Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra
– A message from our principal guest conductor, Bernhard Gueller
You won’t be surprised when I tell you that of all the arts music is the one that sustains you. This cannot be clearer than in this Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana made by the musicians of the Cape Town Philharmonic Youth Orchestra recorded in their own homes.
You may remember what I wrote in Concerto, the CPO’s journal, and partly repeated in the CPO Covid videos:
Art – and here I mean the entire creative spectrum, literature, the visual arts, all performing arts and music – makes us human beings. It is writers, composers, painters, sculptors and more recently filmmakers who create whole worlds and decide how they should look and feel and what they should express and where all of this could lead to and …
But no other art form comes from so deep inside a human psyche and can go that deep into a human psyche than music. No other art form can create such ecstasy, happiness, sadness, grief, desperation and joy.
Music can be a medium which articulates emotions you aren’t able to express with words, and an emotion not expressed remains, to me, unredeemed.
In this country, in this city, we also see the benefits of music in social cohesion. We see that young people from the townships and other disadvantaged areas are given the chance to learn to play an instrument, to perform in public and in so doing are offered something positive for their after-school hours and they can and do bask in a sense of achievement and self-worth that spreads to their families and into their communities. In these times of necessary yet difficult social distancing and isolation, we cannot let their music education suffer. To so many of them, music offers a feeling of self-worth, brings confidence and brings a sense of community. We are fortunate in having a team of dedicated teachers who are preparing on-line theory and practical lessons for our Masidlale learners and some CP Music Academy students.
This anecdote illustrates the importance of music to me. A few years after the end of World War 2, the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by the great Rumanian conductor, Sergiu Celibidache, performed in the destroyed Philharmonie Beethoven’s Egmont overture. You can see the sky through the ruined roof:
There is an “Ideal”. We don’t know how this looks, what it is.
We only feel there is something. And great art, especially great music, gives us a glimpse of it here and there.
I wish you good health, good music on all the channels that have been made available to us like the Berlin Digital Concert Hall, Metropolitan Opera, and Vienna Opera. I trust that you all stay safe until we can meet again in safety at a live symphony concert.
With my warmest regards and thanks for your continued support of our treasured Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra.
Didn’t the audience have other concerns then than attending a concert? Obviously not.
There is an “Ideal”. We don’t know how this looks, what it is.
We only feel there is something. And great art, especially great music, gives us a glimpse of it here and there.
I wish you good health, good music on all the channels that have been made available to us like the Berlin Digital Concert Hall, Metropolitan Opera, and Vienna Opera. I trust that you all stay safe until we can meet again in safety at a live symphony concert.
With my warmest regards and thanks for your continued support of our treasured Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra.
Bernhard Gueller