This past weekend the South African National Youth Orchestra (Sanyo) celebrated its 50th birthday with brilliant concerts in Cape Town and Soweto. Paul Boekkooi, a former member of Sanyo during its early years, looks back on this dynamic institution and raves about their 2014 achievement under the leadership of Finish conductor Osmo Vänskä.
IT IS a universal sign of artistic well-being in developed countries that they establish and nurture youth orchestras. They become and are in many ways one of the most dominant keys to a much wider spectrum of life skills. Even before 1964, when the Sanyo was established, many leaders in music identified the urgent need of an organisation which could bring together and train young instrumentalists from all corners in South Africa.
When 1964 came and our audiences experienced the premiere performance of a youth orchestra at the University of Pretoria’s Musaion, this ideal was brought to manifestation. Within two years the Sanyo went on tour and performed in Pietermaritzburg, Durban, Joburg, Germiston and Pretoria, with Italian conductor Pierino Gamba and pianist Annette Kearney as soloist.
At that time, the level of orchestral performance wasn’t as yet comparable with what it is today, but the special spirit and liveliness associated with youth orchestras was undeniably in place. The 1970s, 1980s and thereafter brought much higher standards, enhanced by a number of overseas tours.
Today, under the leadership of Sanyo’s managing director Sophia Welz, the training of orchestral players is a far more open, inclusive and continual process throughout the year – sometimes in smaller groupings who are incorporated in projects by other institutions. Their annual concerts, however, continue to be both the benchmark and highlight of their activities.
On Sunday afternoon the buzz outside Soweto’s most famous religious landmark, the Regina Mundi church, could not compete with the rousing and intimate sounds experienced in the building itself, forthcoming from the nearly 100-piece orchestra, conducted by arguably their most inspiring conductor ever: the Finn Osmo Vänskä.
Their programme, also performed on Saturday evening at the Cape Town City Hall, had the ideal mix to demonstrate the Sanyo 2014’s versatility and strength. With a considerable number of alumni who were invited to perform as well, the orchestra sounded magnificent in the over-resonant acoustics of the building, while sounds from outside – car alarms, taxis, busses, etc. – competed with those inside.
From Wagner’s Meistersinger-Prelude, through Samuel Barber’s Adagio, a stunning strings-only lamentation and meditation, the Grand March from Aïda by Verdi, and the drawcard of the afternoon, Stravinski’s scintillatingly brusque Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), the orchestra sounded inspired by this all-encompassing historical moment in time.
A fifth composition which was heard, Dubyo, a rap overture, was composed by two members of the National Youth Orchestra Young Composers 2013/2014 project, Amy Crankshaw and Methenjwa Machi, who were assisted by Pieter Bezuidenhout and Johan van Rooyen.
What was so likable about it was the emotive African “soundscape” which was immediately identifiable and handled with great clarity and colouristic sensitiveness by Vänskä before the rousing rap-section set in with joyful exuberance. The orchestration in this part of the work was also excellently conceived.
The conductor’s richly intense and dynamically well-thought-out interpretation of the Barber made it one of the spiritual highlights of the afternoon. In contrast with this, the all too well-known Verdi did not so much sound like a straightforward march at all. Vänsä made a tone poem out of it.
It was the Stravinsky that brought out the immensely high standard of the orchestra in a work which was once thought to be “unplayable”. What was especially enjoyed in this performance was the nervous vitality which comes from the notes, even if some details were hidden by a fog of reverberation.
To the Sanyo: may the next half-century be even more thrilling.