The Good Friday concert – Johan Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion – was a great success. The Easter concert is a must for many people in Johannesburg, setting the tone for the Easter week; the trials and tribulations of Christ on Good Friday and the joy and glory of Easter Sunday.
The choir was on top form mastering the intricacies of Bach’s beautiful music to perfection. Richard’s WhatsApp to the choir afterwards says it all: “The choir was great last night. You were all on top form and the focus was intense. Thanks for your hard work. It really paid off. The reaction of the audience said it all”. Indeed – we got a standing ovation and many great comments from the audience.
The soloists were wonderful too – Aubrey Lodewyk has sung the bass/baritone part with us many times before and was as always great as was Brittany Smith who is also often singing with us, but the one who really stood out with his unbelievably beautiful, warm voice and his ability to tell the story was Siyabonga Maqungo – he is just phenomenal. Siyabonga is now at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. What a special treat and privilege to hear him here in Johannesburg.
So – is it possible to follow this concert with another success? We think so! Our next offering is a very popular work:
Carl Orff’s
Carmina Burana
Sunday 4th June 2023 @ 3 pm
Linder Auditorium, Parktown
Soloists:
Magdalene Minnaar, soprano, William Berger, baritone, Sanele Mwelase, counter tenor.
Pianists:
Eugene Joubert & Kerryn Wisniewski.
Plus a group of 6 super talented percussionists.
Conducted by Richard Cock
Carl Orff was German composer best known for his cantata Carmina Burana and for his innovations in music education. He began playing piano at the age of five, and later studied cello and organ. He was attending concerts at an early age and heard his first opera (Richard Wagner‘s The Flying Dutchman) in 1909 at the age of 14. Orff studied at the Munich Academy of Music. Orff’s teacher at the Akademie was the composer Anton Beer-Walbrunn, of whom he later wrote with respect but said that he found the academy overall to be “conservative and old-fashioned”. He was influenced by the works of Arnold Schoenberg and Claude Debussy.He also studied with the German composer Heinrich Kaminski and later conducted in Munich, Mannheim, and Darmstadt. His Schulwerk, a development approach used in music education was first published in 1930. It combines music, movement, drama, and speech into lessons that are similar to a child’s world of play.
Carmina Burana is a cantata for orchestra – or two pianos and percussion – chorus, and vocal soloists premiered in 1937. Orff drew his text from a 13th-century manuscript containing songs and plays written in Latin and medieval Greman and French, which was discovered in 1803 at the Bavarian monastery of Benediktbeuern. Dubbed the Carmina Burana (“Songs of Beuern”) by the German philologist Johann Andreas Schmeller, the texts present a varied view of medieval life, including religious verses, social satires, songs about love and lust, and bawdy drinking songs. The best-known song from Carmina Burana is “O Fortuna” (“Oh Fortune”), which serves as both prologue and epilogue. It frames the revelry of the three main movements with a stark warning about the power of luck and fate, offering the ancient image of a wheel of fortune that deals out triumph and disaster at random. The forceful first measures are among the grandest statements in all choral literature.
This is a very popular work so tickets will be sold out very quickly.
Book now to avoid disappointment – use this link
On behalf of the Symphony Choir of Johannesburg
Kate Pape