Grahamstown celebrates Mozart
28 June 2006
The music programme for South Africa's National Arts Festival, taking place in Grahamstown from 29 June to 8 July, celebrates the birth of Mozart 250 years ago.
Several all-Mozart concerts on the main music programme, numerous Mozart vocal and instrumental works included in mixed programmes, and an extensive New Music Indaba salute to Mozart will all fuel the party.
The Johannesburg Festival Orchestra under the baton of Richard Cock presents an all-Mozart symphony concert featuring Symphony No.1 K16, Concerto in C major K467 (with soloist Catherine Foxcroft), and Symphony No. 41 in C, Jupiter K551.
The orchestra will also accompany the Cape Town City Ballet, playing the music from Bizet's opera Carmen adapted for the ballet by Michael Tuffin.
Richard Cock conducts a
combined choral concert with the full orchestra, the Chanticleer Singers and the Sdasa Chorale. They will perform Mozart's Requiem Mass K626 juxtaposed with In Memoriam '76, a new work by Mokale Koapeng, commissioned by the festival to commemorate the 1976 Soweto uprising.
In a separate concert, the Chanticleer Singers will perform Mozart's lyrical Missa Brevis, in a programme that includes four pieces by the seventeenth century composer Heinrich Schütz and Gerald Finzi's setting of the Robert Bridges poem My Spirit Sang all Day.
Celebrating their twentieth anniversary, the versatile Sdasa Chorale will treat festival audiences to a concert of close harmony gospel arrangements, African-American spirituals, rhythm-and-blues numbers and indigenous songs.
Another all-Mozart concert will feature the renowned Sontonga Quartet performing Adagio and Fugue in C minor K546, Clarinet Quintet K581 (with guest Matthew Reid on clarinet), and String Quartet in G major
K387.
The Sontonga Quartet's second recital will be an avant-garde late-night affair with Terry Riley's The Gift from Salome Dances for Peace, Matthijs van Dyk's arrangement of B.Y.O.B. by rock group System of a Down, and Henryk Górecki's String Quartet No. 2 Quasi una Fantasia.
Gypsy and Tango in Vienna is the title of a sparkling concert by the Kerimov Trio with guest baritone Federico Freschi. Mozart's Rondo alla Turca and Non pui andrai from Marriage of Figaro will head up the programme. Short works by a range of composers including Beethoven, Brahms, Piazzolla, Cole Porter and Franz Lehár, will make up the complement.
Federico Freschi will make a second appearance in The Art of French Song with Christopher Duigan on piano.
No National Arts Festival music programme is ever complete without a special event for lovers of Baroque music. This year festinos will have the rare opportunity to savour L'Europe
Galante (Gallant Europe), a seventeenth century opera-ballet by André Campra performed by the Baroque 2000 orchestra with three singers and two dancers. The musical director is Chiara Banchini, and Boyzie Cekwana creates the original choreography.
The Violoncello is another mustn't miss in every festival music mix. This year cello maestro Peter Martens will perform all five Bach suites for violoncello solo in two separate recitals. In his words: "An almost sacred journey through some of the most ingenious, inspired and glorious music ever written."
Another sacred journey will be made in Ibali Lomculo-Jesus: Life and Crucifixion, an oratorio composed and conducted by Thanduxolo Christian Ngqobe with singers and musicians from the Eastern Cape's Legato Music Academy Opera and Orchestra Development.
Other Eastern Cape voices and instrumentalists will strike a lighter note in Choral Jazz Spectacular. The Siyaphakama Choir from Queenstown conducted by
Thomas Kolo, the Mdantsane Voices of Joy from East London conducted by Mlungisi Gxabashe, and the Modern Vocal Artists from Mthatha conducted by Lala Nomanyama, have put together a foot-tapping programme of traditional folk melodies and new works by Xhosa composers.
Still more music will spill out into the Grahamstown streets from the packed Standard Bank Jazz programme and numerous Fringe venues.
The festival is sponsored by the Eastern Cape government, Standard Bank, the SABC, the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund and the National Arts Council.
Business & Arts South Africa has also made a special grant to the festival this year. The major portion goes to the artists on the festival fringe, the rest to festival newspaper Cue, the Youth Audience Development Project and the Art-Walk Meander Map.
For more information, see the related articles on the right - and visit the National Arts Festival website.
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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