Red Sun. Chill Wind.

On Sunday, August 18th, at 3 PM we welcome to Northwards House the celebrated Cape Town-based musicians Gabriele von Dürckheim (flute) and Esthea Kruger (piano). They will be presenting a recital entitled “Red Sun, Chill Wind”, featuring works by Franck, Boyd, Hofmeyr, and Kapustin.

Principal flute of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, Gabriele von Dürckheim is an active performer and teacher in Cape Town. She has performed as a member of the Cape Town Philharmonic Wind Quintet, in the CPO chamber concert series entitled Symphonic Masterpieces in Miniature, as well as for the Concert Connect series. After her studies with Eva Tamassy in Stellenbosch, von Dürckheim continued her studies with Trevor Wye in England. She has been a member of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, Malaysian Symphony Orchestra and the South African National Youth Orchestra.

Pianist Esthea Kruger is founder and artistic director of the festival for contemporary art song, Neues Lied, as well as artistic director of Cape Town-based The Songmakers’ Guild. She completed her BMus and MMus degrees (cum laude) under the guidance of Nina Schumann and Luis Magalhães at Stellenbosch University, before enrolling for a DMA at the University of North Texas. Kruger completed a Meisterklasse degree at the Hochschule für Musik, Würzburg, followed by a degree in Liedgestaltung from the same institution. As Head of Keyboard Studies at the South African College of Music, she holds the position of senior lecturer in piano.  

César Franck’s Violin Sonata is widely considered to be one of the finest chamber music works of the nineteenth century. He composed it as a wedding gift for violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, who championed the work for the remainder of his life. The sonata is cyclic in nature, a technique adapted from Liszt, where the entire work may be linked together by the use of common musical themes. The opening Allegro ben marcato is the thematic core of the work, presenting two themes – one each by the violinist and pianist - that will return in the following three movements. This performance will feature the arrangement for flute and piano by Louis Moyse.

The music of Australian composer Anne Boyd displays a fascination with traditional music and instruments of Japan and Indonesia. Bali Moods No.1 takes as its starting point traditional Balinese gamelan music, written throughout in an equally tempered version of the pelog scale, one of the two predominant scale systems associated with Indonesian music. Red Sun, Chill Wind is based on a haiku by the famous Japanese poet Basho and features the flute performing extended techniques whilst the piano, playing mostly in the treble clef, recreates the gamelan very effectively.

Orithyia and the North Wind for solo flute was composed by Hendrik Hofmeyr for the 2014 UNISA International Woodwind Competition, commissioned by the SAMRO Foundation. This work was inspired by the ancient Greek myth of the princess Orithyia, who, while dancing on the banks of the Illisus river, was carried off in a cloud by the enamoured North Wind, Boreas. It employs a large number of extended techniques, including simultaneous singing and playing.

Ukranian-born Nikolai Kapustin is widely regarded as pioneer of the Soviet jazz scene, with his music typically combining jazz idioms with classical forms. The Flute Sonata draws widely on jazz influences and is melodic in nature, although the use of chromaticism reminds the listener of virtuoso passages filled with jazz improvisation. Each of the four movements displays a sense of energy and requires technical prowess from both players.

Join us at Northwards House, Parktown on Sunday, August 18th, at 3 PM for an afternoon in the company of the world’s most beautiful flute music.

Tickets, as always, are available on Quicket.

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