Spring Cyber Symphonies Concert 3
Vaughan Williams A Folk Song Suite CPYWE Conductor Faan Malan
Schumann Piano Concerto A minor, Op. 54 Brahms Serenade No 2 in A, Op. 16
Conductor Bernhard Gueller
Soloist Gerhard Joubert (piano) Concertmaster Suzanne Martens
Recorded at the Cape Town City Hall on September 2, 2021 Streaming September 30 to October 4, 2021
FAAN MALAN Conductor
Faan Malan, conductor of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra Wind Ensemble (CPWE) and Youth Wind Ensemble (CPYWE), is also a brass teacher at the CPO Music Academy. In his early career Malan taught music at various institutions, was involved in the establishment of the Hugo Lambrechts Music Centre in Parow as head of brass and, as a free-lance performing musician, played in and conducted several orchestras in the Western Cape.In 1991, after completing his Master’s degree in Brass Teaching Method at UCT, he took up the post of Senior Instrumentalist at the Free State Musicon and became principal horn at the PACOFS Symphony Orchestra in Bloemfontein. He also conducted the Free State Wind Ensemble. A year later, after he was offered a post at the Mmabana Cultural Centre in Taung, he was appointed as the first Music Unit Manager.
He, and his wife Kim, moved to Kimberley in 1994 where he took up a post of music teacher at the Kimberley Boys’ High School. There the pair started the Kimberley Academy of Music (KAM), and were nominated for several awards of excellence.
In 2003 Malan became the Executive Director of the South African National Youth Orchestra where he was responsible for fund raising and for organising the annual national youth orchestra course. The South African National Youth Orchestra undertook a highly successful tour to Europe under his leadership in 2006.
In 2009 the Northern Cape Department of Sport, Arts and Culture tasked KAM to start the Mayibuye Academy of Music in Galeshewe and in 2011 Malan was instrumental in establishing a tertiary music department for National Institute for Higher Education in the Northern Cape, where he lectured from 2005 to 2013.
Kim and Faan Malan moved to Cape Town in 2013 and started “Music Matters” in Rondebosch, offering services in various aspects of the music industry and started wind band programmes at various schools in Cape Town. Malan obtained his doctoral degree in Business Administration through the Central University of Technology in September 2016.
He is a regular attendee of the annual Summer School in Sherborne, England where he receives conducting master classes from world renowned specialists such as Mark Heron, Bjorn Sagstad and Alberto Roque.
BERNHARD GUELLER Conductor
Principal guest conductor of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director Laureate of Symphony Nova Scotia in Canada, Bernhard Gueller continues to be acclaimed for his interpretations and phrasing, and the excitement he brings to the podium. “He is a favoured conductor, both of players and audiences, undoubtedly because of his carefully prepared but always musically rewarding performances”(weekendspecial.co.za). He is acclaimed by musicians, critics and audiences for his musical purity, and continually garners praise for the fresh approach he applies under his
“amazingly suggestive baton”.
Having stepped down in 2018 after 16 years as music director of Symphony Nova Scotia, Gueller stepped into a new role as Music Director Laureate and in the last two years, prior to the advent of Covid-19 returned to both SNS and British Columbia’s Victoria Symphony where he was also principal guest conductor. He also made his debut with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra in New Jersey in 2019 and returned to Halifax to conduct the Scotia Festival of Music again. He has conducted many other orchestras in Canada including the Edmonton and Calgary Philharmonic orchestras and is a frequent guest conductor with the KZN Philharmonic and the Johannesburg Philharmonic.
Gueller has had many high-level collaborations with internationally acclaimed soloists, including Canadian violinist James Ehnes and pianists Jan Lisiecki, Janina Fialkowska, Anton Kuerti, Jon Kimura Parker and Marc Andre-Hamelin, along with pianist Lars Vogt, violinist Joshua Bell, and Metropolitan Opera singers Pretty Yende, Elza van den Heever and the late Johan Botha, as well as soprano Pumeza Matshikiza.
Beginning his career as a cellist, Gueller won the United German Radios Conducting Competition in 1979 and for nearly 20 years ran tandem careers, deputing for the legendary conductor Sergiu Celibidache, who regarded Gueller as his best “pupil”. Gueller also attracted the attention of the renowned arts administrator Ernest Fleischman who "was deeply impressed by his extraordinary musicianship, his marvellous ability to communicate with the musicians, and his charismatic impact on the audience".
He has also been music director in Nuremberg and principal guest conductor of the Johannesburg Philharmonic. His career has taken him to many top concert halls, from America and Australia to Canada, Russia, Japan, China (Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hong Kong), Korea, South Africa and Brazil, as well as countries in Europe such as Spain, Italy, France, Norway, Bulgaria, Italy and Sweden, and his native Germany where he, for instance, conducted the Stuttgart Radio Symphony and the Munich Philharmonic.
He has conducted in festivals internationally, including the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra in the International Festival of the Canary Islands, the Schwetzinger Festival in Germany, the Scotia Festival in Halifax, and the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival and National Arts Festival in South Africa.
Gueller has made many recordings for national and international broadcast and several acclaimed CDs including two with the CPO - with South African mezzo soprano Hanneli Rupert and the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra and the concerti of Vieuxtemps and Saint-Saëns with cellist Peter Martens. Others include two with contemporary Canadian composer, Christos Hatzis, one of contemporary Canadian works by Tim Brady which won an East Coast Music award, and a CD of orchestrated lieder by Schubert, all with Symphony Nova Scotia.
His latest CD with Symphony Nova Scotia with songstress Sarah Slean was nominated for a Juno Award in 2021. He has also recorded CDs with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, German Brass and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. Gueller was awarded a doctorate by Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for his service to music.
CAPE TOWN PHILHARMONIC YOUTH WIND ENSEMBLE
The Cape Town Philharmonic Youth Wind Ensemble (CPYWE) has been amongst the foremost wind ensembles in the city. Established in 2003, the CPYWE, pre-Covid, played at community concerts and festivals around the city under the direction of its conductor, wind band specialist Faan Malan. Its 2019 SoundsCape@Artscape featured community artists who had the packed house on its feet. Along with the CP Youth Orchestra, Cape Town Philharmonic Music Academy and Masidlale grassroots training projects, the CPYWE was formed to shape the musical lives of talented young people mainly from areas without access to music education. The 39 members, aged between 15 and 25, practise weekly in Cape Town. Many members have gone on to study music and are now professional musicians, often playing in the CPO itself and nationally.
Apart from regular performances in and around Cape Town, the CPYWE often hosts international conductors’ workshops with specialists such as Belgian conductor Rik Ghesquière, and visiting ensembles such as the Ulm Wind Band.
The CPYWE joins the CPO in an annual gala at the end of each year and the 2020 concert was streamed.
Gerhard Joubert Soloist
Pianist Gerhard Joubert is a 2nd year BMus (Performance) student at UCT, currently studying under Prof. François du Toit. He has already appeared as soloist with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra four times and is a laureate of several national music competitions, including first prizes in the Johann Vos Music Competition and the Pieter Kooij Music Competition.
Earlier this year, Gerhard gave a lunch-hour concert at the Baxter Concert Hall where reviewer Beverley Brommert noted in weekendspecial.co.za that Gerhard Joubert is a “talent to watch”. Also in 2021, Gerhard collaborated with Cape Town City Ballet as the pianist for nine performances of Les Sylphides at Artscape where he performed the music of Chopin.
In March 2018 at the National Hennie Joubert Piano Competition in Stellenbosch, Gerhard was awarded the silver medal and two special prizes for the best performance in the third round and the best performance of a classical sonata. The following year, he was awarded the silver medal and several special prizes in the National Youth Music Competition.
Gerhard was one of three young pianists who performed with the CPO in the final round of the 4th Len van Zyl Conductors’ Competition, now called the South African Conductors’
Competition. He was a member of the Drakensberg Boys’ Choir School from 2011 to 2014, touring Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland, South Africa and Europe. He also performed as a soprano soloist with the choir.
RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (1872 – 1958)
A FOLK SONG SUITE
March * Intermezzo * March
Folk songs were an important part of the output over 60 years of Ralph Vaughan Williams, one of England’s most treasured composers. This Folk Song Suite was premiered in 1923, a commission for the Royal Military School of Music in the UK and is considered one of the most significant works for wind band by one of England’s leading composers.
Infused with folk songs most of which with a love theme are from the Norfolk and Somerset regions of England, three movements begin with a march, based on three folk songs Seventeen Come Sunday, Pretty Caroline which deals with the age-old subject of military men and gorgeous women, while the third is about the haves and the have-nots, which enables Vaughan Williams to show the contrasts musically.
The second movement employs folk songs – My Bonny Boy and Green Bushes – and invokes betrayal; while the third movement uses four Somerset folk songs dealing with unrequited love, Blow Away the Morning Dews deals with a failed seduction, High Germany tells of young men going off to war, The Trees They do Grow High is about a woman being promised by a father to a younger man, and the final one, John Barleycorn, deals with drinking!
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
PIANO CONCERTO IN A MINOR, OP. 54
Allegro affetuoso * Intermezzo: Andante grazioso * Allegro vivace
This famous and truly romantic concerto began life as the single-movement Concert Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra, which Schumann completed in 1841. His beloved wife, Clara, had been urging Schumann to tackle larger forms such as the symphony and concerto, and although Schumann was to write three works for piano and orchestra, this concert fantasy was to be his most inspired and popular, especially once it had been transformed into a three- movement concerto.
This transformation took place some four years after the first performance of the single- movement fantasy at which a pregnant Clara was the soloist, with Mendelssohn conducting.
It seems that even at that early stage Clara thought the fantasy should be the first movement of a concerto. Robert duly obliged and wrote a second and third movement, and in this form it was premiered in December 1845, again with Clara as soloist.
The concerto was not an immediate success. Those first audiences must have been a little bewildered at the form of the new concerto. Schumann had created a unique structure and style in which neither soloist nor orchestra dominated. There was no dramatic, conflict-ridden dialogue between soloist and orchestra. As a result, the piece was quite different from the concertos of Mozart and Beethoven, and certainly more integrated than those of Chopin. Yet Schumann managed to create his concerto in this flowing, interweaving sort of way, with major technical demands on the soloist and requiring from the conductor a special, attentive support, especially in the fluid, fast-moving themes and contrasting moods of the first movement.
An orchestral bang opens the work, after which the soloist plays a series of cascading chords before the woodwinds announce the main theme. The piano takes up and explores this idea in constant, relaxed dialogue, until another idea is announced by the flutes, clarinets and bassoon, which is also discussed at length. These two ideas form the main argument of the movement. A cadenza that has been fully written out by Schumann takes the first movement to its exciting close.
We move into F major for the second movement, Intermezzo, and this turns out to be a delicate conversation between strings and piano with a beautiful, yearning cello theme in the middle.
The finale begins without a break. After some soft woodwind murmurings on the very opening subject of the concerto, the soloist launches into a buoyant subject that will dominate the finale. The second idea is a gently syncopated theme. Colour, rhythm and a seemingly endless flow of notes from the soloist take the concerto to its close.
Programme note: Rodney Trudgeon/CTSO Programme bank
JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833 - 1897)
SERENADE NO 2 IN A, OP. 16
Allegro moderato * Scherzo: vivace * Adagio non troppo * Quasi menuetto * Rondo: Allegro
Composed for a small orchestra (this one without violins), the two serenades are very different in every way. The first, in D, was originally planned as a nonet for strings and winds, the second, in A, was written for an orchestra without violins, and both works have to some extent the character of chamber music. The Serenade in D strongly shows the influences of Haydn, early Beethoven and Schubert, more personal traits appearing not so much in the general style as in individual features, such as the second subject of the first movement, the opening of the first scherzo, and other things. But of its six movements, several are overlong for the interest of their material, and when played in its entirety, the work tends to leave a pleasant but rather negative impression. After the tension of the previous years, however, a reaction of this kind was probably necessary for Brahms’s development.
The Serenade in A is more personal, and the absence of violins from the orchestra gives it a curiously sombre colouring for which a precedent can be found in Méhul’s one-act opera Uthal. In the first serenade in D, the easy-going and leisurely atmosphere of the music sometimes verges on dullness, especially in the adagio. The quiet thoughtfulness of most of the second serenade, in A, never makes the music flag in interest, and the slow movement in particular is in a mellow, thoughtful mood that is eminently characteristic of Brahms’
maturity. Completed in 1859, it was revised by Brahms in 1875, two years after the completion of his next orchestral work, the Variations on a Theme by Haydn. The next general character of this work is light and beautiful, and in it Brahms shows a complete mastery of form and orchestration in this medium.
Programme note: CTSO Programme Bank
CAPE TOWN PHILHARMONIC YOUTH WIND ENSEMBLE
Conductor: Faan Malan
In alphabetical order
Flute Robert Dallas Luzaan Breytenbach Jessica Clarke James Geldenhuys Angelique Marks Kerwin Petrus Emma-Beth Peters
Oboe Lisa White ^
Clarinet Sebastian Long Kim Malan ^ Charles Mauger Caelin Murray Annika Nowak Ianthea Peters Mark Swaine Liete van der Ems
Bassoon Richard Otto
Saxophone Michael de Goede Clayton Jacobs Leigh-Ann Schmidt Dylan Meyer Imaan Salie Jenna Walsh
Trumpet Mahir Adams Zico George Oliver Bruce Liddle Katerina Mackenzie Tristan Phillips
French Horn Ezra Bailey Herman de Wee Mark Osman ^ Taj Schlebush
Trombone
Mogammad Daniels Caleb Karriem Aviwe Macutwana
Euphonium Liam Petersen Roneeca Beukes
Tuba
Reberto Isaacs Matthew Raatz Miche van der Rheede
Timpani Talia Bruce
Percussion Stephan Galvin ^ Joseph Gibbon Eugene Trofimcyzk ^
Ad hoc ^
CAPE TOWN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
Principal Guest Conductor: Bernhard Gueller
Resident Conductor: Brandon Phillips supported by RMB Starlight Classics Guest Concertmasters: Farida Bacharova; Suzanne Martens
Deputy Concertmaster: Philip Martens
In alphabetical order
First Violins Piet de Beer ^ Elina Kotcheva ^ Emina Lukin * Philip Martens
Suzanne Martens (guest concertmaster) Refiloe Olifant
Annien Shaw ^ Maretha Uys
Second Violins Miroslawa Domagala Samantha Durrant * Claudia Gõttert ^ Tomasz Kita # Joshua Louis ^ Jane Price ^ Matthew Stead Milena Toma
Violas Rory Africa ^ Petrus Coetzee * Emile de Roubaix ^ Azra Isaacs # David Snaith ^ Renette Swart Maja van Dyk
Cellos
Theresa Burger Mills ^ Dane Coetzee
Estelle Kemp ^ Barbara Kennedy ^ Peter Martens * Edward McLean # Daniel Neal ^
Double Basses Zanelle Britz Donat Pellei # Roxane Steffen *
Flutes
Kim Steenkamp ^ Catherine Stephenson ^ Gabriele von Dürckheim *
Oboes Carin Bam # Lisa White *
Clarinet David Cyster ^ Ferrol-Jon Davids ^
Bassoons Simon Ball **
Brandon Phillips *
Horns
Mark Osman Shannon Thebus ^
Conrad van der Westhuizen
Trumpets Paul Chandler Pierre Schuster # David Thompson *
Trombones Slavomir Mrazik * Ryan van der Rheede
Bass Trombone David Langford #
Tuba
Shaun Williams *
Timpani
Christoph Müller *
Percussion
Eugene Trofimsczyk *
Principal * / Associate Principal ** / Sub Principal # / Ad hoc ^ / On leave ■
Orchestra Attendants Lucien Faro ^
Rudi Makwana^
Drivers
Craig Wildeman ^ Derrick Wildeman ^
CPO MANAGEMENT
Chief executive officer Louis Heyneman General manager Ivan Christian
Business development and fundraising executive Suzanne Aucamp Marketing and communications executive Shirley de Kock Gueller Fundraising / office administrator Mary MacGregor-Frew
Youth development and education co-ordinator Marvin Weavers Education manager: Masidlale and CP Music Academy Odile Burden Librarian Neil Robertson
Assistant orchestra manager and Covid officer Milena Toma
CPO PATRONS Wendy Ackerman; Ton Vosloo
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Wendy Ackerman; Derek Auret (chair); Dennis Davis; Elita de Klerk; Louis Heyneman;
Edmund Jeneker; Felicia Lesch; Nisaar Pangarker; Christoff Pauw; Christo van der Rheede
ADVISORY BOARD Ruth Allen; Ton Vosloo
