Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra's winter season honours SA's Klatzow

29 May 2015

The Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra's winter season, which runs from 4 to 25 June, 2015, honours South African composer Peter Klatzow, on his 70th birthday. The concert, on 25 June, will feature several of Klatzow's works, including his Double Concerto for Flute, Marimba and Strings, and the Brahms/Klatzow Symphony no 5, Klatzow's orchestration of the Brahms String Quintet in G, Opus 111.

The CPO welcomes back two popular conductors this season: Sibelius Conducting Competition second-prize winner Yasuo Shinozaki and American maestro Victor Yampolsky will each direct two concerts, with several outstanding soloists making a return to the CPO stage.

The season opens on 4 June with a performance of Beethoven Piano Concerto no 1 in C with the American pianist Awadagin Pratt. Other works on the programme are Long Walk, a SAMRO commission of Cape Town composer Laura Stevens, (world premiere) and Tchaikovsky's Symphony no 4 in F minor.

The second concert, on 11 June, features the South African soloists Ben Schoeman (piano) and Anzél Gerber in Grovés Bushman Prayers for Piano, Cello, Narrator and Orchestra. The narrator will be Rodney Trudgeon. Schoeman will also play Saint-Saëns Africa for Piano and Orchestra, and Gerber will play Tchaikovsky Pezzo Capriccioso. The orchestra will play the Hussite Overture by Dvorák and the Sibelius Symphony no 1 in E minor.

A Life for the Tsar

On 18 June, Yampolsky takes up the baton with Olivier Charlier as the soloist in Mozart's Strasbourg Violin Concerto, no 3 in G, K 216. Singers Elizabeth Frandsen (mezzo) and Esewu Nobela (tenor) will be joined by the New Apostolic Church Choir and orchestra in the Symphony No.1 in E by Scriabin. The concert will begin with the Overture, A Life for the Tsar, by Glinka.

The season ends with the Klatzow concert, which also features Liesl Stoltz (flute) and Frank Mallows (marimba) in his Double Concerto, Three Paintings by Irma Stern and The Healing Melody, a work commissioned by the Doctors' Orchestra.

All concerts take place at the Cape Town City Hall at 8 pm. Subscriptions attract a 20% discount, with members of Friends of Orchestral Music attracting a further 10%. Single seats range from R90 on the platform to R230. One new subscriber can win a pair of tickets to the Cape Town Concert Series recital with pianists Natalia Lavrova and Vassily Primakov on 24 October at the Baxter Concert Hall. The CPO has hired generators for the City Hall in case Eskom implements load-shedding as scheduled for two concerts.