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Symphony Concert
2018-09-22

FSSO’s 4th Symphony Concert presented in collaboration with the OSM:

International guest pianist and FSSO virtuosi promise an evening of musical poetics

Conductor: Alexander Fokkens
Soloists: Vitaly Pisarenko (piano),
Odeion String Quartet,
Paul van Zuilenburg (trumpet),
Kobus Malan (oboe),
Danrè Strydom (clarinet),
Brahm Henkins (bassoon) and
Shannon Armer (French horn)
Date: Saturday, 22 September 2018
Time: 19:30
Venue: Odeion, UFS

On Saturday 22 September 2018, the Free State Symphony Orchestra’s (FSSO’s) fourth symphony concert of the year brings to the stage international piano virtuoso, Vitaly Pisarenko, and places a spotlight on the local talent of the Odeion String Quartet as well as a number of the FSSO’s principal players.

Regarded as one of the finest young musicians of his generation, Pisarenko has been dubbed as a ‘poet at the piano’ and is performing as guest piano soloist with the FSSO as part of the South African leg of his current world tour. After performing in a series of recitals and concerts with local orchestras, he moves on to the UK, Belgium, Hong Kong and Argentina. The concert in Bloemfontein will be his second last performance in South Africa.

Described by the New York Times as an “immensely gifted pianist… with prodigious technique, myriad shadings and scrupulous accuracy”, the Russian-born pianist already had his first public recital at the age of six. After winning the 8th International Franz Liszt Piano Competition in 2008, he took his place in the musical world as a pianist “of unusually soft touch and captivating expressiveness”, rapidly gaining worldwide recognition. His style has prompted more than one critic to compare his playing to that of “a young Franz Liszt”.

This evocative pianist will perform Shostakovich’s Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Strings, Opus 31 with the FSSO’s Paul van Zuilenburg as the trumpet soloist. Shostakovich originally composed the concerto as an experimentation with a neo-baroque combination of instruments. Despite the title, the work might more accurately be classified as a double concerto rather than a piano concerto in which the trumpet and piano command equal prominence. The trumpet parts frequently take the form of sardonic interjections, leavening the humour and wit of the piano passage work.

The Odeion String Quartet with Samson Diamond (violin), Sharon de Kock (violin), Jeanne-Louise Moolman (viola) and Anmari van der Westhuizen (cello) are the soloists in Elgar’s masterpiece, Introduction and Allegro for String Quartet and Strings. Scored for a string quartet and string orchestra, Elgar originally composed it to show off the players’ virtuosity. The score soon came to be recognised as a masterpiece and is likened to a multi-layered symphonic poem for string orchestra.

The programme concludes with Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Four Winds in E-flat major which is scored for solo oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon. The soloists for the Sinfonia Concertante will be four principal players of the FSSO: Kobus Malan (oboe), Danré Strydom (clarinet), Brahm Henkins (bassoon) and Shannon Armer (French horn).

When asked how he felt about joining the FSSO for this concert, Pisarenko responded by saying that this performance would represent a number of firsts for him: “Although this is my third visit to South Africa, it will be the first time that I perform in Bloemfontein. I’ve also always loved Shostakovich’s piano concerto and have wanted to play it for a long time. It is such a beautiful and expressive concerto, and I’ll be playing this fantastic piece for the very first time with the FSSO.”

Alexander Fokkens, CEO and Creative Director of the FSSO, concludes: “It’s very exciting to be able to showcase our immensely talented local orchestral musicians alongside a musician of Vitaly’s calibre. The programme for the evening will not only show off individual talent, but create an orchestral experience that will feel musically varied and poetically moving.”

Fokkens will also be conducting the concert on the evening. The FSSO’s fourth symphony concert for this year is presented in collaboration with the Odeion School of Music.


Admission:

Ticket prices are as follows:
Adults - R150; Pensioners and block bookings of 10 and more - R100; Children 3 to 18 years - R50.

Tickets are available at any Computicket outlet or online at online.computicket.com. For enquiries, contact Ella Kotze at the FSSO on 051 401 2342, Ninette Pretorius of the OSM on 051 401 2504, or visit the FSSO’s Facebook page (@ Free State Symphony Orchestra) for more information and regular updates.

For media enquiries and visuals, contact Daphney Teffo on 082 506 3551 or e-mail rdteffo@gmail.com


Back
CHOPIN IN AFRICA – Warsaw to Bloemfontein

Lunch Hour Concert

15 November

13:00

Odeion


Ensemble from POLAND:

Maria Pomianowska ~Katarzyna Gacek-Duda ~ Gwidon Modest Cybulski

Karolina Matuszkiewicz ~ Wojciech Lubertowicz

together with

Nicol Viljoen (piano) & Chris van Zyl (cello)

Entrance Free

We can promise you this: you haven’t heard anything like it. Unless, that is, you’ve written an ethnomusicology dissertation on Polish folk music or have access to a functioning time machine.

Alexander Varty: Vancouver's News & Entertainment Weekly

Maria Pomianowska (Professor of Folk Music at the prestigious Kraków Academy of Music in Poland) and her a quintet of fellow musicians will present a lunch hour concert at the Odeion School of Music on 15 November at the Odeion. This concert is entitled Chopin On 5 Continents – Africa. Pomianowska and her ensemble will join forces with Prof Nicol Viljoen (pianist) and cellist Chris van Zyl (BMus Performance) studying under the tutelage of Prof Anmari van der Westhuizen.

Pomianowska and her ensemble will mainly play on string folk music instruments known as sukas. Aesthetically and proportionally a suka closely resembles an ancient violin, but is played vertically like a cello and positioned on the lap.

Pomianowska literally revived the suka from obsolescence with only a dusty painting as the as a point of reference. She was curious to research the connection between her Polish heritage with the South and Central Asian instruments she was studying as part of her own ethnomusicological research.

Pomianowska remarked: “I reconstructed the instrument and rediscovered the performance technique in collaboration with the musicologist Ewa Dahlig-Turek and the late luthier Andrzej Kuczkowski. “We reconstructed the instrument, which had not existed for 100 years in our culture. The last generation of suka musicians became extinct during the beginning of the 20th century, and the only information we had available was from ethnographical sources.”

The suka is played with a bow, and by stopping the strings with the nails - not the fleshy pads - of the left hand fingers. It is a seemingly awkward technique, but one that Pomianowska says produces a uniquely vocal timbre.

It is not enough to play Chopin’s music as written, Pomianowska contends, noting that her famous countryman was also renowned as an improviser. “We want to share with him that creation moment,” she says, “to connect on these different levels of emotion and imagination.”

So what does this have to do with Frédéric Chopin? The Warsaw-born, Paris-trained, composer was a keen student of folk music, and almost certainly heard the suka during summer vacations in his native land. Unlike later musicologist-composers Béla Bartok and Leoš Janácek, Chopin didn’t transcribe folk melodies note for note, but fragments of rural tunes appear in many of his best-loved compositions, and the mazurka was one of his compositional staples. He wrote at least 59 works for piano based on its lively barn dance beat.

She is also preparing to take Chopin far beyond his ethnic origins she has transcribed several of Chopin’s mazurkas for her touring quintet, which will be amplified by local artists, pianist Nicol Viljoen and cellist Chris van Zyl, and encapsulate the concert with a distinct South African flavour. Viljoen has a remarkable favour for the Chopin Mazurkas and gave a memorable recital in Krakow in 2015.

Pomianowska and her ensemble’s concert tour to South Africa is taking place in celebration of Poland’s membership of the UN’s security. The concert at the Odeion School of Music is positioned with the incentive to serve as a catalyst of the planned bi-lateral agreement between the Academy of Music in Kraków and the OSM, which is currently in process.

This event is fully sponsored by the Embassy of Poland in South Africa and the OSM and the University of the Free State would like to extend their gratitude to the Embassy of Poland for this initiative.

Inquiries:

Ninette Pretorius
Officer: Professional Services & Concert coordinator
Odeion School of Music
pretoriusn@ufs.ac.za

or

Marius Coetzee
Innovation & Development Manager Odeion School of Music
coetzee@ufs.ac.za

Grazyna Koornhof
Political & Economic Section
Embassy of the Republic of Poland Pretoria South Africa
grazyna.koornhof@msz.gov.pl

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