alternating with Thuli Zuma, the drama has received highly critical

acclaim and this will be the last time we’ll see it in KZN before it heads overseas. Spice ‘n Stuff, Ashwin Singh’s third play, featuring Shika Budhoo in the title role, is a tantalising mixture of comedy and drama tracing the last days of a group of Grey Street traders as they deal with escalating crime, failing businesses, friendships across racial and cultural denominations, and entwined family relationships. Mating Birds, adapted and directed by Mpho Molepo, offers the world premiere of a stage adaptation of Lewis Nkosi’s novel which won the internationally prestigious Macmillan Pen Prize. The KZN Philharmonic’s World Symphony Series Spring Season is currently in full swing with its usual exciting line-up of international and South African conductors and soloists to be seen in the Durban City Hall every Thursday night. Concerts this month include Creative Duo on 7 October with Naum Rousine on the podium and Cara Hesse and Laura Panna performing Mozart and Poulenc concertos for two pianos. Robert Maxym returns to Durban to conduct two concerts: the first being Spring Symphony on 14 October with Daniel Rowland as the featured soloist in Elgar’s Violin Concerto in B minor, Opus 61 and the second titled Walking Fearlessly, taking place on 21 October with Mariangela

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Vacatello performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.4 in G major, Opus 58. Establishing himself as one of the leading conductors in Europe, young Italian conductor Alessandro Crudele will command the podium for the final two concerts of the season. The first, titled The Classics, takes place on 28 October with Young Choon Park performing the Mozart Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor, K.466 and the second titled A Sublime Noise on 4 November where cellist Jérôme Pernoo will perform Offenbach’s Concerto Militaire for Violoncello and Orchestra in G Major. The ever-popular Drakensberg Boys Choir and the Seaworld Dolphins unite for their first joint musical extravaganza at uShaka Marine World’s Dolphinarium on 23 and 24 October. A Dolphin Celebration will present a section from the choir’s unique repertoire which extends from rock and pop to jazz and folk, classics like Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and Bach’s Magnificat as well as unique African compilations accompanied by authentic African instruments and body percussion. With or without choristers, uShaka Marine World is worth visiting just to see magnificent Gambit, the largest bottlenose dolphin in any oceanarium in the world. He’s given so much pleasure to so many who have marvelled at his superb power and benevolent nature that when he dies – and he’s getting on a bit, I fear – I think Durban will declare a national day of mourning! Up at the KwaZulu-Natal University’s Durban campus, at the Howard College Theatre there are free lunch-hour concerts on Mondays and Wednesdays. Patrick Bebelaar (piano) and students from the Musikhochschule Stuttgart will perform a selection of pieces by Bebelaar, Bräuninger and Süße (4 October) followed by the UKZN African Music Ensemble’s Masquerade Dance from the DRC (6 October). UKZN Big Band and UKZN Voices conducted by Dr Mageshen Naidoo perform works by South African and international composers and arrangers (11 October). Violeta Osorhean and David Snaith present duets for violin and viola through the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods (18 October), followed by the Manor Gardens Ensemble (20 October). Also to be seen this month is composer and classical guitarist Avril Kinsey performing her own compositions (25 October) and opera scenes presented by soloists drawn from UKZN’s Opera School and Choral Academy (27 October). The acclaimed Petersburg Quartet performs on 13 October at the Durban Country Club and again on 15 October at Hilton College while saxophonist Andrew Young can be seen at the HCF Auditorium in Hillcrest on 20 October. Friends of Music’s featured artists this month are Daniel Rowland and Pieter Jacobs on 12 October and Mariangela Vacatello on 19 October. Both concerts take place at the Durban Jewish Centre. East Coast Radio will present multi-platinum recording artists Crowded House at the ICC Arena on 28 October as part of their nationwide tour. On the supper theatre scene, the new Stirling Theatre in the Italian Club in Durban North continues to offer good entertainment after its successful opening in August. This month sees the genial Danny Fisher performing most weekends with his programme Stars in Your Eyes. At the Heritage Theatre in Hillcrest from 5 to 17 October,

Mpume Mthombeni appears in Tin Bucket Drum in the Playhouse New Stages Season

Durban guitar maestro Barry Thomson will be back by popular demand to perform his A Taste of Thomson, marking the fourth year running that he has staged his ‘rock favourites’ tribute show. Laidback and disarming, Barry Thomson engages audiences with rock guitar magic from Procol Harum, Mark Knopfler, Jethro Tull and The Eagles, Grand Funk Railroad, Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix, John Mayer and Stevie Ray Vaughan. The Barnyard Theatre at Gateway is currently celebrating The Big 5. Nope, not the four-legged ones – in this case, it’s the music of Elton John, Tina Turner, Rod Stewart, Michael Jackson and Madonna which runs until 10 October. Following this, and set to run through the festive season into early January, is The Absolute 80’s, which offers a funky, hip and trendy musical journey starring the inimitable Bronwyn Evans and offering everything from Boy George to Guns n’ Roses and the Eurythmics. Moving to visual arts, there’s only a short time to catch A Scent of Light at The Green Gallery in Mount Edgecombe which closes on 4 October and features three well-known South African artists: Coral Spencer Domijan, Rob Domijan and Owen Llewellyn Davies (sculpture). At the end of the month, the African Art Centre gets into festive mode early with their African Christmas Exhibition, which comprises a fascinating array of distinctive Christmas ornaments and gifts at affordable prices. Running until 9 October across all galleries at the KZNSA is the MTN New Contemporaries Award 2010 Exhibition. This will be followed by an exhibition by Conrad Botes. More information can be found by visiting my artSMart website and browsing through the various disciplines at www.artsmart.co.za. CF

seaside playground with over 40 return flights a week, from Johannesburg

october 2010

Images courtesy of Universal Music, Sony Music

LANG G N A

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g, an L g an ing L f th s o me ious s l. o ce s s ea er c p s u y a as a al ap ls a a n d s me s to both niver o n n u s he sicia rld ted p o u n the al m o w ede s w r c t c i e s e sid clas dling npr n u co ng rad ith L t o s E w m FE ut a fully star C I s o SS ds es nd a c A n c a CL sta y, su ian o it ic wh rar mus a al of sic s cla

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october 2010 29

here is a perception in the mainstream that the world of classical music is characterised by academic respectability and antiquarian tastes. Chinese piano virtuoso Lang Lang gives the lie to this view, having acquired a popular appeal the likes of which no classical instrumentalist has seen since the days of Paganini and Liszt. The last classical musician to achieve the kind of universal popularity that Lang now enjoys was Luciano Pavarotti. Some might consider André Rieu’s runaway success another example. But there is a crucial difference between Lang’s career and theirs: both Rieu and Pavarotti built their prodigious audiences by crossing over from the classical milieu to the more commercial realm of popular and adult contemporary music. Lang, on the other hand, has achieved tremendous commercial success while remaining in the niche, high classical genre.

“Lang’s playing style – admired by many and severely criticised by some – is marked by showmanship”

In Europe and the United States, Lang sells out concert halls as a matter of course and is admired for his highly entertaining performance style and the youthful exuberance with which he walks the well-worn path of classical music recital. In his home country of China, Lang’s status has received a sharp upgrade from ‘much-loved performer’ to ‘popular culture phenomenon’. When he was 19 years old, he performed the Grieg Piano Concerto to a packed house at New York’s Carnegie Hall. A short while later he toured Beijing with the Philadelphia Orchestra and was mobbed by adoring fans after playing to an 8 000-strong audience at the Great Hall of the People. In 2008 he played at the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games in the Chinese capital to a global audience of between two and five billion people. Lang’s star status has been reflected in his record sales. The classical market is a small niche and artists are usually quite content to sell a few hundred copies of their recordings. The sales of Lang’s discs number in the hundreds of thousands. Since his recording debut, Lang has been one of the most treasured assets of the

october 2010

Deutsche Grammophon stable. The revered specialist classical label has released eleven albums by Lang – all big sellers – and at times, shown a willingness to jump through hoops to keep him happy. Most controversially, they dismissed Lang’s compatriot and fellow pianist Yundi Li in 2008 – apparently because the star demanded it. In 2009 Sony Music decided to relaunch its classical label. Lang’s star quality was exactly what it needed to help Sony Classical hit the market again in spectacular style. Newly appointed label boss Bogdan Roscic, was told to sign the piano virtuoso, regardless of cost. In February of this year, Lang agreed to sign as an exclusive Sony Classical artist for an initial fee of three million US dollars. By the standards of Hollywood movie stars and top-level athletes, this is a pittance and it certainly pales in comparison to the 250 million that Sony paid Michael Jackson’s estate for the ten-album retrospective of the ‘King of Pop’. In the world of classical music however, this is a monumental fee. There is little doubt that Sony Classical can make good on this investment – aside from sales in the rest of the world, the Chinese market alone can guarantee very respectable returns. Lang’s label debut Live in Vienna, was released last month. It captures a performance at Vienna’s prestigious Musikverein Hall, and its track listing features favourites such as Beethoven’s ‘Appassionata’ sonata, Chopin’s Grande Valse Brillante No. 2 in A-flat major and Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 7 in B-flat major. Lang said of the hallowed venue that he chose for the recital: ‘For me, there are few halls around the globe that have the same prestige as Carnegie Hall and the Musikverein. Of course there are other great halls, but I always feel these two have a unique place in people’s hearts. So I felt that after Carnegie Hall, the Musikverein would be the place where I should do another live recording.’ Reflecting its confidence in its new artist, Sony went all-out with this release, issuing the album on multiple formats including two CD editions (standard and deluxe), DVD, Blu-Ray, vinyl LP and digital – this at a time when the record industry is considered to be in a slump. A short while before Live in Vienna’s release, Lang’s former label, Deustche Grammophon, issued a ‘Best of’ compilation featuring highlights from the pianist’s years with the seminal company. Appropriately, the Deutsche Grammophon retrospective opens with two pieces by Franz Liszt. The second of them, the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp major, is particularly relevant. It was this well-known composition that first ignited Lang’s love for the piano when he heard it in a Tom and Jerry cartoon at the age of two. A year later his training had begun. An initial setback presented itself to Lang when he was nine

years old; just as he was about to audition for Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music, he was expelled from his teacher’s studio due to ‘lack of talent’. However, he was eventually admitted to the conservatory and at 13 years of age made his debut at the Beijing Concert Hall. By the time he reached his 20s, he was long past being regarded as a child prodigy, already being perceived as an experienced performer of international class. Lang has a particular passion for music education. In 2004 he was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations Children’s’ Fund (UNICEF), and in 2008, he launched the Lang Lang International Music Foundation. Supported by the Grammys and UNICEF, this foundation is designed to promote the teaching and appreciation of classical music among children and to provide financial aid to those eager to learn but lacking the necessary funds. Lang’s efforts in bringing classical music to the children of the world prompted Steinway & Sons to put the Lang Lang Steinway into production. This very special piano, the first Steinway ever to carry an artist’s name, is specifically designed for early music

“Lang’s star status has been reflected in his record sales”

education. In China, the numbers of young children learning the piano have increased sharply over the past few years, seemingly as a result of starry-eyed youngsters wanting to emulate their idol. Lang’s playing style – admired by many and severely criticised by some – is marked by showmanship. He punctuates his playing with exaggerated gestures and facial expressions, and his approach to repertoire is strongly subjective, with an emphasis on emotion rather than a faithful reproduction of the written score. For example, listen to his highly idiosyncratic phrasing in his recording of the Hungarian Rhapsody. It is unlikely that Liszt would disapprove of Lang’s take on his famous work. On the contrary, he would probably regard the 27-year-old Chinese as a kindred spirit and a virtuoso artist in his own milieu. Liszt was the mid to late 19th century equivalent of a rock star, dazzling European music lovers with his technically brilliant and highly theatrical performances. He attracted ardent admiration and stormy controversy in equal measure. It is this tradition of keyboard wizardry, which Liszt started in defiant subversion of the conventions of his time, that Lang is now keeping alive more than 120 years after the great Hungarian’s death. CF

october 2010

Images courtesy of of EMI EMI Image coutersy

Berlin

IS COMING TO

Johannesburg

It has recently been confirmed that Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra have agreed to do a three-city tour of South Africa in 2012. CLASSICFEEL’s Warren Holden considers the importance of this event in light of the Berlin Philharmonic’s long and illustrious history, and speaks to Shadrack Bokaba – Managing Director of the orchestra’s Johannesburg counterpart and the prime mover behind the tour’s planning – with regards to how it all came about.

‘N

o orchestra of the Berlin Philharmonic’s calibre has ever visited South Africa,’ enthuses Shadrack Bokaba, Managing Director of the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra (JPO), ‘and the fact that a conductor of Sir Simon Rattle’s stature will be coming with them means that this tour will be like another World Cup’. This may sound like hyperbole but make no mistake, a visit from the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle is the classical equivalent of a tour by any rock legend one might care to name. One hundred and twenty-eight years after its founding, the Berliner Philharmoniker is consistently rated among the world’s top three orchestras (together with the Netherlands’ Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Austria’s Vienna Philharmonic). They are arguably the world’s leading touring orchestra and their recordings have sold in the millions worldwide. As the orchestra’s principal conductor since 2002, Sir Simon Rattle follows in a long line of iconic artists, each of whom has made a significant impact on the way orchestral music is interpreted and performed today. Bokaba sealed the deal with Rattle and the orchestra’s management earlier this year – a few months after the seed was first sown at an international conference held in the German capital. ‘I went to the conference and met the Intendantin of the Berlin Philharmonic, Pamela Rosenberg, and we talked about the possibility of collaboration between the two orchestras. This was something that I had always dreamed of doing because the Berlin Philharmonic and the JPO are run along similar lines – both orchestras belong to the players, not to the management – and the JPO, being only ten years old, would have so much to learn from the Berliners. For one thing, the JPO Academy is modelled on the Berlin Philharmonic’s education programme. What we originally envisioned was an educational exchange between the two orchestras.’ In later talks, the projected visit was expanded to include an actual concert tour by the German orchestra, and that naturally lead

to the inclusion of Rattle himself. The date is set for November 2012 and although the final details are a long way from being set in stone, there are a number of things that can be said with certainty. The tour will extend beyond Johannesburg to include Cape Town and Durban. Bokaba has approached both the Cape Philharmonic (CPO) and the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic (KZNPO) to partner the JPO as co-hosts for the distinguished visitors. As far as the actual concert tour goes, Johannesburg will see performances at City Hall and a yet-to-be confirmed venue in Soweto. Regarding the Soweto concert, Bokaba says, ‘When you do a concert in Soweto there is always a feeling that you have to modify the repertoire to suit the audience there, but I have insisted that the Berlin Philharmonic must do a traditional concert exactly as they would do it in their home city’. The visiting orchestra and their conductor will spend time in rehearsals and master classes with members of the JPO Academy. Bokaba also plans to open these up to other aspiring musicians. ‘Young musicians from all over the country, who are seriously considering music as a career and looking for ways to break into the ranks, can take part. But numbers are limited, so we will be holding auditions beforehand.’ One Berliner who is of particular interest to Bokaba is the orchestra’s youngest member, the 25-year-old Venezuelan double-bass player, Edicson Ruiz. A product of his home country’s much-lauded El Sistema music education programme, Ruiz will perform with the JPO as a guest soloist and will also address aspiring musicians in South Africa’s poorer areas, having risen from similar socio-economic circumstances himself. The financial backing required for a project like this must be considerable, and the responsibility of raising the necessary funds falls on Bokaba’s shoulders. It is still too early to know who will be supporting the tour financially, but Bokaba is thinking big, setting his sights on multinational corporations. The success of this tour would have far-reaching consequences, as both

october 2010 35

orchestras have their eyes on a long-term collaboration. ‘What we want is for this to go beyond just one successful tour to become an ongoing partnership,’ says Bokaba. The JPO couldn’t have made a better choice for an international partner. While there are other orchestras of equal ability, there are few that match the Berlin Philharmonic’s universal range and repertoire, rich history and extensive touring and recording experience. It has continued to prosper even under the most difficult circumstances – war, political turmoil and funding problems – maintaining a formidable reputation for excellence. As Bokaba pointed out, the orchestra is run by its members and is a true ‘musician’s orchestra’. This is the spirit in which it was founded and its self-governing status was entrenched in Berlin state law as Rattle’s condition for accepting the principal conductor post in 2002. The group that would form the basis for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra was formed in 1882. Berlin based conductor/ composer Benjamin Bilse announced that he would be taking his orchestra on tour to Warsaw. It is not clear whether

“A visit from the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle is the classical equivalent of a tour by any rock legend one might care to name”

members of his private orchestra were already fomenting mutiny by this stage, but what is certain is that the announcement of the Warsaw tour led 54 musicians to immediately break away from the group. It was not the tour itself that they objected to, but the fact that they would be expected to travel to the Polish capital on a fourth-class train. They began to call themselves Frühere Bilsesche Kapelle (‘former Bilse’s orchestra’). Within a few months, they had changed their name to Berliner Philharmoniker and had elected a new conductor, Ludwig von Brenner, who led its debut performance on 17 October 1882 and continued as its artistic director for the next five years. In 1887, von Brenner was replaced by Hans von Bülow, regarded by many as the first ‘virtuoso conductor’. From this point on, the orchestra’s history became inextricably linked with that of its principal conductors. Each successive orchestra leader from von Bülow to Rattle has been a strong personality accorded the kind of ‘rock star’ celebrity that had previously been reserved for solo instrumentalists. Often courting controversy, and always driven by an uncompromising desire for

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excellence, these nine artists have provided the impetus that has driven the Berlin Philharmonic to the heights it now occupies. Von Bülow’s appointment came at the pinnacle of what was known as the ‘War of the Romantics’, with music makers divided into two camps as to how Beethoven’s legacy was to be carried forward. Composers like Liszt and Wagner proposed the abandonment of classical forms so as to make music a more powerful means of personal expression. Others, like Brahms and Mendelssohn, preferred to work within the structures that they inherited from Haydn and Mozart. While many of Germany’s musicians chose sides in this dispute, von Bülow remained above it. He saw merit in the best of both the old and new styles. While a devoted disciple of Wagner, he also fiercely championed the work of Brahms, calling him Beethoven’s heir. He thus ensured that the Berlin Philharmonic performed the best work from both schools, giving them a reputation for a well-rounded and universal artistic sensibility, which they maintain to this day. During his tenure, the orchestra established its international fame and helped to expand the popularity of contemporary composers such as Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Richard Strauss and Grieg. Although well respected by the musicians of the Philharmonic, von Bülow was known for his tactlessness and abrasive wit, which he aimed at performers and audiences alike. His successor in the post proved to be a far more genial and charismatic figure. The Hungarian Arthur Nikisch stepped onto the Berlin podium in 1895 and led it through the dark years of the First World War. It was with Nikisch that the orchestra made history in 1913, with the first ever complete commercial recording of a symphony – Beethoven’s Fifth for Deutsche Grammophon. This kicked off the ensemble’s recording career, which has gone on to form a vital part of its many achievements over the years. Nikisch died in 1922, and his post was taken up by Wilhelm Furtwängler, who is primarily responsible for establishing the Berlin Philharmonic as the definitive performers of Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner symphonies. Furtwängler did not believe in following the dictates of the written score. The way he saw it, if he could not interpret a work subjectively, colouring it with his own thoughts and feelings, then why should he bother performing it at all? He remains a controversial figure both for his unorthodox approach to conducting and for his relationship with the Nazi government. Although he was openly disapproving of the Nazis, he chose to remain in Berlin throughout the Second World War, while many of his contemporaries opted to work abroad. He retained his position at the helm of the Berlin Philharmonic even as the orchestra, like all aspects of art and culture in Germany at that time, was appropriated by Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda ministry. As the war neared its end, he finally went into self-imposed exile in Switzerland and was replaced by the Russian-born Leo Borchard, who was favoured for the job by the city’s Soviet

Sir Simon Rattle and JPO Managing Director, Shadrack Bokaba

occupiers. His career was cut tragically short less than two months after he accepted the position. As he was being driven home after a concert, his car passed through a military checkpoint. The driver was instructed by an American sentry to stop but misunderstood the signal and drove on, prompting the sentry to open fire on the car, wounding the driver and killing Borchard instantly. Sergiu Celibidache, the Romanian conductor who would lead the orchestra for the next seven years, was a rather unusual individual compared to his predecessors and successors. Approaching his work in an almost mystical manner, influenced by Zen Buddhism, he refused to take part in recordings, focusing instead on live performances that took place under the ‘optimum conditions for a transcendental experience’. Recordings, he believed, could not offer the full experience because they lacked the ‘ambience of the moment’. In 1952, Celibidache made way for Furtwängler, who was back from Switzerland and recently cleared of all charges at his ‘denazification’ trial, to resume his old post, which he held until his death in 1954. It was then that the Berlin Philharmonic chose its most famous, longest serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan, whom they appointed as music director for life. Karajan is quite possibly the most well-known conductor of the 20th century. There was virtually no part of the repertoire that he did not

perform and record, and often in a manner that set the bar for other orchestras and conductors at the time. Over the 34 years that he led the Berlin Philharmonic, he shaped the orchestra to suit his own unique sound world. To this day, the orchestra’s sound largely remains faithful to Karajan’s specifications. In contrast to Celibidache, Karajan was a fanatical technophile. He loved his fast cars and private jets and was always watching for new advances in recording technology. One of his major achievements was to push classical music into the digital age. He was one of the driving forces behind the CD revolution in the early to mid 80s. The desirability of the digital medium for Karajan is not surprising. His sound was famously finessed and polished, to the extent that critics accused him of being artificial, with too much focus on sonic perfection and not enough thought given to the heart and soul of the music he was performing. These are criticisms that his legion of admirers would dismiss as nothing short of delusional. When he resigned from his post in 1989, just months before his death, he and the orchestra had become so closely associated that fans found it difficult to think of the one without the other. Claudio Abbado gamely stepped up to fill the giant shoes left by Karajan. Under the Italian maestro’s guidance the orchestra expanded its repertoire to include more contemporary work.

Abbado’s style is far more relaxed and understated than Karajan’s and he placed less emphasis on creating a flawless sound. Poor health forced him to take a temporary hiatus from conducting and in 2002, the Berlin Philharmonic elected Sir Simon Rattle as principal conductor and music director. Rattle is now the custodian of the orchestra’s proud history and holds a position that comes with the heavy burden of expectation and the prestige of his predecessors. Few people who have observed his career over the past eight years would say that he hasn’t risen to the challenge. Born in Liverpool in 1955, he had already had an extremely successful career in his home country before he left for Berlin. Between 1980 and 1998, he was the principal conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, where his work commanded the admiration of critics and public alike. When Abbado bowed out as the Berlin Philharmonic’s leader, the orchestra was divided between those who wanted Rattle to succeed him and those who favoured Daniel Barenboim for the job. The Englishman soon won over his detractors and even managed to reorganise the ensemble in a manner that fundamentally changed the way it is run.

“Rattle is now the custodian of the orchestra’s proud history and holds a position that comes with the heavy burden of expectation and the prestige of his predecessors”

Although the Berlin Philharmonic was originally founded by musicians looking for independence and control of their own professional destiny, over the years it came more and more under the influence of the government of the city and state of Berlin. Rattle insisted that this should change. He refused to even sign his contract in 2002 unless the orchestra gained complete independence from the Berlin Senate, and musicians’ wages were increased to a rate they deemed reasonable. Such was the conductor’s status that all his demands were met before he even walked into a single rehearsal with the orchestra. Although his style has been heavily criticised by many members of the German press, Rattle has won the respect of both the public and the members of the orchestra. His contract, initially meant to end in 2012, has been extended to 2018. The Berlin Philharmonic’s importance is twofold: firstly it is representative of German culture and history, and secondly, it has a more global significance as one of the standard bearers for classical music performance internationally. Thus, its 2012 tour will mark both a cultural exchange between Germany and South Africa, and a professional exchange between the Berlin Philharmonic and our three leading orchestras, who are long overdue to take their place alongside their international peers. CF

october 2010

Images Wikimedia Commons

Conductors ‘IN EXCELSIS’ In his book The Virtuoso Conductors, Dr Raymond Holden, Associate Head of Research at London’s Royal Academy of Music and himself a retired conductor, examines the careers of ten of the greatest figures in the central European conducting tradition. CLASSICFEEL’s Warren Holden (no relation) spoke to the author about his book and the tradition it explores.

n the words of British conductor Sir John Barbirolli, as quoted in the introduction to Dr Raymond Holden’s The Virtuoso Conductors, ‘Wagner laid it down that the two fundamental principles of the art [of conducting] were: (1) giving the true tempo to the orchestra and (2) finding the “melos”, by which he means the unifying thread or line that gives a work its form and shape. Given these two qualities of course, we have the conductor in excelsis, and most of our lives must be spent in trying to obtain these qualities’. Although the history of conducting can be traced back as far as the Middle Ages, it was really only in the mid to late 19th century that it emerged as a distinct musical calling in its own right. It was then that composers like Hector Berlioz, Felix Mendelssohn and Richard Wagner began to refine and perfect it in order to get the best out of the orchestras of the day – specifically, but by no means exclusively, when it came to performances of their own works. Berlioz and Wagner went so far as to write in-depth essays detailing the theory and methodology of the art. Notwithstanding the Frenchman Berlioz’s contribution to the development of modern conducting, the profession’s origins seem to be largely based in Germany and what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and it is Wagner in particular who is regarded as having laid its foundations. Dr Holden’s book aims to trace the progression of the tradition that Wagner founded, from the composer’s own heyday through to the late 20th century. ‘The reason why the central European tradition is so important,’ says Holden, ‘is that it really set the tone for conducting practices in other parts of the world. Wagner wrote

Gustav Mahler CF

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Richard Wagner

Hans Von Bülow Arthur Nikisch

about things like tempo manipulation, re-orchestration and the idea of “melos”.’ These were groundbreaking ideas that are now the standard tools of any conductor worthy of the name. ‘These conductors and their students then took their ideas out into the world,’ Holden continues. ‘They took up posts in the United States, England, South America and elsewhere. Even here in South Africa for example, you had Albert Coates. He was a truly pan-European – ultimately “pan-global” individual. He was an Englishman born in Russia who then learned his craft in Germany under the baton of the great Arthur Nikisch [one of the conductors featured in the book], who was a quintessential central European conductor. Coates spent his last few years as a performing conductor in Cape Town. So to think that the central European tradition was confined to central Europe would be a huge mistake.’ Holden is himself a direct extension of the central European milieu, although he is actually Australian. Whilst studying at the Sydney Conservatorium, he met the great British conductor Sir John Pritchard. He went on to begin his career in Europe as Pritchard’s assistant and learned his craft under the Englishman’s guidance for the next few years. Through his apprenticeship to Pritchard, Holden has an artistic pedigree that links him back to Richard Strauss, regarded by many as Wagner’s musical heir, both as a composer and conductor. Strauss is the subject of one of the nine chapters in The Virtuoso Conductors and the current focus of Holden’s studies in the history of conducting. His newest book A Hero’s Life, is dedicated to Strauss’s work with the baton, rather than his composing. The classical music world is filled with similar artistic ‘family trees’, with musicians taking great pride in their pedagogic lineages. In Holden’s case his teacher, Pritchard, was taught by German maestro Fritz Busch, who in turn, was an acolyte of Strauss himself. Although the principles of the central European conducting tradition have spread throughout the world by way of these relationships, Holden’s book concentrates on what may be said to be its central or senior line. The ten musicians who are the subjects of the book lived and worked as integral parts of the tradition – geographically, ethnically and culturally – preserving the work of their colleagues and forbears and adding to it. Through its nine chapters – each one devoted to one artist – the book traces the development of the tradition from its foundations, which coincided roughly with the unification of Germany under the Hohenzollern monarchy, and then details how it was sustained for over a century, retaining its identity and integrity through two World Wars, the break-up and democratisation of both the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires; the troubled years of the Weimar Republic and the Nazi regime; and the division of the Cold War. It ends with the tradition emerging intact into the modern age, having been preserved and even further refined by the work of artists such as Herbert von Karajan. The book begins with an introduction summarising the work of Richard Wagner as the originator of the tradition. Titled ‘Richard Wagner: Zukunftsdirigent’ (‘Conductor of the Future’), it outlines Wagner’s innovations and refinements, from his theories on tempo and ‘melos’ to his belief in freely re-orchestrating pieces to suit the purposes of the conductor and audience, to more practical considerations such as how the various sections of the orchestra were to be arranged on the stage. In concluding the introduction, Holden writes, ‘Wagner’s influence on subsequent generations of conductors cannot be stressed enough. He was a giant figure to whom they all looked for inspiration and guidance. His stage works were at the heart of their programme policies and his thoughts on conducting were seminal to their performance styles. Many of the conductors to whom a chapter is devoted in this book either openly acknowledged Wagner’s importance in their own treatises on conducting or applied his principles in their marked scores and recordings’.

Bruno Walter

Wilhelm Furtwängler

The first chapter, ‘The master-conductor Hans von Bülow’, deals with the troubled life and stellar career of Wagner’s protégé – the first musician ever to make a living primarily as a conductor. Next is Arthur Nikisch, von Bülow’s successor as principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and one of the most popular figures in late 19th and early 20th century classical music, whose mesmeric performance style leads Holden to label him ‘The Magician of the Podium’. The third chapter is dedicated to a man who is now regarded as one of the greatest symphonists of all time, but who, during his own lifetime was known predominantly as a conductor who dabbled in composition – Gustav Mahler. Next up is Felix Weingartner, the first conductor to record all nine Beethoven symphonies commercially, and one of the world’s most important conducting pedagogues. The fifth chapter reveals how Richard Strauss’s achievements as a composer were more than equalled by his groundbreaking work on the podium. The subject of the next chapter, Bruno Walter, aspired to greatness as a composer, but failing to achieve this, dedicated his life to interpreting the work of others with unprecedented sympathy and humanity. The next conductor, like Walter, was a devoted follower of Mahler. An uncompromising musician afflicted with bipolar disorder, Otto Klemperer was an electrifying performer whose own inner struggle translated into some of the most brilliant performances on record. The controversial Wilhelm Furtwängler follows. Although many tend to focus on Furtwängler’s appeasement of the Nazi government (despite his loathing of it) in order to sustain his career, what he is best remembered for is his ability to interpret the same piece in radically different ways from one performance to the next. His determinedly subjective approach to conducting meant that he would mould each work to his own vision and mood. Finally, we have ‘Das Wunder Karajan’, that

Herbert von Karajan

giant of 20th century classical music whom Holden describes as ‘the quintessential virtuoso conductor’. ‘What was important for me,’ says Holden, ‘was that all of the conductors in the book overlap with each other. All of them could trace themselves back to Weingartner, Strauss, Mahler or Nikisch. I knew that if you examine a group of people, they all need to overlap and impact on each other somehow. I hope to do the same thing with the English conducting tradition, starting with Sir Henry Wood and ending with my old boss, Sir John Pritchard’. Forced to retire from conducting when a back injury made it impossible for him to meet the physical demands of the job, Dr Holden is now Assistant Head of Research at London’s Royal Academy of Music. ‘My job is to take historical documents like marked scores, of which we have a considerable archive, and put them into context. What I research and write about, I put into my teaching. I take these scores and notes and the thoughts of Wagner, Mahler, Strauss and all the conductors I’ve written about and make sure that they inform the learning of our students.’ In documenting the work of past conductors and sharing his learning with the Academy’s maestrosin-training, Holden may be helping to create the Nikischs, Furtwänglers and Karajans of the future, ensuring that the proud line of conductors in excelsis remains unbroken for a long time to come. CF

The Virtuoso Conductors: The Central European Tradition from Wagner to Karajan By Raymond Holden Yale University Press ISBN: 9780300093261 CF

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Sweet music in

SALT LAKE CITY John Roos, Director of the UNISA Music Foundation recently sat on the judging panel for the 15th Gina Bachauer International Artists Piano Competition in Salt Lake City, USA. For CLASSICFEEL he reports back on his musical experience in Utah’s state capital.

n 27 June, the theme for the world’s longest continuing television broadcast Music and the Spoken Word (show number 4 215) by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square in Salt Lake City was ‘Love’s beautiful music’. The inspirational message on this occasion began with the words, ‘The sweet music of love changes everything’. Sitting with other jury members and competitors of the 15th Gina Bachauer International Artists Piano Competition in the impressive Conference Centre Theatre which seats 21 000 people(!), it struck me that this is the very heart of the Mormon homeland in Utah. What a beautiful place; it is indeed filled with inspiring music! We were temporarily transported from one spiritual world to another – from the inspiration of the great composers for piano to the reverence of religious songs performed by a 300-strong choir, full symphony orchestra and an 8 000-pipe organ. The poster for the 2010 Bachauer announced that 40 pianists from 18 countries would be competing for one gold medal, reminding me of the World Cup soccer which was in full swing in South Africa at that point in time. The nine members of the jury: Nelita True (USA), Gennady Dzubenko (Russia), Douglas Humpherys (USA), Daejin Kim (Korea), Jie Lu (China), Yuko Ninomiya (Japan), Walter Ponce (Bolivia/USA), Dmitry Rachmanov (Russia) and I, had the pleasant task of enjoying the performances of 37 brilliant pianists in two rounds on the stage of the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Centre. The choice of works was at the discretion of the competitors resulting in some interesting pieces, such as two ricercars from the Musical Offering and an original piano arrangement of Igor Stravinsky’s La Sacre du Printemps. The really nasty task of the jury after the second round was to select just six finalists to perform with the Utah Symphony Orchestra in Abravanel Hall. This was by far one of the most difficult judgments I ever had to make!

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The artistic director of the Gina Bachauer, Dr Paul Pollei hand-picked every single competitor during live auditions held in various centres around the globe ensuring an outstanding general level of performance. Very few international competitions can afford the expense of such live auditions and are forced to rely on CD or DVD recordings for the initial selection process including the UNISA international music competitions. I discovered a direct historical link between the Ukraine, where I was a judge at the Horowitz International Piano Competition earlier this year, and the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Centre in Salt Lake City. Rose Yuddin from Latvia and Harry Wagner from the Ukraine were Jews who immigrated to America to escape poverty and persecution. They met and married in Boston and, virtually penniless, settled in Salt Lake City in 1910. Their son Izzi became a very wealthy businessman who decided to donate money in honour of his mother Rose Yuddin Wagner, to build an arts centre on the site where the house where he was born once stood. Incidentally the Mormons believe themselves to be direct descendants of Lehi, a descendent of Jacob, through Manasseh (son of Joseph), cherishing their close links with Israel. In Utah you find names like Jordan River, Galilea and Mount Zion, not to mention the obvious – a real salt lake! Salt Lake City’s other Jewish link is Gina Bachauer (1913 1976), the Greek concert pianist often regarded as the greatest female pianist of the 20th century. A student of Cortot and Rachmaninov, she enjoyed a long and successful performing career and wooed the toughest of critics with her Romantic repertoire. She developed a close bond with the people of Utah and performed frequently with the Utah Symphony, invited by its conductor Maurice Abravanel – also a musician, originally from Greece. Brigham Young University professor, Paul Pollei, founded a piano competition in 1976 as part of the university’s Summer Piano Festival. In 1978 the competition’s name changed to honour Gina Bachauer, in part because she gave her first Utah

Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra in the 21 000 seat Conference Theatre.

From left to right: 2nd prize winner, Serhiy Salov, John Roos and 3rd prize winner Dmitri Levkovich

recital at Brigham Young University. (I can vividly recall the stately figure of Gina performing a piano recital in the old Capitol Theatre in Pretoria about 40 years ago. She made the piano sound like an organ with her full tone, in a magnificent rendering of the Bach-Busoni Chaconne.) The programme of the 15th Gina Bachauer International Artists Piano Competition featured very interesting personal motivations for entering this event from the competitors. For his rendering of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto the Latvian born Russian pianist, Lukas Genusias was awarded the $30 000 First Prize. This was a welcome present on his 20th birthday which he celebrated during the final round on 1 July. He wrote the following paragraph in the competition programme: ‘When I prepare to enter a major piano competition, I achieve a special personal status in my pianism, different from just preparing for a public performance. This is because I know that my audience will consist of experts of the highest level. Therefore, in a process of preparing, I try not to overlook the slightest imperfection. In this state of alertness, life is more real for me. Concerts give a huge flow of energy between performer and audience. This energy can help both sides to lift souls closer to God.’ Can one wish for a nobler artistic goal? Thirty-one-year-old Ukrainian pianist Serhiy Salov was awarded the second prize ($15 000) while Dmitri Levkovich (also 31) received third prize ($10 000). Yunjie Chen (China) was placed fourth, Kotaro Fukuma (Japan) and Zhang Zuo

(China) fifth and sixth consecutively. The Utah Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Lawrence Leighton Smith in Abravanel Hall which boasts the striking statue Olympic Tower by sculptor Dale Chihuly in the foyer. This avant-garde sculpture, resembling a column of wriggling orange snakes in glass, was part of an Olympic Arts Festival exhibition during the 2002 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City. Dr Paul Pollei mentioned a fascinating statistic, namely that Utah has the highest number of pianos per capita of any other state in the US. As a matter of fact, every single home where the jury was hosted for a dinner had a piano. In one particular residence three grand pianos could be counted. No wonder Salt Lake City simply had to stage an international piano competition! The jury was accommodated in the quaintly named Little America Hotel. My recent visit to this Western superpower made me realise once again that nothing about the US is ‘little’ – from the mega oil spill to the amazing melting pot of nationalities one encounters. For example, there is Omar from Afghanistan running a small grocery shop, a Sudanese driver offering a luxury valet car service, a Chinese lady born in Vietnam, chirpily serving breakfast with a Kosovo-born supervisor. On the famous Temple Square you meet Finnish and Malaysian missionaries. These people of such a variety of nationalities have the freedom to dream and realise those big dreams in this amazingly vibrant American democracy. CF

Image courtesy of Michael Blake

The Bow Project Under the auspices of the Bow Project, composers from a spectrum of musical traditions draw on the Xhosa bow tradition, as represented by the late Nofinishi Dywili, to create compelling new compositions for string quartet. Composer Michael Blake and ethnomusicologist David Dargie gave CLASSICFEEL’s Natalie Watermeyer an introduction to the project, and the tradition that inspired it.

‘I

heard Nofinishi for the first time in 1997 in Grahamstown, just before I moved back to South Africa,’ recalls renowned composer Michael Blake. ‘The concert was organised by Andrew Tracey and it was one of the most revelatory musical experiences I can recall. Nofinishi’s music has been crucial to my own work as a composer ever since.’ Blake’s encounter with the music of Nofinishi Dywili – a traditional Xhosa song leader and player of the uhadi bow – ultimately led him to initiate the Bow Project in 2002. ‘I launched the New Music Indaba at the Grahamstown Festival and within that platform I searched out projects that would challenge composers and initiate new work. I had heard the Princess Magogo arrangements – all by one pair of composers – and I instinctively felt so much more could be done with re-imagining the songs,’ he explains. ‘That’s when I hit on the idea of inviting a whole bunch of composers – and not the usual suspects either – to transcribe, arrange and paraphrase one song each from the recorded repertoire of Nofinishi.’ Each of these songs was ‘re-imagined’ for performance by string quartet by a commissioned composer; in his introduction to the Bow Project’s newly released CD, Blake writes that he saw the string quartet as ‘a perfect bridge between the world of traditional bow music and the world of new classical music’. Since the inauguration of the Bow Project, composers including Mokale Koapeng, Julia Raynham, Robert Fokkens, Lloyd Prince, Kristian Blak, Paul Hanmer, Jürgen Brauninger, Sazi Dlamini, Theo Herbst, Andile Khumalo, Atli Peterson, Matteo Fargion, Martin Scherzinger, Michael Blake and Aryan Kaganof have interpreted various of Dywili’s recorded solo performances for string quartet. The project recently undertook

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a South African tour, in which Mantombi Matotiyana – herself a celebrated uhadi player – played the original version of the traditional song, followed by a performance of the ‘re-imagined’ version by Denmark’s Nightingale String Quartet. Recordings from the tour were finally released on CD last month. Nofinishi Dywili, the performer who so inspired Blake in 1997, hailed from Ngqoko, Lady Frere in the Eastern Cape, where she was an important song leader who knew a multitude of traditional Xhosa songs, many of which were performed at beer gatherings, rituals and dance parties. According to ethnomusicologist David Dargie, whose work with Dywili has been integral to the Bow Project, Nofinishi possessed ‘exceptional rhythmic skill… whatever of the marvellous and complex rhythms there were in any of the songs – 10-vs-8 cross-rhythms or whatever – Nofinishi would also effortlessly bring in greater rhythmic complexity, making the songs even more wonderful’. However, according to Dargie, Dywili many not have been unique in this; he has encountered other individuals from the area who possess similarly impressive rhythmic skills, a fact that he attributes in part to the extensive contact that Dywili’s people had with the San. ‘The Emigrant Thembu (so called) had more contact with the San people than any other “Bantu” language group in South Africa,’ he says. ‘This undoubtedly, profoundly influenced their music in a number of ways. One of the ways was the marvellous development of rhythmic skills.’ According to Dargie, the ancestors of the Xhosa brought the uhadi from West Africa centuries ago, and the instrument – a single string bow with a resonating calabash – has played a fundamental role in shaping Xhosa music. ‘Uhadi has influenced the way Xhosa people sing, and today all the true traditional music is based primarily on the scale and harmonies of uhadi,’

Mantombi Matotiyana and the Nightingale String Quartet meet the people of Ngqoko village

he says. ‘When the Xhosa got different bows from other peoples – mouth bows etc. – then they played these bows according to the uhadi system.’ As Dargie tells it, Dywili’s role as an uhadi player was not of first importance to her village. ‘For the people of Ngqoko, her most important role was leading the beer songs (most of which are in fact ancient ancestor songs). She was no. 2 or so for leading the songs for the important umngqungqo dances, used for girls’ initiation. She would lead at times, but if a certain other woman was there, then that one would lead… The most important of Nofinishi’s songs were undoubtedly the ones that came from the past, especially the deep past. With these she undoubtedly contributed her own embellishments and enrichments, but her role was to be a medium of transmission of culture for her

people,’ Dargie says. Both Dargie and Blake, however, particularly revere Dywili’s skills as an uhadi player; Blake describes her as ‘the great Xhosa bow player of our time’. Thus Dywili’s death in 2002 was a significant cultural loss. The Bow Project – whose newly released CD has been dedicated to her memory – draws attention to her exceptional abilities, and to the ancient heritage she represented. It has also succeeded in inspiring exciting new repertoire, which the late Mary Rörich described as ‘compelling’. One review of the Bow Project concert at the 2002 National Arts Festival stated, ‘the New Music Indaba’s Bow Project comes closest of any festival event so far to presenting an image of modern national culture that is both coherent and exciting. If you want a reason for having national arts festivals, the Bow Project provided it’. CF

Five:20 Operas Made in South Africa Images courtesy of Cape Town Opera

In November, following this month’s production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Cape Town Opera (CTO) will be staging a proudly local production consisting of five 20-minute operas written by some of South Africa’s leading composers.

his year, the South African College of Music celebrates the centenary of its founding. To mark this auspicious celebration, Cape Town Opera, together with the UCT Opera School and the Gordon Institute of Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA), brought together five South African composers to create Five:20 Operas Made in South Africa. This show, scheduled to run at the end of November, will consist of five separate, short operas. The only brief the composers seem to have been given was that each opera had to be based on a South African story or theme, and had to be between 19 and 21 minutes in length – no longer and no shorter. The five composers chosen for this exciting project are Peter Klatzow, Martin Watt, Hendrik Hofmeyr, Bongani Ndodana-Breen and Péter-Louis Van Dijk. The five operas they have put together deal with subject matter ranging from San historian, Lucy Lloyd to the poetry of Breyten Breytenbach, to Saartjie Baartman, to the assassination of Chris Hani, to xenophobia. Born in Springs, Gauteng in 1945, Klatzow won the Southern African Music Rights Organisation (SAMRO) scholarship in 1964. This took him to the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied composition with Bernard Stevens, piano with Kathleen Long and orchestration with Gordon Jacob. In 1973, he took up a post at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where he still works as Professor in Composition. Klatzow’s works have been performed in the United States and numerous European countries. His segment of Five:20 is called Words From A Broken String and deals with the story of Lucy Lloyd (played by Filipa van Eck), the

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Englishwoman who wrote down and compiled the oral histories of Ixam and !kun Bushmen in the early 20th century. The libretto for this work is by CTO Managing Director, Michael Williams. The second segment is Tronkvoël by Martin Watt. This miniopera, set to an Afrikaans libretto by Alwyn Roux, tells the story of an incident related by poet Breyten Breytenbach after his 1982 release from Pretoria’s Central Prison. The incident involved a small tomato plant nurtured by Breytenbach in his exercise yard, and the early-morning hanging of a fellow-prisoner. It is set to be a poignant exploration of how life continues in the face of death and hopelessness, and how deliverance from the direst of circumstances may come from an unexpected, seemingly insignificant source. Conroy Scott plays the role of Breytenbach, while the role of the prisoner awaiting his execution is shared by Phelo Nodlayiya and Monde Massimini. Watt graduated from the University of Potchefstroom with his Bachelor Degree in Music with Honours (cum laude) in 1992. He then went on to study composition under Klatzow at UCT. His music has been performed all over Europe, as well as China and the United States. A respected musicologist, he has presented a number of highly regarded papers at various national and international conferences, and his works of criticism and musical study have been widely published. Prof. Hendrik Hofmeyr, also of UCT, wrote the music and co-wrote the libretto (with Fiona Herbst) for the next piece, simply titled Saartjie, in which he tells the story of the final moments in the life of Saartjie Baartman, known to her European audiences as the ‘Hottentot Venus’. Hofmeyr’s aim with his work was to break the stereotypical view of Baartman as a victim. The title role is shared by Siphamandla Yakupa and Siyasanga Mbuyazwe. Hofmeyr’s first successful opera was his 1988 interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic masterpiece, The Fall of the House of Usher. During the 80s, he spent ten years in self-imposed exile as a conscientious objector. During this time, he furthered his musical studies in Italy and built his reputation in Europe. In 1992, he accepted a post as a lecturer at the University of Stellenbosch, a post which he held until accepting his UCT professorship. Bongani Ndodana-Breen composed the next opera, Hani, to a libretto by Mfundi Vundla. Educated in Grahamstown, at St. Andrews College and Rhodes University, Ndodana-Breen

was awarded the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 1998. His work reflects his love for operatic masters such as Wagner and Britten, and modern composers such as John Adams and Philip Glass, as well as his pride in his native Xhosa culture. He and Vundla, rather than taking a straightforward approach to telling the story of the struggle leader’s murder, present a highly poetic, mystical work, steeped in Xhosa traditional belief. It is set in the dead of night in the study of a writer (Rheinholdt Moagi), who reminisces about his meeting with Hani while in exile. In a dreamlike reverie, he encounters a praise singer (Mandisinde Mbuyazwe), a soothsayer (Nonhlanhla Yende) and a chorus of ancestors. The opera is not so much a retelling of the tragic and momentous event that was Hani’s assassination, as it is a plea to remember the great leader’s legacy in these politically uncertain times. The final opera, Out of Time, was composed by Péter-Louis Van Dijk and the libretto was written by the composer. Told from a child’s viewpoint, the opera relates the meeting of a young couple (the child’s parents) in a tough environment that ostracises and victimises them as foreigners. Filled with both pathos and humour, and including satirical attacks on certain contemporary political figures, Out of Time explores themes of xenophobia, greed and miscommunication. Van Dijk is a composer of international renown. He has written works for the King’s Singers, the Chicago Children’s Choir, the Texas State Choir and the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University Choir. He has several CD releases to his credit and his scores are published in major territories around the world. Two directors have been tasked with bringing Five:20 to the stage. Geoffrey Hyland, a well-known director of dramatic and physical theatre works, is at the helm for Out of Time, Words From a Broken String and Saartjie. Marcus Desando, a seasoned singer, actor and director, will call the shots on Hani and Tronkvoël. The entire performance will be accompanied by the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO), conducted by CTO’s musical director Prof. Kamal Khan. For more information on Five:20 Operas Made in South Africa, visit www.capetownopera.co.za. Performances will take place at the Baxter Theatre, Cape Town on 21, 23, 24, 26 and 27 November. Tickets are available from Computicket: www. computicket.com or 083 915 8000. CF

SAMRO Image courtesy of SAMRO/ SENA

crowns SA’s top young composers Keith Moss (Western Art Music) and James Bassingthwaighte (Jazz/ Popular Music) were named the winners of SAMRO’s 2010 Overseas Scholarships for Composers following a hard-fought music contest at the UJ Arts Centre on 28 August. Each young composer walked off with a scholarship worth R170 000 to study music abroad.

he SAMRO Overseas Scholarships Competition rotates between instrumentalists, singers, keyboard players and composers over a four-year cycle. The four composer finalists in 2010 had the privilege of having their compositions performed by the cream of South African music talent on 28 August. The packed Arts Centre at the University of Johannesburg witnessed renditions of indigenous compositions by the vibrant Wits Choir, and the audience was treated to acclaimed jazz duo Paul Hanmer and McCoy Mrubata performing a thrilling set of Hanmer’s music. These quality choral and jazz performances set the tone for a lively evening celebrating South Africa’s musical diversity, creativity and originality. The finalists in the Western Art Music category were Keith Moss (23) who studied at Rhodes University and the University of Cape Town with Professor Peter Klatzow and Dr Péter Louis van Dyk as teachers, and Angie Mullins (24) who studied at Wits University and was taught by Dr Michael Blake, Professor Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph and Dr Clare Loveday. Moss’s ‘Trio Lamentation’ was performed by Steinway Artist Jill Richards on piano, Susan Mouton on cello and Lesley Stansell on cor anglais; while his choral works – ‘I Carry Your Heart With Me’ (an interpretation of an ee cummings poem inspired by composer Eric Whitacre) and ‘Into This Universe’ (written after a friend’s death and based on a quote from the Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam) – were sung by the Chanticleer Singers, conducted by Richard Cock. Moss echoed the other candidates’ feelings of nervousness and excitement, and was thrilled that fellow Eastern Cape resident Kingsley Alexander Buitendag was a finalist in

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the Jazz/ Popular Music category. While Moss and Mullins’ orchestral works were not performed, he said that his trio, played at the final, is largely an extension of his Masters work in terms of its style and harmonic language. Of his choral work, ‘Into This Universe’, Moss said, ‘The quote that my friend posted… immediately put me in touch with the mood and direction of how I would use the text in a choral setting. I am quite proud of that work’. Angie Mullins’ unconventional contemporary style – as well as the fascinating variety in all four finalists’ entries – underscored the fact that the competition is moving into the modern era while retaining its high standards. Her composition for trio ‘City Must Burn’, was performed by Jill Richards on piano, Magda de Vries on marimbas and percussion, and Waldo Alexander on violin; while her vocal piece ‘Street Study’ was interpreted with great skill by the Street Voices ensemble. Mullins, who wrote one of the set works for the instrumental competition in 2008, said being a finalist was ‘amazing’. She is passionate about two things: music and cooking. Her orchestral piece in her portfolio, which was not performed at the final, is called ‘Murder in the Kitchen’, and evokes the ‘banging and clanging and chopping’ that takes place when preparing a meal. ‘My vocal piece, “Street Study”… is for six voices,’ she said. ‘When I started this piece, I thought about all the things the human voice could do. The first thing that obviously popped to mind was “sing” – so I decided to have my vocalists do just about everything except sing. They grunt and groan and sigh and growl – there’s even a beat-boxing section. I’ve been preparing this

From left to right: Angie Mullins (Runner-up, Western Art); Kingsley Alexander Buitendag (Runner-up, Jazz/Popular); Ms Annette Emdon (Chairman, SAMRO); James Bassingthwaighte (Winner, Jazz/Popular); Prof. Mzilikazi Khumalo (Board Member, SAMRO) and Keith Moss (Winner, Western Art).

work with some amazing young vocalists who are open to trying all the crazy things I’ve put into the score – I’ve loved working with them!’ Mullins’ other piece, ‘City Must Burn’, is a trio for electric violin, piano and percussion – she wrote it for her trio ‘dream team’ of Waldo Alexander, Jill Richards and Magda de Vries who performed the work during the final round. In the Jazz/ Popular Music category, competition was also tight. Kingsley Alexander Buitendag (25) taught by Professor Marc Duby and John Edward at Rhodes University, and James Bassingthwaighte who studied at UCT under the tutelage of Professor Mike Campbell, vied for top honours.

Buitendag’s work for jazz quartet ‘Mr Gaulana’, is a tribute to East London jazz guitarist and composer Lulama Gaulana and was performed by Roland Moses on piano, Mthunzi Mvubu on saxophone, Prince Bulo on bass guitar and Rob Watson on drums. His other piece ‘Sombras’, for solo jazz piano, was performed by Moses. Buitendag is studying towards his Masters in jazz piano performance and composition at Rhodes University; he said being a finalist was exciting and ‘a positive affirmation that I am on the right path to realising my dream of being a composer and musician’. Of ‘Sombras’ he said, ‘It takes inspiration from tonal shades and colours. It is in a Latin-American style ultimately, but is

more an exploration of texture than a by-the-book Latin piece. ‘ “Mr Gaulana” is, in a sense, also a tribute to the South African pianists I have loved since my youth, such as Andile Yenana and Bheki Mseleku.’ The same jazz quartet performed Bassingthwaighte’s composition ‘Song for Sam’, a tribute to Sam Mtukudzi, musician son of Zimbabwe’s legendary Oliver ‘Tuku’ Mtukudzi. Sam died tragically in a car accident earlier this year. Bassingthwaighte’s other piece, ‘Un Asunto Familiar con los Valdes’, was rendered by the versatile Grammy-nominated pianist Jill Richards. Bassingthwaighte said he has been waiting to enter the competition for four years, ‘so to finally be here and be selected as a finalist really feels like a successful end to a long journey’. ‘Un Asunto Familiar con los Valdes’ is his piano composition, a Latin solo prescribed by the competition organisers and based on his

“If you listen to these compositions, there are little pieces of excellence in each of them, and it is exciting to be highlighting new and different kinds of work”

love for the music of the Valdes family from Cuba, particularly revered jazz pianist Chucho Valdes. On the night of the final, Bassingthwaighte was named the Jazz/ Popular Music winner, with Buitendag receiving the R40 000 runner-up prize; and Moss triumphed in the Western Art section, with Angie Mullins being awarded R40 000 as runner-up. Merit awards also went to composers Prince Bulo and Christo Jankowitz. The finals evening was made even more special by the lifetime achievement award presented by SAMRO chairman Annette Emdon to eminent composer, arranger and recently retired SAMRO Vice-Chairman, Professor Mzilikazi Khumalo, who continues to serve on the SAMRO Board. The 2010 competition adjudicators, under the non-voting chairmanship of Joyce Schulten from SAMRO, were Professor

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Chatradari Devroop and Professor Marc Duby (both dual-genre panellists), as well as Professor Christopher Collins, Victor Masondo, Dr Carlo Mombelli, Noel Stockton and Denzil Weale (Jazz/ Popular Music category); and Professor Tania Leon, Professor Hendrik Hofmeyr, Bongani Ndodana-Breen, Mokale Koapeng and Professor Christine Lucia (Western Art Music category). SENA’s André le Roux, General Manager: Corporate Affairs said the organisation was very happy with the response from young composers this year, which saw a record number of 22 entries across the two categories –– an extremely encouraging number for SAMRO as a composers’ society. ‘It seems that writing music is flourishing in South Africa. Over the last couple of years we became a little concerned that formal education in composition was lacking. Therefore we are pleased that there are not only more composers applying, but also an increase in applications for music research bursaries and, in general, for all music study.’ Commenting on the work of the finalists le Roux said, ‘If you listen to these compositions, there are little pieces of excellence in each of them, and it is exciting to be highlighting new and different kinds of work. These young people all have enormous talent, and we look forward to a long and prosperous relationship with them’. SAMRO CEO Nicholas Motsatse added: ‘We are very proud to see, every year, young people with skill and talent being given the opportunity to explore and polish that skill and talent. We are also pleased that we, in a small way, are contributing towards the development of music in this country and ensuring that culture plays a role in society’. Since the inception of the SAMRO overseas scholarships in 1962, the competition has boosted the career of many a young musician and composer, including Peter Klatzow, Melissa van der Spuy, Robert Fokkens, Ben Schoeman, Burton Naidoo, Kimmy Skota and Michael Bester. The prize, currently at R160 000 plus a R10 000 travel allowance per recipient, enables the winners to study music at postgraduate level at an overseas institution or take master classes with internationally renowned composers. The winners of the last composer’s competition, Matthijs van Dyk and Gareth Walwyn, have been busy building their careers and profiles since they were each awarded a scholarship four years ago. For more information, visit www.samro.org.za. CF

Reddy 1962 - 2010

South African pianist, composer and teacher Surendran Reddy died earlier this year. Writing for CLASSICFEEL, Professor Christine Lucia, Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch pays tribute to his unconventional musical genius.

Image courtesy of Heike Asmuss

Surendran

urendran Reddy was a larger-than-life figure on the South African musical scene. He also had a strong European profile, and his music was performed in a number of countries around the world. Known principally as a performer in his youth, in recent years he was increasingly recognised (though not as much as he should have been) as an original and highly eclectic composer. In particular, he was a passionate exponent of a crossover style he called ‘clazz’, in which Western classical music (mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries) was mixed with South African mbaqanga and other elements of jazz harmony and improvisation. This was not merely crossover but virtuoso writing, requiring a virtuoso performer such as Reddy himself to play it. Examples of it can be found in ‘african funk for felix’ (which also quotes ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’) and the ‘clazzical’ sonata in c major, ‘the hammerclaz’. In ‘clazz’ Reddy musically envisaged a new South African society. Just as the music cannot be pigeonholed but embraces the best of many worlds and mingles them freely, so during the 1980s and ’90s he believed vehemently in a future South Africa where people could not be categorised by race, belief, political ideology, gender, or sexual orientation. His belief in human rights, the irrelevance of national boundaries, and freedom (including artistic freedom and freedom from racism) are expressed not only in his music but also in a number of writings, such as the essay ‘if I were to dream’, which he wrote as a preface to a set of short stories by his father. His vehement egalitarianism (as demonstrated by his use of lower case for the titles of all his works) was matched by an equally strong sense of humour. He could not take anything or anyone, least of all himself, too seriously for too long. The humour is also evident in his music – such as ‘toccata for john roos’, which Reddy wrote for the 2008 UNISA International Piano Competition. Aside from the boisterous virtuosity and humour bursting out of the music itself, the score is littered with annotations such as ‘ein bischen furioso’, ‘dancy’, ‘even more dancy and with trotzdem espressivo’, ‘like a Hanon exercise’; and some bars are dedicated to people who might have commented on them and caused a minor change in notation. Reddy’s ‘clazz etude no. 3 for philipp’ has the instruction towards the end, ‘repeat until right hand falls off’. Reddy was the best exponent of his own music as solo keyboard music. Fortunately he recorded two solo CDs: Reddy, Steady, Go! (1994) and Rough ’n Reddy (1996). There are also probably a number of recordings at the SABC. But his jazz quartet Channel 18 (named after his pager) was also an excellent vehicle for the interpretation of his musical ideas, and this, like other performances, is recorded on television footage. Less well

known are his large-scale works for voices and orchestra, such as the oratorio movement ‘masakane - let us build together’ and the oratorio (I suppose one would call it) ‘gaia – the living earth’, where he brought a very good feel for popular vocal music into the mix. In 2009 when he was already quite ill, he wrote a song for the 2010 World Cup, which somehow never saw the light of day – one of many disappointments and frustrations Reddy experienced throughout his life. He had a vast knowledge of music, and not only Western classical music. He improvised in styles that went beyond jazz. One of his most productive relationships was with German tabla player Florian Schiertz; some people will remember the brilliant duet performances they gave during a tour in 2008. Reddy thus brought an enormous weight of knowledge and experience to his work as a teacher of music theory and composition: first at the University of Durban-Westville in 1983-84, and, after he moved to Johannesburg, at the Fuba Centre in the late 1980s to early 1990s, then at the University of Namibia, then privately in Germany and elsewhere. Reddy worked with great musicians such as Sibongile Khumalo, Allen Kwela, and Johnny Fourie in South Africa and internationally with Kiri Te Kanawa, and the Harlem Dance Company. His work as a dance composer-pianist began when he worked for NAPAC in the mid-1980s and his works were performed in Russia, Canada, the United States and Germany. Reid Anderson, Artistic Director of the Stuttgart Ballet and the world’s foremost exponent of John Cranko’s ballets choreographed Surendran’s Four Romantic Piano Pieces, which became a hit of the Alberta Ballet, Canada. He was commissioned several times by SAMRO, including a commission with six other composers for a movement of an oratorio (his ‘masakane’) dealing with issues arising out of the Human Rights Treaty and intended as a gift from South Africa to the Olympic Games in Atlanta in the late 1990s. The work as a whole never materialised, but the orchestral version of ‘masakane’ was premiered on 23 March 2000 by the KZNPO in Durban. Pianist, composer and teacher Surendran Reddy died on 22 January 2010 after a long illness in Konstanz, Germany where he had lived since 1995. He is survived by his parents YG and Leela Reddy, his brother Rajen, daughter Leela, and long-time partner and friend Heike Assmuss. On 4 September there was a public celebration of his life and work at the Jazz Centre, University of KwaZulu-Natal. His work list can be viewed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Surendran_Reddy. To learn more and listen to samples of his work visit www.surendranreddy.com. CF

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Backstage B

arcelona is definitely one of the most beautiful cities I have ever visited. It compares favourably with my impression of Moscow when I visited it on my way to sing in Siberia three years ago. Like Moscow, Barcelona is a populous city brimming with diversity. Ancient yet modern, the city brims with large boulevards; infused with history and endlessly busy with cultural events, its people seem very busy but are wonderfully friendly. Barcelona inspires me with happiness and I love its relaxed atmosphere. My most recent visit in July 2010 reminded me of an earlier visit in 1998, when – as a student in Durban – I took part in the Francisco Vinas International Singing Competition. A city of many faces with umpteen things to see and cultural venues to visit, Barcelona offers the Sagrada Familia, Casa Mila, Casa Gaudi, Gran Teatre del Liceu, Palau de la Musica Catalana, Santa Maria del Mar and so much else. The city boasts distinguished architecture of wrought iron, sculptural work, mosaics, ceramics and stained glass. Residents are proud of their Catalan language, and their traditional dishes, which include paella, crema Catalana and tapas. La Rambla is the most famous street in Barcelona, engaging tourists and its citizens with a museum of contemporary art, plentiful music and dancing, comedians, magicians and hawkers selling traditional products and musical instruments. My children fell in love with Spanish guitars at first sight and to avoid a day of crying babies I had no choice but to buy the children’s version! The crown of La Rambla is the opera house, the Gran Teatre del Liceu, centrally placed in this most popular street of Barcelona. Music plays a very important role in the daily lives of Catalans so the Liceu is exceedingly well looked after. Gran Teatre del Liceu was opened in 1847 and was once the largest opera house in Europe, with 4 000 seats. It was destroyed by fire in 1994; the reconstructed Liceu was re-opened in 1999 with about 2 300 seats on six floors. My singing teacher in Durban, James Conrad, directed opera there and the late, famous South African tenor Deon van der Walt, was a regular especially in Mozart operas. The Liceu presents approximately 120 performances of 15 different operas per year. Some of the productions in the 2010/ 2011 opera season include: Gluck’s Iphigenie auf Tauris with Elisabete Matos in the title role; Bizet’s Carmen with Ana Caterina Antonacci as Carmen, Roberto Alagna and Neil Schicoff sharing the role of Don Jose; Berg’s Lulu; Verdi’s Falstaff conducted by Fabio Luisi; Donizetti’s Anna Bolena with Edita Gruberova; Wagner’s Parsifal shared by Klaus Florian Vogt and Simon O’Neil; Mascagni’s Cavelleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci with Jose Cura; von Weber’s Der Freischütz with Peter Seiffert and Matti Salminen, conducted by Marc Albrecht; Handel’s Tamerlano with Placido Domingo and Anne-Sofie van Otter and Richard Strauss’s Daphne with Rainer Trost, Robert Holl and Bukhard Fritz.

with tenor Musa Nkuna

Image Wikimedia Commons

Gran Teatre del Liceu - interior

In addition, the Liceu has a line-up of recitals and concerts with Violeta Urmana, Andreas Scholl, Rolando Villazon and Jonas Kaufmann. No wonder classical music and opera as a genre will always be popular in Catalonia. The Liceu also has a special programme for children. This season’s adapted productions for children include: The Super Barber of Seville, the Small Magic Flute, Allegro Vivace, IT Dansa, Petrushka and the Orchestra of Animals. Due to munificent sponsorships and support, the Liceu has the ability to invite all the big names in opera to perform there – Joan Sutherland, Mirella Freni, Fiorenza Cossotto, Montserrat Caballe, Victoria de los Angeles, Agnes Baltsa, Edita Gruberova, Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras, Gwyneth Jones, Natalie Dessay, Juan-Diego Florez, Mario del Monaco, Walter Berry, Carlo Bergonzi, Maria Callas, Richard Tucker, Luciano Pavarotti, and many more. The Liceu also has a long history of famous directors and conductors with the specific historic distinction of having had great composers such as Manuel de Falla, Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, Ottrino Respighi and Pietro Mascagni all conducting their works there.

Another spectacular venue in Barcelona is the Palau de la Musica Catalana. This concert hall was constructed between 1905 and 1908, as the concert venue for the Chamber Choir of the Palau, the Orfeo Catala and the Choir School of Orfeo Catala. It was at this venue that I saw and heard Jose Carreras at a recital of Spanish songs. The Palau de la Musica Catalana hosts about 360 concerts a year – this translates to almost a concert a day for a year! They have a varied and enticing programme ranging from classical to jazz, and their annual Mozart in Jazz concert is a very popular one. The Sagrada Familia is also a must-see landmark. This imposing building was designed by Gaudi, and its construction began in 1882. Completion of construction is expected in 2026. There are several concerts in and around the city to raise money to help finance the construction of this amazing building. Barcelona presents an abundance of beautiful music and the city itself is definitely worth visiting! Only through preservation, reconstruction and refurbishment of historic buildings can a country preserve its rich history and this can happen only in countries whose citizens are proud of their history, their culture and their past. CF

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Black Tie

THE Ensemble Image Brenda Veldtman

South Africa currently has a gratifying array of classical music companies and organisations, not least of which is The Black Tie Ensemble, which has found a new home for their Sunday Morning Concerts at the Brooklyn Theatre in the Greenlyn Village Centre in Pretoria.

Bongiwe Madlala and members of The Black Tie Ensemble during the Christmas Concert 2009

anaged by Salon Music, the Brooklyn Theatre was previously known as The Performer. The venue has been beautifully renovated in the style of a small European opera house, and boasts a Steinway concert grand piano. Current Managing Director of BTE, Arnold Cloete says, ‘The Brooklyn Theatre is an established venue for classical music. Situated in the heart of Pretoria, it is a very welcoming and pleasant theatre’. The BTE performed Don Pasquale during their regular Sunday concert at the theatre in September and on 24 October they will present Best Opera Ever at 11h00. This late spring concert will feature eleven members of the BTE performing The Best Opera Ever, including arias, duets and ensemble works. The audience can expect a wide range of music from the most celebrated opera works to forgotten highlights. Countertenor Jonathan Watkins will perform the duet Vienie, Appaga il tuo consorte from Orfeo ed Euridice with Bongiwe Madlala. Watkins recently performed in the South African premier of the countertenor version of Christoph

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Wallibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. Loveline Madumo and Goitsemang Lehobye will sing the friendship duet Mira o Norma from Norma by Vincenzo Bellini. Madumo and Kewin Mann will perform arias from the ‘forgotten’ French opera Le Cid by Jules Massenet. Madumo will sing ‘Pleurez, pleurez’ and Mann will sing ‘O Souverain, o juge, o père’, two of the best known arias from this particular opera. The BTE’s October Sunday programme will also include ‘Mir ist so wunderbar’ from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fidelio, ‘Dunque proprio finita!’ from Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème and Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘Bella figlia dell’amore’ from Rigoletto. Other items on the programme include ‘Mitternacht’ from Frederick von Flotow’s Martha, ‘Nemico della patria’ and ‘La mamma morta’ from Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chénier. The full Black Tie Ensemble will also be performing Night of Stars... A Christmas Concert, produced by Classical Music Productions Windhoek, on 29 and 30 October in the Eros Dutch Reformed Church in the Namibian capital.

All these artists will be performing at the Sunday Morning Concert on 24 October.

Images Dewald von Solms Loveline Madumo (soprano), Jonathan Watkins (countertenor) and Louette Johnston (coloratura).

The Black Tie Ensemble also regularly performs at the Pro Musica in Roodeport and Ritrovo restaurant in Pretoria. A definite highlight on the BTE calendar, this year there will be two Christmas Concerts. The first will take place at 16h00 on 28 November at the Joburg Pro Musica Theatre and the second at 15h00 on 5 December in the ZK Matthews Great Hall on the UNISA Main Campus. Aiming to once again contribute to a children’s charity during the Christmas period, the BTE invites audience members to bring unwrapped gifts to these performances. Ritrovo has been one of the principal supporters of the BTE over the past decade and more, hosting a charity opera gala evening on the first Wednesday of every month in order to raise funds. Guests enjoy an intimate evening of operatic performance accompanied by delectable food and wine. Ritrovo originated the BTE’s ‘Adopt-an-artist’ scheme in 2000. This scheme encourages individuals and companies to contribute a monthly amount to cover individual Black Ties’ household expenses, allowing them more financial freedom to concentrate on their musical craft. For its contributions to this programme, Ritrovo earned a 2002 BASA Award for Sponsorship by a Small Business. The scheme is working well and most Black Ties are currently sponsored. Founded in 1999 by South African opera legend Mimi Coertse and costume designer Neels Hansen, the BTE consists of some of South Africa’s leading opera voices, exemplifying a diversity of cultures. The past eleven years has also seen the rise of the Black Tie Opera Chorus. Filling the need for a full-time opera chorus, BTE began assembling this ensemble, which now operates on a semi-professional basis. Launched in 2002, the Incubator Scheme, BTE’s in-house training programme, has seen talented

Bongiwe Madlala (soprano), Dikgang Mantoro (baritone) and Goitsemang Lehobye (soprano).

young singers receiving training and support from experienced vocal coaches, in addition to music theory lessons and skills development classes. With a view to ‘incubating’ professional, experienced singers, the scheme aims to have trainees join the permanent Ensemble after their three-year apprenticeship. In January 2010, at the Oude Libertas Theatre in Stellenbosch, BTE performed a programme made up of perennial favourites such as ‘O sole mio’, ‘Funiculi Funicula’ and ‘The Italian Street Song’. February saw two Valentine’s Day concerts at Melrose Arch in Johannesburg, while July brought The Magic of Opera at the Pro Musica. In September, the group staged The Black Tie Ensemble Celebrates Africa – One Voice at the Capital Arts Festival at the State Theatre. For this concert the BTE traversed a range of styles and genres including opera and African contemporary songs. Over the years, the singers of the BTE have also performed to great acclaim overseas in a variety of destinations, including the Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong; Graz and Vienna in Austria; Japan and Nigeria. With eight successful seasons behind them, the BTE promises great musical experiences for the remainder of 2010. Arnold Cloete says, ‘Although The Black Tie Ensemble are struggling financially the staff and the artists believe in the vision and mission of the company. We are all very serious about keeping the art of opera alive’. Bookings for upcoming BTE shows can be made through the Brooklyn Theatre (www.brooklyntheatre.co.za) or at Computicket (www.computicket.com) or 083 915 8000. For more details about the Black Tie Ensemble contact Madeleen Engelbrecht on 012 322 7944 or via e-mail at publicity@blackties.co.za. CF

Image *OHN (OGG

CROSSING CULTURES, CHOREOGRAPHY

CONTINENTS

Hanano, performed at the Dance Umbrella gala in 2008.

Sowetan-born dancer Vincent Mantsoe started out as a member of a local dance group – inspired by music videos, African traditions and township dance. Today he is an award-winning dancer and choreographer. CLASSICFEEL’s Natalie Watermeyer caught up with Mantsoe while he was in the country to take part in Crossings. 58

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f you have only ever seen award-winning choreographer and dancer Vincent Mantsoe in performance, meeting him in person is a little surprising. He’s not, for example, the bird-being he embodies in Gula, nor is he quite as big as he somehow appears while performing. Without his magnifying stage presence in effect, one might miss him in a crowd – which makes his metamorphosis on stage all the more arresting. It’s a kind of magic; or perhaps when he talks of the meditative transmission of energy through the body and the harnessing of ‘chi’ or inner forces described in certain Asian spiritual philosophies, he’s really on to something. Spirituality has always been a major influence in Mantsoe’s work. He continues to draw on traditional movements and ideas handed on to him by his sangoma mother. He acknowledges his wellspring of inspiration by performing certain rituals – ‘but not enough, because these days there’s not as much practice of the rituals, so it’s hard to recreate the right kind of environment,’ he says. He fuses this with influences drawn from a host of sources – Asian, in particular. ‘There’s a lot of common philosophy between African and Asian beliefs, whether they’re Indian, Chinese, Korean or Japanese... It’s really important to find those connections,’ he says. These days, Mantsoe is based in France, where he heads up his own dance company. He describes contemporary dance in his adopted country as ‘very ideas based, with a lot of conceptualised thinking’. ‘They like to provoke, to ask questions,’ he says. Choreographers, it seems, need to be prepared to explain and motivate their work in some detail. Mantsoe made France his permanent home several years ago, pushed and pulled respectively by his frustration at the lack of support for the arts in South Africa and the demand for his solo works abroad. It was not an easy decision, and the language barrier and lifestyle created predictable difficulties, yet he seems to have adapted well to life in a strange climate. ‘I’ve got my dance studio now... it’s great,’ he says. Mantsoe has made the trip home to South Africa twice this year – in February, to perform his latest work San, at this year’s FNB Dance Umbrella, and in August, to reunite briefly with Moving into Dance Mophatong and rework his multiple award-winning Hanano, an important work in South Africa’s contemporary dance canon. During this time he also took part in Crossings, an artistic workshop involving choreographers, dancers, composers and lighting designers from several countries around the world. Participants worked with the mentorship of leading practitioners in their fields: choreographer Michel Kelemenis, composers James Webb and Eva Koniger, lighting designer Florian Ganzevoort and Mantsoe himself.

Crossings took place in Newtown, and was initiated by the Newtown Dance Corner (made up of The Dance Factory, the Dance Forum, Moving into Dance Mophatong, and Vuyani Dance Theatre) along with the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS). The workshop spanned two weeks, during which time participants worked together on numerous projects, the idea being, ‘to share ideas, to improve and to stimulate different paths… to push people out of their box, to remove limitations,’ says Mantsoe. He describes the projects undertaken by the participants as deceptively simple; for example, in one week the participants were asked to engage in five tasks, creating twominute works around ideas such as ‘process’, ‘demarcation’, and ‘rapture’. The topic was initially given to the choreographer, who then communicated his or her interpretation of the concept to the composer, lighting designer and dancers of his or her group, allowing them to take these ideas and run with them. The following task was initiated with the composer’s ideas – and so on. At the end of each day, each group presented a sketch of a work for which they received feedback, tools that they could employ in the next task. ‘It’s intense,’ he says. Although the initiative culminated in the creation of pieces performed before an audience, Mantsoe is adamant that this was not the main point of the exercise; the important thing was that participants were stretched and inspired to go beyond their current safety zone. ‘The idea is to try to be as open as possible,’ he says – open to the exchange of ideas across both disciplines and cultures, which can be challenging. Not only is language sometimes a barrier, but the process of pushing creative boundaries can mean confronting one’s social and moral beliefs, questioning the foundations of one’s personal identity. Mantsoe mentions an incident where one participant was distraught at the thought of composing for a concept that she felt was sexually immoral. ‘It’s not easy,’ he says. ‘Sometimes you get difficulties – people fighting, having problems communicating’. Nevertheless, Mantsoe stresses the value of mentorship and exposure to different viewpoints and approaches in pushing artists to create new and exciting works. His fear is of a situation where dance works that differ significantly from the current canon struggle to find a forum for expression, creating a self-perpetuating stylistic straight jacket with little room for genuine experiment or innovation. ‘There was a point, four or five years ago, when everything looked the same,’ says Mantsoe of the South African dance scene. ‘No individual expression… The taste was the same; the smell was the same; there were no different ingredients.’ Hence the need for projects such as Crossings. ‘This is the first Crossings in Africa,’ he says. ‘It’s unique – these opportunities don’t come every day. To start with, it’s not only about composers, choreographers, lighting designers and so on, it’s about what works and what doesn’t work to make individual artistic development better for years to come.’ Hanano – along with Themba Mbuli’s Dark City and Batsumi by Thabo Rapoo, among other works – will be performed at Moving into Dance Mophatong’s season at The Dance Factory from October 21 - 24. To book tickets or for further information, please phone Nadia at MIDM on 011 838 2816. CF

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– A TRIBUTE TO PHYLLIS SPIRA

Dance inspiration 60

Phyllis Spira and Eduard Greyling in Orpheus in the Underworld

Philip Boyd with student Norma Mcinga

anging on the wall outside an upstairs studio in the Dance for All building in Aden Avenue, Athlone is a supremely joyous framed photograph of the school’s honorary life patron Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. Needless to say the Nobel Peace Prize winner, who was in such an exuberant mood at the FIFA World Cup™ Kick-Off Celebration Concert in Soweto, is dancing. This time he is flanked by two Dance for All (DFA) ballet girls on scholarship to Alexander Sinton High School. Inside the DFA studio on that late July, Friday afternoon, last minute rehearsals were underway for the 20th anniversary celebrations in the Artscape Opera Theatre. The logistics of getting 67 children of all ages from Gugulethu, Khayelitsha and Nyanga to the studios, then into the city, didn’t faze CEO Philip Boyd, or his amazing staff. This was business as usual for an organisation which has grown into a major institution. On the night of 1 August, Two Decades, One InSPIRAtion, the 20th celebration gala and tribute to the late co-artistic

director Phyllis Spira (1943 - 2008) went without a hitch. It was directed by acclaimed singer Aviva Pelham (who sang Celine Dion’s ‘Power of the Dream’ with little dancer Mbongeni Moyakhe) and co-produced by DFA founder Philip Boyd and dancer-choreographer-teacher Christopher Kindo. Teacher-choreographers Margie Sim, Ingrid Carlson, Adele Blank, Christopher Kindo, Bruno Wani and Hope Nongqongqo created and staged ballets and dance works in a programme which also demonstrated DFA’s status in the Cape Town dance world. The Cape Dance Company, La Rosa Spanish Dance Theatre (featuring two ex-DFA students), Cape Town City Ballet (with DFA graduate Xola Putye partnering Megan Swart in the Don Quixote pas de deux), Jazzart Dance Theatre and the UCT School of Dance all participated in this fundraiser. After interval and a moving film collage of Spira in her prime, guest of honour, Western Cape Premier and Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille recalled how the ballerina inspired her when she was a schoolgirl. ‘The Arch’, as the world famous cleric is fondly known, also paid tribute to a remarkable chapter in our cultural history. Only a week after announcing his impending retirement from public life, the iconic 79-year-old performed a half mast arabesque and a cross between a grande battement and a soccer kick on stage. Then he thanked Phyllis and Phillip for finding ‘so many beautiful feet’ to fit the ballet slippers and ‘for unveiling incredible talent’. Twenty years ago those feet and that talent from the townships of Cape Town weren’t regarded in most (read White) influential ballet circles as suitable for this art form. Philip Boyd, the Johannesburg-raised former principal dancer of CAPAB Ballet Company, was married to Prima Ballerina Assoluta Phyllis Spira from 1986. When he started Ballet for All it was in the spirit of the late ballet pioneer David Poole who began teaching in Gugulethu and Nyanga in the 1980s. Ballet for All began in a Gugulethu classroom, in 1991, as a CAPAB Ballet Company development programme, with 34 children. Two decades later this initiative, not without its growing pains and tragedies, touches the lives of 1 500 children in Cape Town and in the Western Cape Outreach programme. Youngsters in Barrydale, Montagu, McGregor, Bonnievale and Nkubela near Robertson also have the opportunity to learn discipline and

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Tribute director Aviva Pelham and dancer Mbongeni Moyakhe in performance

UK, outreach project student Theo Ndindwa returned home and founded the iKapa Dance Theatre in 2007. Another DFA achiever is 26-year-old Noluyanda. In My Tribute to Phyllie, her mesmeriz–ing, self-choreographed gala solo, the shaven-headed dancer in a red dress inflamed her classically trained body with African rhythms and undulations in response to a Nina Simone song. This young artist is also an accomplished teacher. Her professional dancing career began in Switzerland with the Cinevox Junior Company. The full-time InSPIRAtions Dance Co. folded after a few months in 2009. For economic survival Mqulwana, like too many of her South African peers, is now on contract in Disney’s The Lion King in Singapore. But it seems from the interaction with her contemporary ballet students, who danced her African-spiced Ba Nke with flair, DFA will always be her creative home. The celebration was aptly performed on the same stage where Spira enjoyed many triumphs and enchanted so many audiences for close to 30 years. Her last public appearance, weeks before her death on 11 March 2008, was in this same venue as a judge in the first South African International Ballet Competition where her presence was adoringly recognised each day.

“A secret ingredient of this success story is the emphasis on professionalism, at every level, and the tangible spirit of aspiration”

focus, and hone their creativity in these satellite schools. Drugs, gangsterism, foetal alcohol syndrome, poverty, the ravages of HIV/AIDS as well as other social obstacles and ills come with the territory. That hasn’t stopped the remarkable teachers, who have often put their lives at risk, the proactive board members, the dedicated staff (including outreach co-ordinator Hope Nongqongqo who started as a DFA student), magnanimous donors and an impressive list of dance professionals and international volunteers from making a difference. Two major milestones were the formation of the DFA Youth Company in 2005, and moving into DFA’s Dance Centre in 2007, thanks to the Ackerman Family Foundation. A secret ingredient of this success story is the emphasis on professionalism, at every level, and the tangible spirit of aspiration. As has been the case in notable South African dance and theatre development initiatives since the mid-1970s the performing arts have been a ticket out of despair and into education and employment. DFA has, to date, produced 25 professional dancers, teachers and administrators who work at home or abroad. Their training in ballet, African, Spanish, jazz and contemporary dance, as well as choreography, have stood them in excellent stead. For example, after furthering his education in the

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The gala tribute opened with Philip Boyd and former CAPAB Ballet Company colleagues Ann Lloyd, Nicolette Loxton, Carol Kinsey, Johann Jooste, Juanita Yazbek, Lynne Domancie, Allison Foat, and Spira’s long-time partner Eduard Greyling paying moving tribute under a suspended portrait of her in costume. Printed tributes festooned the theatre’s foyer and abounded in the programme. They included an accolade from fellow Joburger, the Royal Ballet’s director, Dame Monica Mason. Born in Johannesburg on 18 October 1943, Spira, who studied with Reina Berman, went to the Royal Ballet School to London when she was 16. Five years later, after dancing as a soloist with the Royal Ballet Company she returned home, giving up a promising international career. Her first legendary partnership was with Gary Burne at PACT Ballet (1963 - 1964) and then at CAPAB Ballet Company from 1965. Many parents of the Dance for All students weren’t yet born when Phyllis Spira reigned supreme as a ballerina and then a ballet mistress, but most of them have personal memories of the delicate woman with the steely determination, who helped drive their school with Philip Boyd, and change their lives for the better. That’s a patriotic legacy that outstrips any tutu or tiara. CF

ACT DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME FUNDED BY NEDBANK ARTS AFFINITY

PROGRAMME SUPPORTED BY

SUPPORTING SOUTH AFRICAN CREATIVITY NEDBANK IS A FOUNDING TRUSTEE of the Arts & Culture Trust (ACT) and funds the ACT Development Programme which enhances the continued development of arts and culture in South Africa by providing support for artistic excellence in creative production, professional development, and training for the youth in the form of onceoff grants. ACT is South Africaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s premier, independent arts funding and development agency. Support ACT by opening a Nedbank Arts Affinity current account, credit card account, savings account and/or investment account today and support South African creativity through your everyday banking. Visit any Nedbank branch, call 0860 DO GOOD (0860 36 4663), or for more information, visit www.nedbankarts.co.za

WWW.ACT.ORG.ZA

Image Wikimedia Commons

Music,

MYSTIQUE AND MONEY: THE ALLURE OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

Spanish Stradivarius II of c. 1687, on exhibit at Palacio Real de Madrid

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Musical instruments, whether they are they owned by collectors or practising musicians, are highly prized possessions.

ohn Lennon’s piano – a Steinway, yet not a particularly exceptional one, being an upright inadvertently decorated with cigarette burns – recently sold for a record amount, making it the world’s most expensive piano. It brought in £1.45 million at auction, following a bidding war that developed between the eventually victorious George Michael and several others drawn by the glamour of the upright’s provenance – this was the piano upon which Lennon composed ‘Imagine’. After using it in recording his own album, Michael sent it to a museum in Liverpool, to be appreciated by legions of Beatles fans. For collectors, musical instruments generally acquire their allure either through their provenance (either in having been owned by a famous musician, as in the case of Lennon’s piano, or having been authenticated or signed by a celebrated musician) or by dint of the instrument itself. The most obvious example of the latter is the sought-after Stradivarius. The stringed instruments, created by the Stradivari family – Antonio (1644 - 1737) in particular – are believed to demonstrate an excellence of craftsmanship matched by few. Around 650 Stradivari are believed to exist today, and these instruments repeatedly earn the highest amounts at auction for musical instruments, rivalled only by the lesser known, far scarcer creations of Giuseppe Guarneri, a later contemporary of Antonio Stradivari. While Stradivari, a perfectionist, earned a reputation for consistency and the excellent finish of his instruments, Guarneri experimented constantly with design details, sometimes producing apparently crude violins capable of a remarkable sound much prized by some soloists. The quality of sound created by the instruments of Stradivari and Guarneri are believed by many to be exceptional, impossible to recreate using modern techniques. This has been attributed to everything from the quality of the wood used (denser, apparently, due to the ‘Little Ice Age’ in Europe 300 years ago) to the lost secrets of the luthiers of the time. And yet, neither blind tests conducted since the early 1800s nor acoustic analyses have succeeded in successfully demonstrating this claim to superior sound. Nevertheless, both remain highly sought after, with collectors prepared to pay millions of dollars in acquiring them. From the stringed instruments of 17th century Italy

to those of the present: today’s modern collectables include ranges of guitars dedicated to iconic guitar heroes. Former Guns ‘n Roses guitarist Slash has several Gibson Les Paul guitar models named for him; produced in limited numbers, the guitars have popular appeal to Slash’s legion of fans. Usually, instruments that attain collectable status in this way will be less valuable than those that owe their cachet to having been owned and played by the star in question; but this is not always the case. A Fender Stratocaster signed by a veritable ‘who’s who’ of rock – including Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Brian May, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, Pete Townshend, Mark Knopfler, Ray Davies, Liam Gallagher, Ronnie Wood, Tony Iommi, Angus and Malcolm Young, Sting, Ritchie Blackmore, Def Leppard, Jeff Beck, and Bryan Adams – brought in $2.7 million when sold at auction in 2005 to raise funds for victims of the tsunami; knocking Eric Clapton’s guitar ‘Blackie’ from the top of the ‘most expensive’ guitar list in the process. Clearly, musical instruments are valuable possessions, and as such, should be insured. Specialist insurance should take into account the nature of the instrument, which determines to a large extent the risks to which they are subject – for example, it is far easier to steal a Stradivarius than a Steinway, although both can be easily damaged. For the most part, the challenges in insuring musical instruments are similar to those entailed when covering artworks in general: the value of the item should be established upfront; if loaned, should be covered by an adequate agreement; and it may be necessary to pay attention to how the item is housed (many instruments are susceptible to humidity, etc.) and how – and by whom – it is transported. Here an issue more or less unique to musical instruments can come into play: not only are they valuable items to collectors, they are also, first and foremost, tools of the musician’s trade. As such, many instruments travel with their owners as they jet from performance to performance. Consequently, musicians may find themselves forced to relinquish their instruments while on board. Specialist insurance should take this into account, and provide cover in the event that the item is stolen or damaged in this eventuality. Finally, there are some things that insurance won’t cover: if Pete Townshend smashes his guitar on stage, he’s on his own. CF

Glorious history, ENGAGED PRESENT, BRIGHT FUTURE

The Market Theatre Foundation grapples with the question of relevance on a daily basis; only too aware of its ‘glorious history’, engaging daily with the present, and employing a critical eye towards creating a bright future. CLASSICFEEL’s Emily Amos interviewed Sibongiseni Mkhize, CEO of The Market Theatre Foundation and Malcolm Purkey, the current artistic director, to learn more.

o person and certainly no institution can afford to simply ‘rest on their laurels’ if they wish to actively contribute in any industry in the 21st century – the world moves too fast. Today The Market Theatre Foundation consists of The Market Theatre, and its ‘complementary wings’ – The Laboratory and the Market Photo Workshop. The Foundation began in the depths of apartheid; geared towards resistance. In the words of Malcolm Purkey, ‘This is a great tradition of theatre fuelled by the fires of apartheid and the anti-apartheid movement. That’s also the soul of the institution’. He remembers the early days, ‘The risk taking of the first generation of artists – Mannie Manim, Barney Simon, the company and then all the work that emerged in the early 80s through to the State of Emergency of ’86. I mean extraordinary – an historic bundle of theatre worthy of any of the great theatre traditions of the world’. According to Sibongiseni Mkhize, ‘The reason why it even started in 1976 was to start a theatre which was a space for artistic expression for South Africans from diverse backgrounds; it’s always been a home for all, and for many years, the theatre was the space that enabled artists from all kinds of backgrounds to come together and share in that experience. So I think that at the heart of it is the theatre, and the other activities or the wings of the Foundation, when they emerged later… fitted into the bigger picture which is the theatre’. Purkey takes a simple, direct management approach to The Market Theatre and what it can and does offer: ‘The first principle is to stage work that is so compelling that nobody can ignore it. The second point is to make sure that people know about it. And the third point is that when they come here they have a good time’. Certainly for some theatre-goers there still seems to be some sort of psychological block to visiting the area; a hangover from the turbulent period of the 80s and 90s, and perceptions of the city as a dirty, crime ridden area perhaps? But today, this is certainly not true of the Newtown precinct, Joburg’s cultural heartland.

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Says Purkey, ‘That psychological block about danger in the city is very, very hard to shake.’ Asked why people should visit Newtown, the Head of the Laboratory, Matjamela Motloung has this to say: ‘Newtown breathes and lives the spirit of Johannesburg. It provides hospitality and entertainment that is rare for any city in the world; one can enjoy the science museum at Sci Bono, enjoy children’s dance and theatre classes at the MID/ Dance Factory and The Lab respectively, learn how to take photographs at the Photo Workshop and take pictures at the Bassline while enjoying great live music, and when tired from all that excitement, pop in to Sophiatown, Gramadoelas or Niki’s Oasis for a hearty meal and finish up the day with a play at the internationally renowned Market Theatre.’ Mkhize in turn emphasises, ‘If they were to come down here, they would realise that this is a place where people are friendly and welcoming’. Purkey points out that recent years have seen exciting changes in the audience demographic, ‘We’ve learnt that there’s a new audience that’s emerged and actually it’s been thirty years in the training at The Market Theatre – basically an 80 percent black audience at The Market Theatre… It is part of the new elite, the new intelligentsia, part of the new middle class and I think that’s fascinating because there’s a hunger and it’s not an anxious hunger; it’s not a negative hunger. It’s not, “Oh God, we’re in trouble”. It’s, “Oh goodness me, there are challenges. What can we do about them?” And that means that there’s a positive energy in the community… and part of that positive energy is to engage in the theatre, provided that we engage back.’ This is critical for the current programmes of The Market Theatre. Looking at the context within which it operates and contributes today, Purkey has this to say, ‘We’re in a different period for sure, it’s not the same as having a clear anti-apartheid stance against a great monster. So our art is now more diverse, our topics are more diverse; we have subcultures, we have

Image DeskLink

Image courtesy of The Market Theatre Foundation The Market Theatre

playfulness, we have irony, we have looseness and we also have the move towards more private writing’. In the interview he goes further stating, ‘The Market Theatre has built its whole reputation on this notion of a hunger for knowledge and information and soul and community in times of crisis… [From] 2004 onwards, we could say that the state has been throwing up beautiful crisis… which is not going to go away easily; it is fuelling the next generation of theatre makers’. Mkhize describes the significance of The Market Theatre Foundation in 2010: ‘It’s a kind of theatre that if you want to understand what it means to be South The entrance to The Market Theatre African, especially after 1994 with the new South Africa emerging, if you want to by Purkey, the play was premiered at the National Arts Festival understand the kinds of issues that are coming out, how the arts in June, had a short season at the Baxter and then went to the community interprets the new South Africa and how it engages the Edinburgh International Festival where it was sold out, receiving new South Africa, The Market Theatre is the best place to come ‘very favourable critical attention’ according to Purkey. It’s going and actually engage with the kinds of issues, the kinds of concerns to Newcastle, Glasgow, and Sweden too before it comes to the that people have about the new South Africa’. Market. With regards to the work of the theatre Purkey is proud to In international terms, echoing Purkey’s belief in the importance say, ‘We clean up at the Naledi [Theatre Awards] almost every year of The Market Theatre and its work, Mkhize says, ‘I think it must be with new plays, and not often ‘easy’ plays. Think of The Suitcase, a source of pride for anyone in South Africa to know that there is a think of Ten Bush, think of Thirst, think of Death of a Colonialist, theatre that finds a way of touring South African work… because… we think of Mike van Graan’s work’. don’t have much of our own culture, our own experience being shared Moving on to The Lab specifically, Mkhize, Purkey and with the world… Whether we talk about The Market Theatre nationally or globally – we haven’t abandoned our vision, we will always make sure Motloung all seem to agree on the critical role it plays. Motloung describes it thus: ‘The Lab is an institution that is renowned that we take South African arts and culture to the world’. for unearthing and providing training of the highest quality to Theatre-goers can look forward to seeing The Girl in the individuals that have gone on to become leading arts practitioners Yellow Dress at The Market Theatre soon. Written by Craig in SA, for me it has been an opportunity to expand and share my Higginson, the Literary Manager of the Foundation, and directed

Images courtesy of The Market Theatre Foundation

Matjamela Motloung, head of The Laboratory

vision, skills and passion for development arts. I believe the main purpose of The Lab is to find, nurture and expose talent, while encouraging socio-economic development in rural areas and townships across South Africa.’ He talks about the recent annual community theatre festival, ‘which saw 37 new plays from across South Africa being showcased, and the launch of the Barney Simon Resource Centre, ‘where emerging artists and theatre companies can come in and use The Lab as a research, writing and networking facility’. For Mkhize, ‘Institutions like The Lab are vital in ensuring that, in as much as we’ve got an emphasis on science and commerce… people are reminded that the arts are also very important – attending to people’s souls’. Of the future for The Lab he says, ‘I would like to see it growing in such a way that The Lab and the theatre start working very, very closely and the Lab starts to shape the direction, or starts to influence the way The Market Theatre is going’. Motloung sees The Lab as, ‘a catalyst for theatre development in South Africa, finding and producing the best township, rural and new community-based theatre for mainstream audiences’. With regards to the Market Photo Workshop (MPW), John Fleetwood, the head, sees its past and present thus: ‘As a school of photography, a resource centre for practising photographers, and a gallery, the Market Photo Workshop has played an integral role in the training and growth of South Africa’s photographers for more than twenty years; ensuring that visual literacy reaches those in neglected and marginalised parts of our society. Informing photographers, visual artists, educators, students and the broader community of the trends, issues and debates in photographic practice, the Market Photo Workshop

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Sibongiseni Mkhize, The Market Theatre Foundation CEO

John Fleetwood, head of the Market Photo Workshop

is an agent of change and representation in the continued development of South Africa’s visual poets.’ For the future he feels, ‘The Photo Workshop has always dynamically engaged with debates within photography and society; through this and in reaction to this MPW has established its projects and courses. We hope to be able to continue with this. There are many interesting questions to address that relate to photography in its role of documenting art, media, research and archive. Our challenge in the next five years is going to be to address this through our curriculum and projects in a way that will ensure that we continue to produce great and exciting photographers’. A recent highlight of the MPW’s work is the World Cup Rural & Urban Photo Diary which saw ‘a group of 25 individuals with differing perspectives contribute, resulting in a dynamic collection of stories about the experience. The project aimed to create an alternative to the mainstream media understanding of the World Cup – in depth stories and personal views’. Readers can go to www.marketphotoworkshop.co.za/2010diary and view some of the breathtaking images of this project. Looking to what The Market Theatre Foundation is offering in the immediate future, arts and culture lovers can expect a Master Class in Photography from the MPW with Jo Ractliffe, the annual Zwakala Festival from The Lab, John Kani in Nothing but the Truth and of course, The Girl in the Yellow Dress at The Market Theatre. Contemplating The Market Theatre Foundation’s past, present and future, Mkhize believes, ‘It’s important that everyone who has got the means to support the arts do so, because I think in a country like ours, that is still grappling with the identity of a new South Africa, we need the arts, there is no way that you can live without the arts.’ CF

Exhibitions

AND EVOLUTIONS: CAVERSHAM AT 25 Celebrating 25 years of printmaking history the Standard Bank Gallery presents People, Prints and Process: Twenty-Five Years at Caversham in October. The exhibition features work by a multitude of artists – among them William Kentridge, David Koloane, Magkabo Helen Sebidi and the late Robert Hodgins. CLASSICFEEL’s Lore Watterson spoke to founder Malcolm Christian, about the ongoing evolution of Caversham Press. Image Standard Bank/ DeskLink Media

aversham, the actual location of the Caversham Press and the Caversham Centre, is a very small place in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, some 30 minutes north of Pietermaritzburg. The directions were somewhat vague: ‘next to the Caversham Mill and next to the other famous Caversham art centre, Ardmore’. Having learned that the Caversham Press was situated in an old Wesleyan church we were on the lookout for a place that would resemble a churchyard when suddenly a gate opened and we saw the Caversham sign. With typical, friendly hospitality, it was the owner and founder Malcolm Christian himself, who had been on the lookout for us, and now welcomed us to his home ‘in the churchyard and among the graves’. We also found ourselves among the cottages built for the resident artists and writers at the Caversham Centre. The day of our visit was cold and windy, and the warm tea offered went well with the interview in the studio right above the actual press. Here we settled among prints, frames and books to find out more about the last 25 years of Caversham Press and its metamorphosis into the present Caversham Centre. ‘When we set up here in 1985, the idea was to duplicate what you find in a university fine arts department,’ says Malcolm Christian recounting the origins of Caversham Press. ‘To provide the facilities to do etching and drypoint, to do screen print, and eventually to do lithography etc. so that artists could move from one process to another.’ According to Christian, the knowledge of fine art printmaking and the market for fine art prints was virtually non-existent at that time. ‘That growth of starting out, exploring and discovering new territory, was just such an exciting element,’ he says. ‘If I hadn’t been at Wits University – I lectured there for five years – I probably wouldn’t have been able to set Caversham up, because friends and colleagues came from Johannesburg, where the market existed – people like

Malcolm Christian

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Lynne Allen, My Winter Count, 1999. Screen print, lithograph and colle. 66.5 x 97 cm. William Kentridge, Adaptability Compliance, 2000. Etching, dry point and Chine Colle. 25 x 33.5cm.

Deborah Bell, Salutations, 1997. Etching, dry point and Chine Colle. 49.5 x 34 cm.

Joseph Manana, Hamba Kahle, 1998. Screen print. 33 x 59.2 cm.

Helen Magkabo Sebidi, Lebelo le a jelwa, 1995. Screen print. 43.6 x 76 cm.

Kentridge, Hodgins and Bell with whom we worked... in the early days.’ Throughout the history of Caversham Press, now celebrating 25 years with the retrospective exhibition at Standard Bank Gallery, major turning points in the institution’s evolutionary development seem to have been instigated or accompanied by important projects or exhibitions. The first of these, the project to set Caversham in motion, was the 1985 Johannesburg Centenary portfolio published by Brenthurst and involving five artists. ‘That was the project that really gave me the courage to buy this derelict old church and set up this dream of a printmaking studio – something which hadn’t been done before – to bring my two little kids and wife to reside amongst all the graves,’ recalls Christian. ‘When we started Caversham, it was as an open access studio – it was to work with artists who weren’t able to access universities; for

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printmaking you need the facilities. And really, it only dawned on me when we put our first exhibition together for Standard Bank at Grahamstown in 1990 – Five Years at Caversham – that I realised that because of the economic imperative... we were excluding many of the people that I’d anticipated working with. So I started running technique training workshops in a variety of different processes, as an introduction to younger artists – mainly artists from disadvantaged backgrounds. I also changed the way we were working to a collaborative approach. I literally said, “What do you have that you can bring to the meal?” And “What do I have? I have the knowledge and the process and the materials, and you have the image and the imagination and inspiration”. And then we started working on that basis – so it became a collaborative publishing venture rather than a contractual one.’ The dawning awareness that financial restrictions ultimately excluded those they had hoped to reach led Caversham to

establish a non-profit education trust in 1993. This was initially funded by the Christian family themselves but as interest in the educational project developed, they decided to establish a nonprofit trust and apply for funding. Caversham’s 1995 exhibition formed the basis for this: ‘The Spirit of Our Stories, working with the storyteller Gcina Mhlope. She gave us stories, and we gathered stories, and then the young artists used those as sources of inspiration‚’ recalls Christian. Three years later the exhibition Note and Song followed, looking at music and poetry. At this time, says Christian, Caversham reached an important turning point, propelled in part by a sense of exhaustion, along with several other factors: ‘What had happened was that William [Kentridge] Robert [Hodgins] and Deborah [Bell] produced the Ubu portfolio, and suddenly things really took off. I think it was really the first time ever that an edition was sold literally before it was printed. So there was that critical element as well. But I think mainly it was this deep sense of “I cannot continue – I’ve got to decide what I am contributing as a legacy”... it was really saying, you need to take it to the next step’. Once the decision was made to change direction, Christian says events conspired to make the path ahead quite clear. ‘Whenever a critical decision of huge impact happens, the signposts are so clearly marked that you really don’t make a mistake,’ he says. ‘It’s the small things that have vagueness about them’. Out of the blue, they received an unsolicited grant from the WK Kellogg Foundation through John Samuel. ‘He phoned me up and said, “Do you remember us sitting on the veranda, talking and dreaming about what an impact it would have to expand this facility to an international community, to bring people from overseas to South Africa to work with South Africans?” And I said, “Yes,” and he said, “As a newly appointed director at Kellogg we get what we call a PIF [Personal Initiative Fund] which is a discretionary fund – we can actually allocate it to any programme that we like. Here is $70 000”!’ The offer did not come without accompanying challenges. Samuel wanted Christian to explore the idea of residencies, build the required infrastructure and run pilot projects before the end of the foundation’s financial year the following May. ‘This was July, so there was no time, and there was no experience, I didn’t know what residencies were,’ recalls Christian. Yet once again help came from an unexpected quarter. ‘Within ten days I got a phone call from a friend of mine saying, “I have somebody from Atlanta here, director of the Fulton County Art Council, and she’s looking to set up South African partnerships.” I said, “You’ve got to bring her”’. When Christian explained his dilemma to Director Harriet Sanford, she offered to get him an invitation to the annual meeting of the Alliance of Artists’ Communities,

which was happening a couple of months later in San Antonio. ‘I’d never been to the States,’ recalls Christian. ‘What they were dealing with was how to set up a residency programme!’ From these fortuitous encounters, Caversham’s metamorphosis took place. ‘What we did with that residency, was introduce it over a two month period with 15 women artists, with three arriving in the beginning. Then one would leave and another would come – overlapping. We exhibited the works in Atlanta at the beginning of the millennium, and from there onward, because of the success of that, we set up Caversham Centre for Artists and Writers – and that’s what this is now, instead of Caversham Press,’ explains Christian. ‘Caversham Press still continues, with Ros and myself, but then you had the Education Trust and now you have Caversham Centre.’ And so to 2010. This year Caversham fittingly celebrates 25 years of evolution with a retrospective exhibition featuring works from their major projects – many of which have served as important milestones along the way. People, Prints and Process:

“That growth of starting out, exploring and discovering new territory, was just such an exciting element”

Twenty-Five Years at Caversham includes the work of more than 70 of the artists who have collaborated with Caversham over the last quarter of a century, and it features over 100 works produced during this time. ‘It brings to the fore the nature of Caversham,’ says Christian of the forthcoming exhibition reflecting on the changes they have undergone throughout 25 years of development. ‘I think in some ways that it’s the nature of Caversham as well as myself – that you trust the process; the process in some ways dictates what comes out’. In addition to celebrating the collaborations of Caversham, another exhibition is being prepared by Malcolm Christian and David Koloane at the same time. This will be shown at the University of Boston in February 2011 and is eagerly awaited by their American supporters. Since Christian refers frequently to the spirituality of Caversham, the spirits who somehow seem to influence his decisions and the work done at the centre, one can only assume that these spirits have recognised the tremendous talent present at this tranquil, beautiful place right in the middle of the KZN Midlands, and may they long continue their influence. CF

Thank you and goodbye Images courtesy of Goodman Gallery

Throughout his artistic career, Sam Nhlengethwa has frequently returned to the subject of jazz – a theme that he has said ‘simply inspires me’. A Kind of Blue – his tribute to Miles Davis’s groundbreaking album – heralds his farewell to the subject, while paying tribute to one of the most celebrated jazz albums of all time.

‘J

Sam Nhlengethwa, Backstage, 2010, mixed media on paper

azz is rhythmic and it emphasizes interpretation rather than composition,’ Nhlengethwa once told an interviewer, explaining his repeated return to the theme. ‘There are deliberate tonal distortions that contribute to its uniqueness. My jazz collages, with their distorted patterns, attempt to communicate all of this. As a collagist and painter fortunately, the technique allows me this freedom of expression.’ Last year marked the 50th anniversary of A Kind of Blue, Miles Davis’s masterpiece, regarded by many as one of the world’s greatest and most influential jazz albums. For Nhlengethwa, this heralded a coincidental opportunity to say goodbye to what has long been a rich seam of inspiration, while marking Davis’s 1959 achievement. Something of a surprise hit – not least to its creators, Davis and his sextet, consisting of drummer Jimmy Cobb, bassist Paul Chambers, pianists Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly, and legendary saxophonists John Coltrane and Julian ‘Cannonball’ Adderley – the album became one of the best selling albums of all time, despite being largely experimental.

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Whereas in the past Davis had incorporated modal elements into his largely ‘hard bop’ style – most notably on the albums Milestones and 1958 Miles – A Kind of Blue was unique in being entirely modal, with each performer improvising within a given set of scales. ‘No chords... gives you a lot more freedom and space to hear things,’ said Davis of the modal approach. ‘You don’t have to worry about changes and you can do more with the [melody] line. It becomes a challenge to see how melodically innovative you can be. When you’re based on chords, you know at the end of 32 bars that the chords have run out and there’s nothing to do but repeat what you’ve just done—with variations. I think a movement in jazz is a beginning away from the conventional string of chords... there will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.’ As was Davis’s wont, the album was recorded with virtually no rehearsal, and the band members given only an outline of the scales and melody lines they were to use in improvising. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the result was outstanding – a revolutionary album. As one commentator noted, ‘It wasn’t just

Sam Nhlengethwa, The Leaders, 2010, mixed media on paper

one tune that was a breakthrough, it was the whole record’. Nhlengethwa recalls that in his youth, everyone possessed a copy of the record; today, he says he still listens to the album on a weekly basis. Hence his tribute to A Kind of Blue – his first exhibition to focus solely on a particular album, and his last to draw on jazz. Composed of around 30 small-scale works – etchings, lithographs, paintings and media collage drawings, mostly monochromatic and all inspired by Davis’s experimental album – Nhlengethwa’s work is accompanied by the continuous playing of A Kind of Blue, allowing the viewer to immediately access the artist’s source of inspiration. Jazz was an integral part of Nhlengethwa’s life growing up. Born into a family of jazz devotees, his own passion for the music and its consequent influence has long been evident in his work. Born in the mining community of Payneville, Springs in 1955, Nhlengethwa attended Bill Ainslie’s Johannesburg Art Foundation, and later went on to graduate with a fine art diploma

from Rorke’s Drift Art Centre in 1978. During the 1980s his work began to attract international attention, appearing in group exhibitions in several European countries as well as the United States. In 1995, It Left Him Cold – Nhlengethwa’s tribute to Steve Biko – appeared as part of Seven Stories About Modern Art at London’s Whitechapel Gallery, a politically inspired exhibition curated by David Koloane. Nhlengethwa has received several prestigious awards, including in 1994, the Standard Bank Young Artist Award, and has works in numerous important corporate and public art collections. Throughout this time he has returned to jazz, both as a subject and as a source of inspiration for his method and approach to work. Now Nhlengethwa has reached the end of that road. With the 50th anniversary of A Kind of Blue, Nhlengethwa bid jazz a final goodbye – in his work, at least. ‘It was not an easy decision,’ he says. ‘I’ve been doing jazz from time to time; I feel that I’ve done enough.’ CF

Images courtesy of Karkloof Spa Wellness and Wildlife Retreat/ DeskLink Media

Timeless

CLASSICFEEL discovered that a weekend at the Karkloof Spa Wellness and Wildlife Retreat, situated on a beautiful 3 500 hectare game reserve just outside of Pietermaritzburg, makes for a truly timeless experience.

t is not necessary to pack a watch or alarm clock when preparing for a visit to the Karkloof Spa; it is a very different experience from staying at any other game lodge because here the visitor decides what to do and when. Breakfast in the afternoon is no problem at all. There’s no getting up at some ungodly hour to join the game drive – unless that’s what you want of course. Mealtimes and scheduling of game drives and hikes (or for the really energetic visitor, mountain bike rides) are entirely at the visitor’s discretion. The main attraction at Karkloof Spa is of course the spa itself. Like the game lodge, it was built to embrace, incorporate and form part of its natural surrounds. It features 17 luxurious treatment rooms, all with wonderful views over the surrounding bush and gardens. The ecodesign incorporates natural materials that invite game to graze right on the doorstep. Facilities include a glass-fronted hand and foot ceremonial lounge, Moroccan-flavoured Rassoul, flotation pool, Kneipp therapy pools, open-air Jacuzzi, sauna and steam rooms and a Reflections Lounge. An exotic list of natural treatments is offered and carried out by a team of handpicked, exceptionally skilled Thai therapists. Over a superb glass of wine from the well-stocked wine cellar, Karkloof’s owner, Fred Wörner, an avid spa-goer himself, told CLASSICFEEL how the Spa is the product of years of overseas travel, combining all the best parts of all the finest spas he has experienced. The concept behind this most expansive ecofriendly spa in Africa was the creation of a truly stress-free experience. This concept doesn’t end at indulgent spa treatments or dispensing with the limiting schedules associated with game lodges, but extends even further – a stay at Karkloof is a truly all-inclusive one. There are no additional costs on top of the accommodation: meals, drinks, game drives and any spa treatment the visitor could wish for are all included in the rate. One of the Spa’s specialities is a Thai massage for deep relaxation. In typical Fred Wörner style, he set out to bring in no less than 18 Thai therapists to offer this special treatment to his visitors. Karkloof Spa is located just 24km from Pietermaritzburg, in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands and is a luxury boutique lodge with

16 individually decorated villas, each ensuring total privacy for the visitor. Each villa has a private deck that allows the visitor to do a bit of ‘game spotting’ while enjoying a leisurely sundowner or a meal. In fact, at one point, we received a visit from a rather friendly family of nyala – a beautiful experience indeed. The next morning the first sight we saw was a giraffe strolling elegantly down the valley, stopping now and then to sample the plentiful greenery. Apparently the properties around Karkloof Spa have not changed much over the years. They consist mainly of timber, beef, dairy and vegetable farms – right next door is a farm that grows organic avocados. At Karkloof, the bathrooms are plentifully stocked with beauty products made from these avocados – a welcome addition to the experience. But what has changed over the past 15 years is that the wildlife has been recognised as an asset and as such is being nurtured and protected. In the mid-1980s the Karkloof Valley became the first part of the property to be used solely for wildlife tourism, and the nearby Albert Falls Nature Reserve began introducing buffalo, giraffe and rhino. However, the areas set aside for wildlife remained small and fragmented, until the establishment of Karkloof Spa and its surrounding property, called Ihlanze farm. This has led to the consolidation of land in the Karkloof, Umgeni and Umgenyana valleys. Ihlanze is large enough to be considered a viable area for the conservation of biodiversity. Today a game drive at Karkloof Spa will most probably include the sighting of white and black rhino, buffalo, giraffe, zebra, blue wildebeest, eland, kudu, nyala, hippo, bushbuck, impala and warthog. Over our wine we also discussed the general state of tourism in South Africa. As Fred Wörner explained, Karkloof Spa Wellness and Wildlife Retreat has received numerous awards, but the most exciting accolade has been its acceptance into the Relais & Châteaux family. Karkloof Spa was officially inaugurated as a member of Relais & Châteaux at the 35th International Relais & Châteaux Congress held in Biarritz, France between 16 and 18 November 2009 – a high honour for a unique destination. For bookings enquiries and reservations contact: 033 569 1321 or email reservations@karkloofspa.com. CF

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Berlin Cathedral

Inside the Reichstag Dome

Magnificent Berlin Images 7IKIMEDIA #OMMONS

Berlin first emerged as a major settlement during the Middle Ages. It went on to become the seat of government for the Kingdom of Prussia, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. Divided post World War II, and reunited to become the capital of the modern German state in 1990, Berlin is far more than just the city of ‘the wall’.

efying the ruination of WWII bombing and the East-West split, Berlin is one of the richest cities in Europe in terms of its history, culture, architecture, art and the vibrant, contemporary urban living it offers. The city thrives on music, offering a grand array of opera houses and celebrated opera companies to perform in them. Originally inaugurated in 1912 as the Opernhaus, Deutsche Oper Berlin was reopened in 1961 and is currently Germany’s biggest opera house. Designed for the works of Wagner, Verdi, Puccini and Strauss amongst others, the Deutsche Oper has hosted 112 world premieres in the last century. Its current repertoire consists of about 70 operas. The Komische Oper Berlin opened under the name Theater Unter den Linden in 1892. Following several name changes, in 1947 Austrian director Walter Felsenstein founded the Komische Oper Company which has specialised in German language productions of opera, operetta and musicals. For the 2006/07

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season this opera company was named the ‘opera house of the year’ and the choir was lauded as the ‘choir of the year’ by Opernwelt magazine. Originally known as Court Opera (Hofoper) the Berlin State Opera opened in 1742. Destroyed by fire in 1841, it was rebuilt as Königliches Opernhaus (Royal Opera House). During the 19th and 20th centuries the opera featured conductors such as Felix Weingartner and Richard Strauss. It was known as the the Linden Opera from 1928, a year which saw Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes with conductor Ernest Ansermet as guest performers. The opera house was destroyed again in 1945, and from then on, the Linden Opera company was mainly hosted in the Metropoltheater where it served as the state opera of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) with a repertoire consisting of Classical, Romantic and contemporary ballet and operas. In the 1990s, the opera was officially renamed Staatsoper Unter den Linden. With reconstruction of its permanent home at the Opera

House on Unter den Linden Boulevard underway from June 2010 to summer 2013, the Schiller Theater on Bismarck Street is providing a temporary home for the Staatsoper. The Berlin Philharmonic (Berliner Philharmoniker), home to conductor Sir Simon Rattle, was voted number two on a list of ‘top ten European orchestras’ in a 2008 survey by international music critics, organised by Gramaphone magazine. The Berlin Philharmonic’s primary concert venue, the Philharmonie, is located in the Kulturforum area of the city. Honouring the orchestra’s quality and depth of work UNICEF appointed the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle as Goodwill Ambassadors in 2007. In a revolutionary move the orchestra created a digital concert hall in late 2008 – an internet platform that allows music fans from across the world to enjoy the Philharmonic’s concerts in sight and sound. Beyond the musical soul of Berlin, in the east of this magnificent city, lie the Berlin State Museums which include five different ‘clusters’ consisting of 17 museums: Mitte, Tiergarten, Charlottenburg, Dahlem, and Köpenick. The Mitte ‘cluster’ includes Museum Island, which boasts the Pergamon and Bode Museums, the Old National Gallery (Alte Nationalgalerie), the Old Museum (Altes Museum) and the New Museum (Neues Museum). Built over 20 years, the Pergamon Museum boasts life-size copies of reconstructed monuments such as the Pergamon Altar, the Ishtar Gate and the Processional Way, Babylon. The Bode Museum plays host to a collection of sculptures and Byzantine art. The Old National Gallery holds a collection of Classical, Romantic, Biedermeier, Impressionist and early Modernist artwork including works by Caspar David Friedrich, Édouard Manet and Claude Monet. The Old Museum was dedicated as a world Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999 and houses the antique collection of the Berlin State Museums. The New Museum was closed at the beginning of WWII and only recently reopened in October 2009 receiving a 2010 RIBA European Award for its architecture. Exhibits in this museum include the Egyptian and Prehistory and Early History collections including the iconic bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti. Tiergarten includes the ‘Kulturforum’ and the Museum for Contemporary Art displaying work by Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Long, Andy Warhol and Cy Twombly. The Charlottenburg ‘cluster’ includes the Museum Berggruen for classic modern art. Also in Charlottenburg is the Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum which venerates this renowned German artist. A replica of her sculpture, Mother with her Dead Son is at the centre of Neue Wache (New Guard House) built during the reign of the Frederick William III, king of Prussia from 1797 to 1840, and now a monument to ‘the victims of war and tyranny’. Kollwitz’s work is emotive and finely wrought, dealing with heartrending depictions of human conditions such as poverty, hunger and war. The Dahlem ‘cluster’ includes the Museum of Asian Art and the Museum of European Cultures. Köpenick includes the Museum of Decorative Art. On the historical and political front Berlin offers the remains of the Berlin Wall, tours of underground tunnels desperately dug out between East and West, the Brandenburg Gate and the last markers of Checkpoint Charlie. Beautiful churches such as the Domplatz, the Berlin Protestant cathedral, the Freidrickswerdersche Kirche and the Nicholas Church, rise majestically throughout the city. Red City Hall and the current Reichstag building with its striking glass dome are among the city’s many architectural delights. Berlin also famously celebrates the movies, annually hosting the Berlin International Film Festival, home of the coveted Golden or Silver Bear Awards. A city which defines the German word ‘Zeitgeist’, now a ubiquitous term throughout the world, Berlin has formed a contemporary new identity post reunification that blends current urban culture and art with a rich, tumultuous history. CF

AIR FRANCE IS A PROUD CARRIER TO M U S I C F E S T I VA L S AROUND THE WORLD Music Deutsche Oper Berlin, Komische Oper Berlin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berliner Philharmoniker Museum ‘clusters’ Mitte including Museum Island Tiergarten including the Kulturforum Charlottenburg including the Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum Dahlem including the Museum of Asian Art and the Museum of European Cultures Köpenick including the Museum of Decorative Art Modern political history Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie East-West tunnels, Berlin Wall Architecture Domplatz Freidrickswerdersche Kirche Nicholas Church Red City Hall Reichstag Berlin International Film Festival – 10 to 20 February 2011

Air France offers daily flights to Paris with a choice of five onward connections to Berlin. For more details, contact Air France’s Sales and Service Centre in Johannesburg on 0861 340 340 or 011 523 8001 or visit www.airfrance.co.za.

Images courtesy of Hotel Izulu and DeskLink Media

Ecofriendly FIVE-STAR LUXURY ‘Life is too short to waste it on anything but the best’ – this is the slogan of the Best of KZN, a luxury group of owner-run hotels spread throughout South Africa’s Zulu kingdom. CLASSICFEEL was invited to visit Hotel Izulu, one of the luxury hotels on the North Coast, and can only agree with the sentiment

n invitation to the North Coast of KwaZulu-Natal in the middle of a typical mid-winter Highveld cold spell is just too tempting to ignore. The invitation promises lush vegetation, beautiful beaches, blue sea and five-star treatment. What more do you want? During the indulgent weekend at Hotel Izulu in Ballito, some 30km north of Durban, all these promises and more were fulfilled. Actually to be really honest, it was not just the warm weather and the beach that made us accept the invitation, there was also the promise of some very interesting cuisine. Already famous

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for its food offerings, Hotel Izulu is playing its part in the green revolution by reinventing its menu with an emphasis on fresh, organic, homegrown produce. The newly appointed General Manager, Grant Pringle, commented recently: ‘Here at Hotel Izulu we are constantly thinking of ways to reduce our footprint on the earth while maintaining five-star luxury, proving that it can be done with style.’ The hotel has converted to solar heating for its water supply, taking water saving to another level. The management has

reduced water consumption by a further 50 per cent with the clever use of new ecofriendly showerheads that aerate the water to give a spa-like feel while saving on water and electricity. Walking through the beautiful grounds of the hotel with Guy Gorrie, Executive Chef of Hotel Izulu’s restaurant, Gigi’s Brasserie, we understood how important the ‘green and organic’ aspect of the hotel really is. He explained how they are using vermiculture – their ‘worm factory’ is probably one of the largest such installations in any South African hotel and it is yielding great rewards. It was created in order to nourish the successful organic herb, vegetable garden and orangery. Earthworms are truly amazing creatures that hold vast potential for addressing many of our current ecological concerns. We learned how earthworms aerate, till and fertilise the soil, breaking down organic waste into plant-available forms, improving the soil structure and nutrient- and water-holding qualities of soil. Eisenia foetida and Lumbricus rubellis are the earthworm species most commonly used in vermiculture. Both are referred to by a variety of common names, including red worms, red wigglers, tiger worms, brandling worms, and manure worms. Guy proudly showed off the hydroponics system situated at the impressive water feature in the section of the garden where he harvests his very own crops of waterblommetjie and watercress. He showed us all the different herbs and he challenges any visitor to find rocket anywhere in the country that tastes as good as his own crop. We were offered an exclusive insight into the operation of Guy’s kitchen when we dined at the chef ’s table. Situated right in the kitchen of the hotel, this prime spot enables guests to observe the culinary process through glass windows while

the staff is really hard at work. This is quite an impressive sight, especially during evenings when Gigi’s Brasserie is fully booked and hotel guests order dinner to eat in the intimacy of their room. In the midst of all this activity a carefully prepared tasting menu is separately prepared just for the chef ’s table. Dining in the kitchen is a wonderful, new experience. Be warned, you can forget about your diet when you eat at Gigi’s. Food like baked sea bass served with a pine nut and anchovy crust, accompanied by a caper, olive & coriander beurre noisette, truffle mushroom soup, grilled asparagus served with truffle cherry tomato cream, and beef fillet are all prepared right in front of the client by a team of well organised chefs who still have the grace to chat and explain their fare when they have a moment to take a breather. The hotel also includes the award winning Imbilo Spa, which offers full- and half-day treatments for deep relaxation and detox in an environment of peace and tranquility. Hotel Izulu, with its mixture of old world charm and modern hospitality is very well placed in KZN, especially since the opening of King Shaka International Airport, which has made the north of KwaZulu-Natal more accessible to travellers. We were wondering if the hotel still reflects the previous owner Penny Coelen Rey, winner of the 1958 Miss World Pageant, whose family home it was before it was extended and made into a hotel. In fact she is a frequent visitor to Gigi’s Brasserie, sitting outside among the lush palm trees savouring her lunch, enjoying the cuisine so freshly and proudly prepared by the team, adding additional charm to her surroundings. For reservations call 032 946 3444 or email info@hotelizulu.com. CF

Dr Julius Laszlo

Graham Beck

Michael 'Spatz' Sperling

They don’t make guys like these any more Victor Strugo toasts three octogenarian luminaries.

fter almost three years, this is the last regular edition of my monthly wine column. Starting next month, I return to a solid diet of food. As it happens, these farewell pages must contain farewell tributes to two of South Africa’s most influential winemakers. Dr Julius Laszlo, cellar master at Die Bergkelder from 1978 to 1992, recently died in Stellenbosch. Born to a Hungarian family in Romania in 1926, Laszlo earned a doctorate in soil microbiology in Moscow and then returned home to direct Romania’s Institute for Viticulture and Oenology until 1974, when he brought his family to South Africa as political refugees. He is credited with playing a pivotal role in changing the South African wine industry by upgrading vineyard quality, sourcing new vine material, increasing cultivation of noble

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varieties and shifting from large vats to small oak barrels for maturation of reds. His erudition and influence helped prevent a decline in the wine industry during years of economic and cultural isolation, and contributed to its rapid recovery soon after the advent of democracy. In his honour, Bergkelder’s Fleur du Cap team released a flagship signature red blend named Laszlo. The merlot-dominated maiden release has been overtaken by cab sauvignon in the latest, with a generous (18 per cent) dollop of shiraz adding complexity. Another great loss is the passing of wine producer and social philanthropist Graham Beck, who succumbed to lung cancer in London, aged just 80. A larger-than-life presence, Beck earned a B. Com degree in his native Cape Town. Mining and other entrepreneurial successes led to his purchasing first a stud farm and then the Madeba farm which

he planted to vines, having recognised princess potential in (at the time) a ‘Cinderella’ valley called Robertson. The original Graham Beck Wines developed into a world-class producer of méthode cap classique. The Graham Beck Brut was the bubbly chosen to crown two rather significant Presidential inaugurations – Nelson Mandela in 1994 and Barack Obama fourteen years later. Further acquisitions multiplied his successes – first in Franschhoek and Stellenbosch and most recently the Steenberg wine estate in the Constantia valley, which he purchased in 2005. In a resurgent industry, what set Beck apart from other winners was fulfilling his strong desire to create employment and better the lives of thousands of people. One example of this was investing in Douglas Green Bellingham in 1999 until its sale to empowered management in 2006. Then last year, the Graham and Rhona Beck Skills Centre was opened, part of an extensive social development program to facilitate skills development and nurture long-term upliftment of the Breede River Valley farming community. Fortunately still with us is another member of that generation, German-born vintner Michael ‘Spatz’ Sperling, who celebrated his 80th birthday a week after the World Cup final. Arriving in South Africa in April 1951 as a 20-year-old World War II refugee, with no means to study oenology or viticulture, this self-taught wine grower turned a humble fruit farm on the slopes of the Simonsberg into one of the most popular wine brands in the Cape, Delheim, increasing its harvest from 18 tons in 1952 to over 1 000 of some 15 grape varieties grown across 150 hectares. Apart from fashioning most of Delheim’s distinctive wines and tutoring a large number of today’s top winemakers, Sperling’s achievements include the transformation of wine legislation to recognise authenticity of origin, the inauguration of the Nederburg wine auction in 1975, the formation seven years later of the Cape Independent Winemakers’ Guild and the fashioning of the local wine route system as a stimulant to tourism. To toast these luminaries with my last drink as your wine only columnist, I return to my favourite valley, Robertson, whose varied output never ceases to amaze and entice me. First released in 2004, the Robertson Winery’s flagship is named No. 1 Constitution Road Shiraz, consciously capitalising on its echo of South Africa’s trajectory to democracy under the ingenuous guise of merely sporting the winery’s actual physical address. At this year’s Decanter World Wine Awards, the 2006 vintage was named Regional Trophy Winner, beating all its compatriots in a field of some 11 000 entries across the globe. Made by Jacques Roux, this rich, intense wine is a 100 percent shiraz from the area’s top vineyards. Thirty months in oak barrels have added vanilla and cinnamon nuances to ripe red berry flavours. Tannins are bold but not harsh – a wine that you won’t forget to remember. Editor’s note: next month, due to popular demand, Victor Strugo’s column on fine dining will return to these pages. It is CLASSICFEEL’s hope that in the near future, we will again have the budget and space to accommodate both his food and wine columns. CF

movies

Ondine

ONDINE Director: Neil Jordan Cast: Colin Farrell, Alicja Bachleda, Alison Barry, Tony Curran, Emil Hostina, Dervla Kirwan, Stephen Rea Moving between the fantastic and the mundane, Ondine follows the story of Syracuse, a misfit recovering alcoholic and fisherman who catches a beautiful and mysterious woman in his trawler’s nets. His wheelchair-bound daughter Annie is fascinated with this new woman in their lives, believing her to be a ‘selkie’ or ‘silkie’ – a seal which can magically transform into a human. Deriving from Scottish and Irish mythology, ‘silkie’ myths often tell the tale of ‘silkie’ men or women leaving the sea to become husbands, wives or lovers of land-bound humans. Given the opportunity to return to the sea, most do so without hesitation, but they can be kept land-bound and beholden to their human partners if their ‘seal pelts’ are kept from them. In Ondine, writer-director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) has Syracuse falling in love with his ‘sea woman’. When he first captures her in his fishing net, he thinks he is ‘seeing things’; she seems half-dead but she slowly comes alive. Annie, lonely and ostracised by children her own age due to her illness, is spellbound by Ondine and the two form an intimate and playful relationship together. Syracuse falls in love with Ondine and begins to wonder if the seemingly mythical might be true. With many of Neil Jordan’s films the love story is often haunted by a lurking menace and Ondine is no different. The

october 2010

real world literally crashes into Syracuse, Annie and Ondine’s lives with a terrible car accident. A dark and violent figure from Ondine’s past returns; Annie believes it’s Ondine’s ‘silkie’ husband come to take her back to sea. Colin Farrell plays the leading role of Syracuse. ‘I read Ondine and loved it,’ he says. ‘It’s a really beautiful story, a really magical piece.’ After an extensive search, the relatively unknown, Polish actress Alicja Bachleda was cast as Ondine and newcomer Alison Barry, a ten-year-old from County Cork, was cast as Annie. When writer-director Jordan wrote the movie, he had in mind the village Castletownbere near his Irish country home. With regards to the landscape, Jordan says, ‘I wanted the film to be about the landscape, for it to have a very intimate relationship with landscape. Of course it could have been filmed where I come from, in Connemara or in Sligo, but Castletownbere is a real, working fishing town and quite a bit away from the tourist trail. It has its own identity, its own industry and its own internal life.’ In Ondine, hope eventually prevails and a new beginning is presented to Syracuse, Ondine and Annie. Jordan says, ‘There was something in those initial images [I had] that suggested both a fairytale and an awful, harsh reality. I just let the ideas go where they would.’

AT SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 8 OCTOBER T.B.A.

FOR INFORMATION & BOOKINGS:

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movies

LONG STREET Director: Revel Fox Cast: Sannie Fox, Roberta Fox, David Butler, Busi Mhlongo

Long Street

Starring the late Busi Mhlongo as Andiswa, a Zulu singer with powerful presence and musical genius, Long Street follows the story of Sia and her mother Maria. A troubled and tense relationship simmers between the two; Sia is thrown out of rehab and returns to her mother’s home. Sia’s father also hovers in the background. Suffering from writer’s block and feeling unable to express himself, he still hopes to reconcile with

both his daughter and estranged wife. Andiswa becomes a moving musical force in their lives bringing mother and daughter together as they create a new relationship and discover surprising, new things about themselves and each other. Long Street is a poetic and powerful new South African film driven by music, and tells its story with ‘feeling, compassion and elegance’. This is another beautifully crafted local film.

COPPÉLIA The South African Ballet Theatre with Izithombe TV Productions Coppélia

Eat Pray Love

The much-loved comic ballet Coppélia was created in Paris in 1870 with choreography by Arthur Saint-Léon and Charles Nuitter and music by Leo Delibes. It tells the story of Dr Coppelius, an old and eccentric toymaker who is tricked into believing that his life-size Coppélia doll has actually come to life. Franz, the village romantic, is besotted with Coppélia arousing the ire of Swanhilda, his true love. In Act II she pretends to be Coppélia showing Franz his foolishness. The comi-sad character

of Dr Coppelius delights in his living doll creation but his fantasy is soon shattered when he realises the full truth of the trick which has been played on him. A classic ballet set in sweeping countryside, Coppélia runs the gamut of love and deceit but all is forgiven in the end, ensuring a ‘happily ever-after’ ending. The roles of Swanhilda, Franz and Dr Coppelius are some of the most technically and dramatically demanding in any ballet performers’ repertoire. The South African Ballet Theatre presents a local treat for all film and ballet lovers.

EAT PRAY LOVE Director: Ryan Murphy Cast: Julia Roberts, Javier Bardem, James Franco, Billy Crudup Eat Pray Love

Eat Pray Love

october 2010

Elizabeth Gilbert’s hugely successful book Eat Pray Love, finally comes to cinematic life with Julia Roberts in the lead role. Based on Gilbert’s own life experiences, the story follows her adventures as a modern 21st century woman who is supposed to not only want, but have it all – husband, house and successful career. Newly divorced Gilbert finds herself at a crossroads in life, questioning who she is and what she really wants.

Risking all the safety of the life she has known up to this point she sets out on a journey around the world, which becomes a quest for self-discovery. In Italy, she learns that the value of food is more than just nutritional; she learns the power of prayer in India; and unexpectedly finds true love in Bali. An inspirational memoir that has struck a deep chord with many women (and men) throughout the world, Eat Pray Love is sure to enchant.

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Lauren Beukes

Images courtesy of Jacana Media

books... author interview

LITERARY MAVERICK

CLASSICFEEL interviews novelist, journalist and scriptwriter Lauren Beukes – no ordinary South African writer.

auren Beukes’ mind occupies a multimedia nether world that finds expression in her groundbreaking novels, Moxyland and Zoo City (both Jacana Media). A maverick herself, she is also the author of Maverick: Extraordinary Women from South Africa’s Past (originally Oshun and now available as an e-book). Riding the new wave of South African authors who are finding their own unique creative voices beyond the confines of anti-apartheid or post-apartheid writing contexts, Beukes is eminently readable. Asked to define her writing, Beukes says, ‘It is playful, inventive and imaginative with a focus on telling great stories with the potential to surprise you.’ Her non-fiction title, Maverick (nominated for the 2006 Alan Paton Non-fiction Award), made for fascinating reading, but was written with a unique approach to biography. The book relates the lives of South African women such as Brenda Fassie, Sarah Baartmann, Nongquawuse, Daisy de Melker, Helen Martins, Dr James Barry and Glenda Kemp. About the book, Beukes said, ‘I wanted to write an irreverent and accessible pop history that celebrated our heroines and villains in all their complexity.’ In reviewing her fiction writing, many have referred to it as science fiction, a categorisation that is not necessarily appropriate. She says, ‘I’d call them novels of ideas, unexpected stories, well told and rooted in reality. I use the fantastical elements (magic in Zoo City or technology in Moxyland) as a way of exploring human issues. They’re as “sci-fi” as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or Margaret Atwood’s Oryx & Crake.’ Beukes’ novels can make for disturbing and intriguing reading – Zoo City is described as ‘muti noir’ and Moxyland as a ‘dystopian thriller’. Asked to elaborate on these terms, Beukes responds, ‘Zoo City is an unconventional detective story, set

october 2010

in a gritty Johannesburg, about crime, music, magic, refugees and the possibility of redemption. Moxyland is a fast-paced thriller set in a future Cape Town. It’s about corporate greed, branding, art, consumerism, terrorism and selling out’. Tantalisingly for avid South African ‘krimi’ readers – both her novels involve thriller/ crime elements. Zoo City races to a definite crime/ thriller finish, and Moxyland has characters operating outside the book’s prevailing ‘corporate law’. ‘I love film noir. I love The Wire. And I’m interested in the edges of society, the places where people teeter and sometimes come adrift,’ explained Beukes. Her novels are very cutting edge and could be said to be written within a particular Zeitgeist that might only appeal to Generation X or Millennium Generation readers but Beukes disagrees, ‘I would guess that my audience skews between 18 and 40, but I have a zealous coterie of 70-year-old plus readers in Cape Town. The novels are ultimately about the human experience and that has universal appeal’. Beukes invites her readers to enter strange worlds but they are presented so fluidly that it is easy to suspend disbelief and become engaged with them. These fiction worlds are at once far-fetched and immediate – contemporary references to the landscape of SA cities – Cape Town and Johannesburg – 419 scams, the Red Ants and foreign immigrants are seamlessly woven into her novels. She attributes this to her to previous work experience: ‘I’ve been a freelance journalist for over twelve years and it’s taken me to fascinating places. It’s like a backstage pass to South Africa. My experiences will always be reflected in my fiction. I’m interested in how people work, in how society functions and dysfunctions, in the cracks and edges. And good fiction should reflect reality.’ Indeed Zoo City features magic ‘animalled’ people and Moxyland

‘A technicolour jazzy rollercoaster ride into a dazzling hell.’ – André Brink

features a world where everyone is tracked through their cell phones in a very disturbing way – highly probable in our real and not too distant futures. Beukes is also a talented TV script-writer, and has tapped into myriad multimedia options to augment and market her work including CD soundtracks that accompany each of her novels; the Zoo City video ‘trailer’ which is available on YouTube; the Moxyland e-book, website and toys; plus the ‘Zoo City Bares’ artworks. Describing what the multimedia approach brings to her work, she says, ‘It’s a space to play, to collaborate with other interesting people, like African Dope who worked with me to create very cool soundtracks that fit the mood of the books, or the incredibly talented local illustrators who customised the limited edition ‘Zoo City Bares’, hand-painted vinyl art toys inspired by the novel’. Venturing beyond just her writing and creativity, the launch of each of Beukes’ novels has involved a charitable endeavour such as the Moxyland toys, made by the Montagu Sew & Sews,

and the ‘Zoo City Bares’ artworks which were auctioned online for charity. For Beukes this is important, ‘I feel strongly about the social issues I tackle in my novels, whether it’s economic apartheid in Moxyland or xenophobia in Zoo City. [The charity work] is a complement to the story that allows me to leverage my fictional world so that it has an impact on the real one.’ CF

WIN! WIN! WIN! Five CLASSICFEEL readers stand a chance to each win a copy of Moxyland and Zoo City. To enter, simply send your name, contact details and the answer to the question below to CLASSICFEEL/ Lauren Beukes Giveaway, PO Box 3670, Randburg 2125, or fax to 011 787 8204. Regrettably only one entry per person. Closing date: 31 October 2010. Question: Which of Lauren Beukes’ books features magic ‘animalled’ creatures? 'An unforgettable cast of characters and a storyline too outlandishly original to put down.’ – Victor Dlamini.

WAKE UP TO

Roger Smith

Image DeskLink Media

books... author interview

CLASSICFEEL’s Emily Amos interviews Roger Smith, author of crime fiction novels Mixed Blood, Wake Up Dead and to-be-released Dust Devils.

t’s possible that not many South African crime fiction fans have yet heard of Roger Smith, but they should be eagerly devouring his work. With the release of Wake Up Dead, Smith delivers fast-paced, gut-wrenching, page-turning South African crime fiction that appeals to a world audience. Smith is published by US publisher Serpent’s Tail, and is enjoying incredible writing success, with his first book Mixed Blood, due to start filming with Samuel L. Jackson this coming January. Set in the Cape Flats, Wake Up Dead follows ex-policeman Billy Afrika. Recently returned from a failed protection detail in Iraq, he is in search of his outstanding pay – money that is desperately needed by the widow of Afrika’s ex-police captain, Barbara Adams and her family, who are living out on the Cape Flats in a vortex of violence fuelled by the 26 and 28 gangs. Paradise Park is anything but. Beyond the sand and dust, something darker lurks in Pollsmoor prison, 28s general Piper schemes a reunion with his paroled prison wife, Disco. Caught up in the hijacking of Roxy and Joe Palmer, Disco De Lilly is on the run, feeding his tik addiction, dodging his landlady and frantic to avoid retribution from 26 gang leader Manson for the ‘freelance’ hijacking. Billy Afrika knows Roxy Palmer killed her husband and policeman

october 2010

Ernie Maggot suspects it but is impeded in his investigation by a festering, aggressive attitude and his young son Robbie, dumped on him by his wife. It’s a complex chessboard of characters, Smith says, ‘I would call my books “whydunnits” rather than whodunnits, because, the reader is deliberately placed in a position where they observe. It’s almost like there’s an anthill and you’ve chopped the top off and you’re looking in’. Smith is clear on his role as a crime writer, ‘My sense is that if you’re writing about crime, especially in South Africa, you have some kind of obligation to reflect it in a way that isn’t glamorous… For instance, I would find it quite difficult to write a “caper” or an Oceans Eleven where you’ve got George Clooney in a Lamborghini and a casino.’ ‘If I am going to write about crime I’m going to do it in a really unvarnished and quite brutal way… The kind of crime fiction that I’ve enjoyed reading and that I’ve always admired, manages to incorporate a very accurate reflection of the society in which it is set’. Smith must be getting it right, ‘People on the Flats who read my books come to me with the comment that it’s fantastic to see the portrayal of the Flats, that it’s real and realistic. And that, if anything, I’ve downplayed the level of brutality,’ he says. In Wake Up Dead, protagonist Afrika makes a disturbing statement, ‘When you took a life you lost some form of protection you didn’t even know you had, until it was gone. Left you in a place where bad people started tuning into your frequency’. Smith talks about a sense of ‘karmic energy’ where randomness, chaos and coincidence come together, particularly when it comes to crime in South Africa, saying, ‘I’m comfortable with using coincidence in my books because I think it’s absolutely real… So I guess for me it’s a matter of writing fast-moving, entertaining fiction with specific references… a darker kind of fiction’. With one of the most diabolical (read: outrageous) opening lines, Wake Up Dead should have readers gasping for breath as it reaches its heart-stopping climax on the beach of Three Anchor Bay – read it. CF

books... your guide to great reads

THE CELLO SUITES: IN SEARCH OF A BAROQUE MASTERPIECE By Eric Siblin Harvill Secker ISBN 9781846553561

The Cello Suites follows Eric Siblin’s discovery of, and subsequent musical ‘love affair’ with Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cello Suites. The book is written to mirror the six Suites including 36 chapters which honour the six movements of each Suite. Following his sudden passion for this 18th century work, Siblin delves into three narratives within the book: biographic portions of Bach’s life and the story of the missing Bach manuscripts, Pablo Cassals and his discovery of the music in 19th century Spain, and Siblin’s own journey into Bach’s music. This book is a musical adventure into the world of Baroque music and the grand majesty of the cello.

THE SOUTH BANK SHOW: FINAL CUT By Melvyn Bragg Hodder & Stoughton ISBN 9781444705522

A thoroughly enjoyable book that spans a range of artists including Harold Pinter, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Toni Morrison, Ingmar Bergman, Judi Dench and Rudolf Nureyev to name a few. Working from his collection of interviews gathered from The South Bank Show, Melvyn Bragg takes a select few and deepens the ‘portrait’ of each. Engaging and fascinating, Bragg shares his experiences of pursuing and carrying out each interview, some of which entail adventures like getting to Nureyev’s private island. His personal insights on each artist make for wonderfully interesting reading.

African Writing and the 2007 HSBC/ SA PEN Literary Award for her short story Poison, Rose-Innes is a magnificent writer, able to move between the short story format and lengthier novel writing with seeming ease. The title story Homing forms a thematic thread for the book as a whole, although not intentionally so according to Rose-Innes; it simply worked out that way. The stories span a period of 14 years of Innes’ writing, and she spent some time reworking the older ones when she revisited them. Delightful, sombre and contemplative, Homing is a reader’s treat.

JOHNNY BOSKAK IS FEELING FUNNY AND OTHER PLAYS By Greig Coetzee, compiled by Hazel Barnes UKZN Press ISBN 9781869141806

HOMING By Henrietta Rose-Innes Umuzi ISBN 9781415201343

Finally, here is a collection of Henrietta Rose-Innes’ superb short stories. Recent winner of both the 2008 Caine Prize for

A compendium of the plays of popular and notable South African theatre practitioner, Greig Coetzee, this book includes his classic, award-winning play White Men with Weapons and the later Johnny Boskak is Feeling Funny, which saw the

development of one of the characters in White Men. With a fitting foreword from Mannie Manim, which affirms his place as a ‘burgeoning South African talent’, the book includes one of Coetzee’s favourite and as yet, not quite properly appreciated plays, The Blue Period of Milton van der Spuy. The introduction from Hazel Barnes is insightful; this is a body of work that deserves to be documented thus.

A JOURNEY By Tony Blair Hutchinson ISBN 9780091925550

Tony Blair’s highly controversial autobiography charts much of his political career but also delves into topics such as his use of alcohol as a coping mechanism and his views on politicians who have affairs. The book certainly provides provocative reading, much of it lashing out against his successor Gordon Brown; inside insight into his actions in the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death and the decision to join the USA in the ‘War on Terror’ is fascinating.

SHERLOCK

LITTLE DORRIT

# $

SHERLOCK BBCDVD-3223L

Sherlock sees Britainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most famous detective (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) operating in the 20th century, where his legendary analytical skills enable him to spot â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;a software designer by his tie, an airline pilot by his thumbâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. With John Watson, newly returned from the war in Afghanistan, Holmes tackles a series of murders that have stumped Scotland Yardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s finest.

LITTLE DORRIT BBC DVD 2773L

Dickensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rags-to-riches tale of the daughter of William Dorrit â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a longstanding inmate of the Marshalsea Debtorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Prison. She is brought to life in this 14-part series. When Arthur Clennan returns from abroad, his fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dying words compel him to reveal that the

october 2010

) ' $ *

THE OLD GUYS â&#x20AC;&#x201C; SERIES ONE

PERSUASION

Music, documentary, film â&#x20AC;&#x201C; whatever your taste in DVDs, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll find something here to add to your collection.

ROGER LLOYD-PACK

CLIVE SWIFT JANE ASHER

GROWING OLD DISGRACEFULLY

SERIES ONE

Dorrit family are the rightful possessors of a vast fortune â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a discovery that launches them from Marshalsea into high society.

THE OLD GUYS â&#x20AC;&#x201C; SERIES ONE BBC DVD 3092L

Divorced pensioner Roy Swift and his irritating friend Tom Pack share a house, despite being utterly unlike each other in most respects. Newly retired, and having lived a life not quite as eventful as they might have expected, they confront the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;big questionsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in life â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from religion to relationships â&#x20AC;&#x201C; making for an amusing sitcom about the prospects of encroaching old age.

OLIVER TWIST BBC DVD 2572L

A faithful rendition of Dickensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s novel, Oliver Twist features an excellent cast

OLIVER TWIST

dvds... new and exciting

including Timothy Spall and Sophie Okenedo. Orphaned by the death of his mother, Oliver Twist comes through the meanness of an orphanage upbringing and a subsequent escape into the London underworld with sweet disposition and innocence intact â&#x20AC;&#x201C; despite encountering some very shady characters along the way.

PERSUASION BBC DVD 2EBD0099

Yet another BBC DVD adaptation of a classic, this time a take on Jane Austenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s popular novel, starring Sally Hawkins as Anne Elliot, with Rupert Penry-Jones as the naval officer spurned by Anne in her youth. Anne comes to regret turning down the man she loves despite his lack of means; when he returns after eight years, his newly acquired wealth and stature make him a highly eligible bachelor â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but has Anne missed her chance?

cds... pure jazz

CARLO MOMBELLI & THE PRISONERS OF STRANGE

THE NIGEL KENNEDY QUINTET

KYLE SHEPHERD TRIO

COUNT BASIE & HIS ORCHESTRA

ARILD ANDERSEN

Are you a jazz connoisseur? This is where you will find albums to suit your taste.

THE NIGEL KENNEDY QUINTET – SHHH! EMI 50999 60850225

Best known for being a highly controversial classical musician, Kennedy has proven himself to be a thoroughly respectable jazz player. The seven tracks on Shhh!, all penned by the violinist himself, present a pleasing, straight-ahead jazz sound with touches of classic rock, that owes as much to the influence of Jimi Hendrix as to that of Stéphane Grappelli.

COUNT BASIE & HIS ORCHESTRA – BLUES BY BASIE Columbia/ Legacy CDCOL7322

Another reissue from Columbia’s vaults, this is vintage jazz at its finest. Blues by Basie features Basie’s original band, including vocalist Jimmy Rushing. True to its title, the album eschews flashy jazz improvisation in favour of a simple old-school blues sound. Of course

Basie’s piano dominates the record: one stand-out track is ‘How Long Blues’, showcasing Rushing’s vocals before Count breaks into a thrilling extended solo. Classic Basie.

KYLE SHEPHERD TRIO – A PORTRAIT OF HOME fineART Music FAM4564-2

In this follow-up to last year’s fineART, the Capetonian pianist and his band – made up of drummer Jonno Sweetman and bassist Shane Cooper – deliver more fine, laid back jazz conceived as a musical acknowledgement of ‘the home of our spirit, the home of our people, our musical masters, the legacy of our country’s past, our present and the promise of our future’.

CARLO MOMBELLI & THE PRISONERS OF STRANGE – THEORY Instinct Africaine INS016

There is not much around today to which one can compare the Prisoners of Strange.

Led by bassist Mombelli, the Johannesburgbased band plays visionary free-form jazz with trombones, flugel horn, vocals and all manner of electronic effects. At turns moving, amusing and meditative, the songs on their latest offering are always intriguing. Theory may not be always be an easy listening experience, but it is certainly a rewarding one.

ARILD ANDERSEN – GREEN IN BLUE: EARLY QUARTETS ECM 2143-45

This set contains reissues of the Norwegian double-bassist’s first three albums, Clouds in My Head, Shimri and Green Shading into Blue, recorded in 1975, 1976 and 1978 respectively. Among the musicians accompanying Andersen on these albums are pianists Jon Balke and Lars Jansson; saxophonists Knut Riisnaes and Juhani Aaltonen; and drummer Pål Thowsen. Although this is free jazz par excellence, the improvisations are remarkably restrained.

cds... hard core classics

SIR SIMON RATTLE AND BERLINER PHILHARMONIKER

LANG LANG

ALICE SARA OTT

VARIOUS ARTISTS

SOL GABETTA

For those who prefer their classics undiluted by other genres, here is a selection of exciting new classical releases.

SIR SIMON RATTLE AND BERLINER PHILHARMONIKER – TCHAIKOVSKY: THE NUTCRACKER EMI Classics 50999 646385 2 2

This double CD contains a complete performance of all Tchaikovsky’s music for The Nutcracker ballet, as opposed to the suite of highlights that is usually performed. Although many serious classical music fans don’t hold these popular tunes in very high regard, they still have the power to charm and entertain, providing an excellent way to introduce children to classical music. Of course this recording is of the high standard that one would expect from Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic.

SOL GABETTA – ELGAR CELLO CONCERTO

well as Dvorák’s Waldesruh’ and Rondo for Cello and Orchestra; Respighi’s Adagio con variazioni and Vasks’ Gramata cellam. Gabetta’s playing is technically stunning, with perfect tone and her interpretation is sensitive and poignant.

LANG LANG – BEST OF Deutsche Grammophon 00289 477 9014

This CD is a collection of highlights from Lang’s eleven releases with Deutsche Grammophon. Works by Liszt, Chopin, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Mozart stand alongside contemporary works by Mike Oldfield, Alexandre Desplat and Deng Yuxian. The remarkable thing about Lang is his personalised interpretations and unique phrasing. While we may have heard some of these works many times before, no-one plays them as Lang does.

RCA Red Seal 88697630812

Argentine cellist Sol Gabetta plays Elgar’s landmark work accompanied by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mario Vengazo. Also included on this album are three shorter works by Elgar, as

october 2010

VARIOUS ARTISTS – CLASSICS FOR LOVERS Naxos 8.570013-14

Described as ‘the perfect accompaniment to a romantic encounter’, the 21 tracks on this

double-disc set are perfect mood setters for intimate candlelit evenings. Liszt’s Dream of Love, Faure’s Pavane, the adagio from Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and ‘Venus’ from Holst’s The Planets, are among the favourites included on the compilation. Although compiled for romantic occasions, this set is equally good just for unwinding at the end of a long day.

ALICE SARA OTT – TCHAIKOVSKY/ LISZT: FIRST PIANO CONCERTOS Deutsche Grammophon 00289 477 8779

For her second release and first orchestral recording, the 21-year-old pianist has chosen two of the best-loved piano concertos ever written. The contrasting styles and tones of the two works enable Ott to demonstrate her technical and emotional flexibility. From the majesty and lyricism of Tchaikovsky, to the intensity and dazzling virtuosity of Liszt, Ott’s performance stretches the expressive range of her keyboard and reveals an artistic maturity well beyond her years.

cds... new and exciting

THOMAS QUASTHOFF – TELL IT LIKE IT IS Deutsche Grammophon 00289 477 8614

Bass-baritone Quasthoff started his career in the classical tradition, stunning audiences with his interpretations of Schubert Lieder. Unexpectedly, on Tell It Like It Is, he turns his technically brilliant and wonderfully expressive voice in another direction entirely. Backed by a sextet made up of guitar, keyboards, bass, drums, trumpet and saxophone, Quasthoff abandons classical form for the raw emotive power of blues and soul. If you aren’t already a Quasthoff fan, chances are you will be after hearing this album.

THE CANADIAN TENORS – THE CANADIAN TENORS Decca STARCD 7490

This quartet, which recently visited South Africa, doesn’t have much new to offer to the classical crossover genre. Their debut album is the usual mix of classical reworkings, rearranged pop songs, including an arrangement of Albinoni’s ‘Adagio’

and Leonard Cohen’s much-covered ‘Hallelujah’. It may not be groundbreaking, but it is a decent easy listening record – the production is slick and polished and the singing is of a high standard.

TOM JONES – PRAISE & BLAME Island Records STARCD 7495

Now in the industry for nearly half a century, Tom Jones has lost none of his vocal power and vitality. On Praise & Blame, he departs from the pop-oriented work of the past decade, and returns to raw blues and rock basics with a soulful, bluesy collection of songs dealing with themes of redemption and spirituality. Although Jones’ singing has always maintained a youthful character, this record is clearly the work of a mature man with a full knowledge of life’s agonies and ecstasies.

KOBUS MALAN & ANTHONY CAPLAN – OBOE IN AFRICA Turnaraound Music CDHMP 001

Oboist Kobus Malan and multi-

TOM JONES

KOBUS MALAN & ANTHONY CAPLAN

VARIOUS ARTISTS

THE CANADIAN TENORS

THOMAS QUASTHOFF

In this section you will find CDs and DVDs that are not strictly classical or jazz, but are new and exciting nonetheless.

instrumentalist Anthony Caplan collaborate on this exploration of African musical idioms. Blending African and Western instruments, scales, harmonic structures and tuning, they create a sound quite unlike any other. To ears accustomed to the structures of Western music, the resulting sound is rather jazzy in places. A fascinating crosspollination of divergent musical traditions.

VARIOUS ARTISTS – BESTE BREYTEN Rhythm Records RR109

This compilation honours one of South Africa’s most celebrated poets. Artists such as Laudo Liebenberg, Lize Beekman, Piet Botha and Anton Goosen sing the words of the incomparable Breyten Breytenbach with new musical settings. Among the most interesting tracks on the album are those that feature the man himself reading his works over a background of ambient music. Breytenbach’s astounding linguistic virtuosity lends itself beautifully to musical adaptation.

Name one composer, conductor, singer or musician you would love to meet. Maria Callas, but she has passed on. Marilyn Horne is someone for whom I have tremendous respect – I would love to meet her. What are you reading at the moment? The Bride of Lammermoor by Sir Walter Scott and A History of Afrikaans Literature by Johan Christoffel Kannemeyer.

Bronwen Forbay is one of South Africa’s foremost sopranos. After completing her studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, she travelled to the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship and studied for her Masters degree at the Manhattan School of Music, receiving her Artist’s Certificate at the Southern Methodist University in Texas. She returned to South Africa to take up a post at her alma mater as Professor of Voice. She also continues to perform and can be seen this month in the lead role of Cape Town Opera’s production of Lucia di Lammermoor. Name three artworks you love and why? Paintings by Monet and Renoir; Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto no. 2; Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and all the films based on her books. All these works have a special beauty and elegance that help me relax after a long day.

Bronwen Forbay

Image courtesy of Standard Bank

What is in your car’s CD player? La Traviata with Ileana Cortrubus (Violetta), and Placido Domingo (Alfredo), conducted by Carlos Kleiber. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I am happy as I am and am grateful for what I have. How have the classical music and opera scenes in SA changed over the last 10 years? There are many more opportunities for South African singers now with Cape Town Opera, Opera Africa, and Opera South Africa all thriving. An Opera Studio and Choral Academy (OSCA) was established at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban in 2003. It did not exist when I was a student there. It is also encouraging and inspiring that young SA opera singers such as Pretty Yende and Njabulo Madlala are winning major international competitions and returning to SA to conduct master classes and benefit concerts. Opera is growing in SA, and the stature of SA singers is rising internationally. We need to keep it up! Name one thing you think would improve the music and theatre industries in SA? I would encourage artists and arts organisations to collaborate, share resources, and promote a greater exchange of ideas on a nationwide scale. For example: It would be incredible for productions performed in one location to tour and be shared throughout the country. This would enable artists and institutions to reach out to the community while providing opportunities for as many people as possible, and encourage SA artists to perform at home. I believe that this investment would reap huge rewards. What is your most treasured possession? Firstly my wedding ring, and secondly my laptop. My husband bought it for me at a Thanksgiving Day sale. He waited in line from 2:30 am until the store opened to buy it for me. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Losing those one loves without being able to say goodbye. What is it that makes you happy? Spending time at the beach with my family and friends. Describe a defining moment in your life. Receiving the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music in 2007. What projects will you be busy with during 2010? Performing Lucia di Lammermoor; completing my Doctorate at the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music and learning Violetta in La Traviata. Name one goal you would like to achieve in the next twelve months. To contribute to the future of opera and opera singers in SA.

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