Summer Cyber Symphonies 4 Mozart Piano Concerto No, 20 in D minor, K466 Schubert Symphony no 8 in in B minor, “Unfinished”, D 759 Conductor Bernhard Gueller Soloist Esthea Kruger (piano) Concertmaster Farida Bacharova Recorded at the Hugo Lambrechts Music Centre, Parow, on March 7, 2021 Streamed April 15- 19, 2021 This concert is generously supported by 1 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 again to conduct the Scotia Festival of Music. 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. 2 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 Schumann, all with Symphony Nova Scotia. He has also recorded CDs with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, German Brass and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. 3 ESTHEA KRUGER Soloist South African pianist Esthea Kruger obtained her BMus and MMus (Piano Performance) degrees (both cum laude) at Stellenbosch University under the guidance of Nina Schumann and Luis Magalhães, and was awarded Stellenbosch University's prestigious Chancellor’s Medal in 2009. After she had received scholarship offers from several music schools in the United States, she enrolled in a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance at the University of North Texas under the tutelage of Vladimir Viardo. Having completed her doctorate in 2012, she then commenced her Meisterklasse degree at the Hochschule für Musik Würzburg, Germany, studying in the class of Bernd Glemser. She was awarded the Meisterklassendiplom at the beginning of 2015. Additionally, she specialised in Art Song Accompaniment, obtaining a second master’s degree in Liedgestaltung in 2019 from the Hochschule für Musik Würzburg as student of Gerold Huber. Esthea Kruger has won prizes at many major competitions in South Africa, such as the SAMRO Overseas Scholarships Competition, the ATKV-Muziq Competition, the FMR/Pick 'n Pay Travel Award Competition, the Stonehage Bursary Competition, the Mabel Quick Overseas Scholarship Competition and the UNISA National Piano Competition. Apart from her solo performances, Esthea Kruger regularly appears in concert as chamber musician, in South Africa and abroad. As Lied accompanist she was awarded the pianist prize at the Armin Knab Singing Competition of the Hochschule für Musik Würzburg in 2013, 2015 and 2017. In 2018 she performed at the Davos Festival’s Young Artists in Concert in Switzerland. Esthea Kruger is the founder and artistic director of “Neues Lied”, a festival for contemporary art song that she organises yearly in Germany. The festival was awarded a cultural prize by the City of Würzburg in 2020. In 2019 Esthea Kruger was appointed piano lecturer at the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town. 4 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791) Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor K. 466 1) Allegro 2) Romance 3) Rondo: Allegro assai A distinguishing feature of Mozart’s D minor Piano Concerto is the fact that it was a great favourite of Beethoven’s. In fact, by all accounts, Beethoven played it often and played it brilliantly. He even wrote cadenzas for the concerto that are still used by many soloists today. This is one of only two piano concertos by Mozart in a minor key. The other, number 24, is in C minor. Clearly Mozart regarded D minor as a particularly dark key because his Requiem is mostly in D minor, as is that terrifying scene in Don Giovanni when the Don is subjected to his damnation. The strange opening of the concerto on the orchestra sets the scene for the serious business in hand. The main theme is sombre and syncopated, creating a sense of unease. Outbursts from the orchestra emphasise the tragic nature of this music. But when the piano enters, it is with an entirely different theme that is somewhat lighter in mood. The orchestra maintains its insistence on the opening ideas, but the piano’s new theme becomes very important in the development section. The movement ends in the same brooding, unsettled mood in which it began. The soothing world of B flat major introduces the second movement with the soloist suggesting three different thematic ideas. But a stormy middle section takes us into G minor. The finale is quite a virtuoso affair with the piano announcing the main material that has returned us to the stormy world of D minor. With exquisite woodwind writing, Mozart takes us gently into D major to bring his masterpiece to a close. PROGRAMME NOTE: CTSO PROGRAMME BANK/RODNEY TRUDGEON 5 Franz Schubert (1797-1828) Symphony no. 8 in in B minor, “Unfinished”, D 759 1) Allegro moderato 2) Andante con moto The mystique which surrounds the name “Unfinished Symphony” has undoubtedly captured the imagination of millions of music lovers over the years and caused this two-movement work by Schubert to become enormously popular. As so often with nick names, the composers themselves knew nothing of them. In fact, Schubert left many works unfinished including other symphonies, chamber works and piano works. He was notoriously erratic when it came to finishing a job and his capricious mind leapt from inspiration to inspiration. The fact that the two movements which have come to be known as the Unfinished are arguably vastly superior to any other symphonic movement Schubert wrote gives some sort of indication that, after the vast outflow of inspiration which resulted in these two movements, Schubert clearly realised that he could say no more. A scherzo or finale would simply not live up to what he had already achieved, even though he had sketched part of a scherzo. That is one popular theory. The other is that in 1822, when he wrote this music, he was beginning to experience the first signs of the disease that would kill him six years later, syphilis. This theory certainly ties up with the extremely personal and inward looking character of the music. So when he made a temporary recovery, he felt haunted by the two movements he had written and in fact gave them away. The score remained in a bottom drawer until 1865, when it was discovered by the conductor Johann Herbeck, who gave the first performance. The intense, personal nature of this music is evident right at the outset. There is no introduction and the first theme moves mysteriously through the cellos and basses. Then the violins enter with an agitated figure over which the oboe and clarinet intone a mournful theme. The music begins to build to a climax and after some forceful chords on the full orchestra, the horn sustains a long, pivotal note from which the second subject appears in the key of G major. A truly magical transition. This subject is played on the cellos and is one of Schubert’s most memorable themes.