Spring Cyber Symphonies Concert 1 Mozart Bassoon Concerto in B flat, K. 191 Beethoven Symphony No. 1 in C, Op 21 Conductor Bernhard Gueller Soloist Brandon Phillips Concertmaster Philip Martens Recorded at the Cape Town City Hall on August 19, 2021 Streaming September 16 - 20, 2021 This concert is generously supported by BERNHARD GUELLER Conductor Principal guest conductor of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director Laureate of Symphony Nova Scotia in Canada, Bernhard Gueller continues to be acclaimed for his interpretations and phrasing, and the excitement he brings to the podium. “He is a favoured conductor, both of players and audiences, undoubtedly because of his carefully prepared but always musically rewarding performances”(WeekendSpecial.co.za). He is acclaimed by musicians, critics and audiences for his musical purity, and continually garners praise for the fresh approach he applies under his “amazingly suggestive baton”. Having stepped down in 2018 after 16 years as music director of Symphony Nova Scotia, Gueller stepped into a new role as Music Director Laureate and in the last two years, prior to the advent of Covid-19 returned to both SNS and British Columbia’s Victoria Symphony where he was also principal guest conductor. He also made his debut with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra in New Jersey in 2019 and returned to Halifax to conduct the Scotia Festival of Music again. He has conducted many other orchestras in Canada including the Edmonton and Calgary Philharmonic orchestras and is a frequent guest conductor with the KZN Philharmonic and the Johannesburg Philharmonic. Gueller has had many high-level collaborations with internationally acclaimed soloists, including Canadian violinist James Ehnes and pianists Jan Lisiecki, Janina Fialkowska, Anton Kuerti, Jon Kimura Parker and Marc Andre-Hamelin, along with pianist Lars Vogt, violinist Joshua Bell, and Metropolitan Opera singers Pretty Yende, Elza van den Heever and the late Johan Botha, as well as soprano Pumeza Matshikiza. Beginning his career as a cellist, Gueller won the United German Radios Conducting Competition in 1979 and for nearly 20 years ran tandem careers, deputing for the legendary conductor Sergiu Celibidache, who regarded Gueller as his best “pupil”. Gueller also attracted the attention of the renowned arts administrator Ernest Fleischman who "was deeply impressed by his extraordinary musicianship, his marvellous ability to communicate with the musicians, and his charismatic impact on the audience". He has also been music director in Nuremberg and principal guest conductor of the Johannesburg Philharmonic. His career has taken him to many top concert halls, from America and Australia to Canada, Russia, Japan, China (Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hong Kong), Korea, South Africa and Brazil, as well as countries in Europe such as Spain, Italy, France, Norway, Bulgaria, Italy and Sweden, and his native Germany where he, for instance, conducted the Stuttgart Radio Symphony and the Munich Philharmonic. He has conducted in festivals internationally, including the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra in the International Festival of the Canary Islands, the Schwetzinger Festival in Germany, the Scotia Festival in Halifax, and the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival and National Arts Festival in South Africa. Gueller has made many recordings for national and international broadcast and several acclaimed CDs including two with the CPO - with South African mezzo soprano Hanneli Rupert and the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra and the concerti of Vieuxtemps and Saint-Saëns with cellist Peter Martens. Others include two with contemporary Canadian composer, Christos Hatzis, one of contemporary Canadian works by Tim Brady which won an East Coast Music award, and a CD of orchestrated lieder by Schubert, all with Symphony Nova Scotia. His latest CD with Symphony Nova Scotia with songstress Sarah Slean was nominated for a Juno Award in 2021. He has also recorded CDs with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, German Brass and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. Gueller was awarded a doctorate by Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for his service to music. BRANDON PHILLIPS Soloist Principal bassoon of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra and, since 2015, its resident conductor, Brandon Phillips runs a tandem career as bassoonist and conductor. The winner of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra’s Inaugural Len van Zyl Conductor’s Competition in 2010 (now the SA Conductors’ Competition), he is also the music director of the Cape Town Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. Phillips began his music career in the New Apostolic Church. He studied bassoon and viola at the University of Cape Town, receiving his Diploma for Orchestral Studies and B Mus Hons in solo bassoon in 2005. He is regularly invited as an adjudicator and conductor for various competitions such as the ATKV, Artscape National Youth, Unisa Winds and the Schock Singing competitions. He is a guest conductor of the Johannesburg Philharmonic and the KZN Philharmonic, and other orchestras in oratorio, opera and ballet, as well as cross-over concerts. Appearances with the Miagi Youth Orchestra Festival which he conducted in 2014 in Berlin and Amsterdam received critical acclaim. He has also conducted at the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival. In 2012, Phillips received a prestigious award from the Minister of Arts and Culture Ivan Meyer for “outstanding achievements by the youth”. In 2017 he received another prestigious award, "Skouerklop", at the Suidoosterfees. Phillips is supported by RMB Starlight Classics. Phillips conducts the CPO’s popular community concerts which give performance platforms to talented local musicians, as well as the Rotary Concerto Festival with the CPYO. He was invited to conduct the German National Youth Orchestra at the Beethoven Festival in Bonn in 2019 and recently conducted the world premiere of a work by American percussionist Marcus Gilmore with the CPO in Rolex Arts Weekend in Cape Town. In 2021, under Covid-19 restrictions, Phillips conducted the CPO in its Youtube presentation, The Instruments of the Orchestra, for learners around the country. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1767-1791) Bassoon Concerto in B flat, K 191 Allegro * Andante ma adagio * Rondo: Tempo di Menuetto Mozart completed the Bassoon Concerto in June 1774, while the Mozart family was happily ensconced in the Tanzmeisterhaus on Salzburg’s Makartplatz. The summer of 1774 was in fact one of the most peaceful periods in the composer’s life – there were no hectic journeys in the offing – and the relaxed life in that Salzburg summer is clearly mirrored in the music he wrote at this time. It is highly likely that the Bassoon Concerto was commissioned by the Freiherr Thaddäus von Dürnitz, a talented amateur of the bassoon, who also ordered the Sonata for Bassoon and Cello, K 292 and probably some 65 other works. There are, moreover, strong indications that Mozart wrote three or even four other bassoon concertos for this rich Bavarian patron, but sadly they have never been found. So this, the only existing Mozart Bassoon Concerto, remains perhaps the most popular bassoon concerto played today, remembering that Vivaldi had written 39 for this instrument alone and composers from the Baroque to the 21st century have written hundreds more. In this work, the 18-year-old Mozart made no secret of the fact that he still accepted the convention of his day where works of this nature were concerned; each of the three movements contains minore sections in accordance with the taste of the period, while the juxta-positioning of thematically stable tutti sections and solo passages consisting of lively figurations may be seen as a survival of the baroque concerto principle. This particular one displays the instrument’s agility and lyricism. Bassoon concertos reached the peak of their popularity during the first half of the 18th century. After 1750, however, the bassoon lost ground as a solo instrument in favour of the flute and clarinet. NOTE: CTSO PROGRAMME BANK, AUGMENTED Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827) Symphony No. 1 in C, Opus 21 Adagio molto - Allegro con brio * Andante cantabile con moto * Menuetto: Allegro molto e vivace * Adagio - Allegro molto e vivace When Beethoven’s first foray into the imposing world of the symphony was premiered in Vienna in April 1800, little did the musical establishment know that a musical revolution had begun. The symphony, indeed orchestral music, was never to be the same again. Twenty- seven years later, when Beethoven died, his nine symphonies became the backbone of symphonic thought that was to dominate the 19th century and even the 20th. For, with his First Symphony, Beethoven had indicated quite clearly that he was turning away from the orderly classical world of Haydn and Mozart and embarking on an altogether new journey. Arnold Whittall captures the essence of what Beethoven set about doing when he writes: “Beethoven, as the first great composer to approach the symphony with caution, ensured its transformation from something which just happened to be the most substantial form yet devised for orchestral concert music into a vehicle for the expression of personal dramas and philosophies … With Beethoven, symphonies ceased to pour off the conveyor belt: each one had to be individual, hand-made, a landmark in the composer’s development.” And how individual this First Symphony is! In an audacious gesture, Beethoven begins with a discord in the wrong key. A question-and-answer sequence proceeds until the main Allegro leaps away with a typically Beethovian impishness. The second movement is elegant and courtly, with drums tapping away here and there, while the main theme wends its gentle way. The third movement could almost be called the first symphonic Scherzo, although we have to wait for Eroica for that title to become official. But this is no graceful 18th-century Minuet and Trio. A Beethoven signature chord begins the finale. But surprises await, with a series of tentative scale passages before the ebullient main subject races away.