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  • In key for a new season

    Mail & Guardian , South Africa
    May 7 2004

    In key for a new season

    The Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra's (JPO) fourth birthday is on
    June 21 - an unbelievable feat, because the months between January
    and June 2000 were some of the blackest for orchestral musicians in
    Johannesburg. Paul Boekkooi looks back on four years of the
    Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra and previews its new season

    he Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra's (JPO) fourth birthday is on
    June 21 - an unbelievable feat, because the months between January
    and June 2000 were some of the blackest for orchestral musicians in
    Johannesburg.

    At the end of January 2000 the old National Symphony Orchestra was
    disbanded owing to a lack of funds. That orchestra gave two
    heart-rending free performances to the Johannesburg public in
    Parktown's Linder Auditorium without a conductor. Both houses were
    brimful. Many thought it the final death knell for orchestral music
    in Africa's richest city.

    The musicians thought differently. They started forming committees to
    investigate the possibility of establishing a new orchestra where
    each member would be a stakeholder in the company they collectively
    own. The JPO gave its inaugural concerts on June 21 and 22 that year
    in the Linder with Finnish maestro Hannu Lintu conducting. The
    sustainability of regular symphony seasons was one of the challenges
    facing the new orchestra. It met only sporadically during the first
    30 months of its existence. However, since 2003 it presented four
    symphony seasons annually. With ample corporate funding, the JPO is
    now able to plan seasons at least a year ahead. After an excellent
    first season in 2004 with only a couple of artistic disappointments,
    lovers of symphonic music can look forward to an arguably better
    second symphony season, starting on May 12 at the Linder. The
    five-concert season on Wednesdays and Thurdays at 8pm ends on June
    10.

    Although United States composer Alan Hovhanness's Mysterious Mountain
    (1955) is apparently popular on Classic FM, a live performance of
    this work by the composer of Armenian and Scottish parentage might
    have a different impact.

    Only a minority might appreciate the composer's New Age sounds and
    his sometimes boringly conservative harmonies. The orchestration is
    colourful and mystical, but unfortunately at times, also wearisome.

    However, the same concert presents French pianist Jean Dubé (23) who
    won the International Liszt Competition in Utrecht, The Netherlands,
    two years ago. He'll be playing the Liszt Piano Concerto No 1 in E
    Flat Major.

    But how adroit will conductor Michael Hankinson be and what kind of
    exoticism will he be able to evoke in the full score of Stravinsky's
    Firebird Ballet?

    The week after that, on May 19 and 20, a new conductor will take his
    bow with the JPO - Pretoria-born Conrad van Alphen, who already has
    an international reputation. He will conduct Russian master pianist
    Boris Petrushansky in a performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No
    4 in G Op 58, while he will also bring us one of the 20th century's
    most celebrated symphonies: the Shostakovich No 10 in E Op 93. In
    terms of formal analysis, few of the composer's symphonies have had
    more written about them than this one.

    For the three remaining concerts, the JPO has contracted a maestro
    who has had a special relationship with it from the very first year -
    Germany's Bernhard Gueller. He or the riveting Charles Ansbacher from
    the US, who conducted during this year's first season, is the kind of
    orchestra trainer the JPO needs to continually grow as an symphonic
    entity. Gueller brings us three stimulating, divergent programmes.

    The first, on May 26 and 27, are by Czech, Hungarian and Russian
    composers, opening with a selection of Dvorák's Slavonic Dances,
    followed by a rare performance of Bartok's Viola Concerto as prepared
    for performance from the composer's original manuscript by Tibor
    Serly.

    The brilliant, Russian-born violinist, who lives in Pretoria but is
    often one of the JPO's sub-principals, will be the soloist. The
    concert ends with Rachmaninov's swansong, the broodingly melancholic
    Symphonic Dances, Op 45.

    The following week Anton Nel (piano) is the soloist in music by
    Viennese composers: Schubert's Rosamunde Overture, the Brahms Piano
    Concerto No 1 in D Op 15 and Beethoven's Symphony No 3 in E Flat Op
    55 (The Eroica), also performed at the JPO's inaugural concert.

    The theme for the final concert on June 9 and 10 is The Planets. Not
    only will Gustav Holst's famous suite be heard, but the June concert
    opens with Mozart's last and arguably greatest symphony, No 41 in C
    K551 (The Jupiter). Book at Computicket.
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