Hot on the heels of Cinzia Milani’s guitar recital, the Grahamstown Music Society presents The Rhodes Trio, featuring three outstanding musicians all resident in Grahamstown: Catherine Foxcroft (piano), Kwazi Mkula (cello), and Duncan Samson (violin/viola).
Hot on the heels of Cinzia Milani’s guitar recital, the Grahamstown Music Society presents The Rhodes Trio, featuring three outstanding musicians all resident in Grahamstown: Catherine Foxcroft (piano), Kwazi Mkula (cello), and Duncan Samson (violin/viola).
The trio will perform on Wednesday next week ahead of their appearance as part of the Rhodes Music Staff performances at the National Arts Festival.
Their programme will include works by Mozart, Schumann, Piazzolla, Simonetti, Gounod and two pieces by Grant McLachlan that have been arranged especially for the Trio.
The Rhodes Piano Trio was formed in 2015 at the Rhodes Department of Music and Musicology and is due to perform at a number of South African Music Societies, as well as the Festival.
Duncan Samson is an avid chamber musician.
Over the years he has performed with numerous orchestras and ensembles around South Africa, including the Eastern Cape Philharmonic Orchestra in Port Elizabeth, the PACOFS orchestra in Bloemfontein, the National Chamber Orchestra in Mmabatho, and the Eastern Cape Chamber Orchestra in Grahamstown.
He plays both violin and viola and performs regularly with various chamber groups in the Eastern Cape.
Duncan is also currently Director of Mathematics at St Andrew’s College and DSG in Grahamstown.
Kwazi Mkula was born in the Eastern Cape. He grew up in Cape Town where he began his cello tuition at the Beau Soleil Music Centre.
He studied at the University of Cape Town under Marian Lewin, where he graduated with a Performers' Diploma in Music in 2013.
He has performed in several orchestras in South Africa under conductors such as Bernard Gueller, Victor Yamposky and Alex Fokkens.
He has also shared the stage with local artists such as Thandiswa Mazwayi, Jimmy Dludlu and Lira.
He has participated in music festivals such as the Stellenbosch International Chamber Festival, SANYO and MIAGI.
He has recently relocated to Grahamstown where he teaches cello at DSG. Catherine Foxcroft is a soloist, chamber musician, pedagogue, adjudicator and researcher in music cognition.
She performs frequently with South African orchestras and as recitalist in South Africa and abroad.
She has recorded for the SABC, Radio Telifis (Ireland), Nord Deutsche Radio and the West Deutsche Radio.
Her CD recordings and live concert recordings are broadcast frequently on FMR and SAfm in South Africa.
Her piano students regularly win prizes at national competitions (UNISA, FMR, GMS, SAMRO, KZNPO and JPO Youth Concerto Festivals).
Several of her students have continued to study piano performance at internationally acclaimed music institutes.
The Rhodes Trio will be performing at 7.20pm, Wednesday 24 June at the Beethoven Room, Music Department, Rhodes University. Tickets are vailable at the door – adults R90, pensioners R70, tertiary students R50. Schoolgoers and GMS members FREE.
PROGRAMME
Divertimento KV 240Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756-1791)
Allegro, Andante grazioso, Menuetto, Allegro
The Divertimento is an arrangement of the Diverimento KV 240, originally composed for 2 oboes, 2 bassoons and 2 horns.
It is one of five wind divertimentos which were composed in Salzburg, no doubt as occasional music, during the mid-1770s.
They are unpretentious, finely crafted works, full of ingenious ideas and all kinds of neat little touches that lift them up above the ordinary level of wind music of the time.
K240 is marked by its spirited, triple-rhythm first movement, and its graceful Andante, charming Menuetto, and robust Allegro.
Fantasiestucke Op 88Robert Schumann
(1810-1856)
Romanze, Humoresque, Duet, Finale
Schumann composed the preliminary version of a Piano Trio in A minor in 1842.
The work reached its definitive form in 1850, when it appeared under the title of Fantasiestücke Op 88.
This collection of pieces is a more delicate composition in comparison to Schumann’s other chamber works for piano and strings.
The opening Romanze, with its melancholic folk-like melody, is a touchingly simple piece. Its theme reappears in a more lively form as the first episode of the following Humoresque.
The various episodes of this second piece recur in a circular design, with the opening march-like theme returning only at the end.
This final reprise is an exact replica of the opening section, though Schumann adds a coda which charmingly allows the march to fade away into the distance.
The duet of the third movement showcases the two stringed instruments, which spin a melodic line of great beauty while the piano provides a gently rippling accompaniment.
The finale returns to the march rhythm of the second piece, albeit in more grandiose style.
Towards the end, the music turns to the major for a curiously disembodied coda in which the piano’s chorale-like melody is shadowed throughout in syncopation by the stringed instruments.
After this, the music gradually dies away while the pianist plays fleeting passagework over a drone from the strings. But the coda also has its own tailpiece – a sudden spurt of energy which brings the work to a flamboyant conclusion after all.
Oblivion Astor Piazolla(1921-1992)
Astor Piazzolla’s Oblivion was composed in 1982 as a chamber ensemble.
Oblivion was one of Piazzolla’s most famous Tangos, and it became mostly popular when it was released on the soundtrack of Marco Bellochio’s film Henry IV, The Mad King.
Oblivion has been recorded in many different versions, including being rewritten for the klezmer clarinet, saxophone quartet, oboe, and orchestra.
It is one of the tangos that Piazolla wrote with almost no jazz or rock influence, like most other of his pieces from that time.
It has some harmonic sophistication and elegance and it sings a beautiful song of tango and emotion.
Oblivion is beautiful, elegant, and terribly sad, and remains one of the most haunting works composed by Piazzolla.
Short interval
Sonata a tre
Giovanni Simonetti (1948 – )
Allegro, Aria, Moderato e cantabile
In addition to compositions published under his own name, the recorder player, composer and editor Winfred Michel (born 1948 in Fulds, Germany) composed numerous pieces in the style of the early 18th century under the pseudonym Giovanni Paolo Simonetti.
These include numerous trio sonatas, chaconnes and a 'Madrigale' for solo violin.
In 1993 he succeeded in convincing noted Haydn scholar, H. C. Robbins Landon, that six piano sonatas he had composed were long-lost works by Joseph Haydn and got them published in 1995 as works by Haydn, "supplemented and edited by Winfried Michel".
This short, three-movement work is a very effective composition simulating the style of the Baroque period in harmonic and instrumental design.
Meditation Gounod (1818-1893)
Charles-François Gounod was a French Romantic composer, best known for the composition of Ave Maria as well as his opera Faust.
Meditation consists of a melody (Ave Maria) superimposed over the Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846, from Book I of J.S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, written 137 years earlier.
Gounod improvised the melody, his future father-in-law, Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmermann, transcribed the improvisation and, in 1853, made an arrangement for violin (or cello) with piano and harmonium.
Mbira, Shingalana Grant McLachlan (1956 – )
Mbira and Shingalana started life as music for a documentary series – "Shingalana" – about a baby lion.
The pieces were adapted and extended for two pianos for a recital at the 1996 Grahamstown festival, where they were performed by the composer and the pianist Susan Gough.
Mbira is inspired by the Zimbabwean instrument and by the cyclical and repetitive rhythms typical of Mbira music.
Shingalana is a lively playful piece originally depicting the baby lion cub, and makes extensive use of a 13/8 time signature.
Shingalana has been adapted for several ensembles including harpsichord and African percussion.
This version for flute, bassoon, and piano was especially adapted for the Chameleon Trio by the composer in 2014.
