Endler Concert Series: Paranoid Android at Endler Hall

With the Twilight Ensemble:
Magdalene Minnaar, soprano
Gabriele von Dürckheim, flute & piccolo
Féroll-Jon Davids, clarinet & bass clarinet
Petrus Coetzee, violin & viola
Peter Martens, cello
José Dias, piano 

The Endler Concert Series is gearing up for another musical highlight, with an incredibly unique concert programme which brings together some of South Africa’s leading musicians, in a collaboration that explores and stretches the limits of the classical genre.

A brainchild of the Cape Town Philharmonic’s principal flautist and SU Music Department alumna, Gabriele von Dürckheim, Paranoid Android is a chamber music recital of compositions from the previous and current centuries, anchored around one of the iconic works of modernism: Arnold Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. In order to perform this enigmatic, fascinating work, she is joined by soprano Magdalene Minnaar, well known for her support of new music and creative concert concepts, and three illustrious colleagues from the CPO, principal clarinettist Féroll-Jon Davids, principal violist Petrus Coetzee and principal cellist Peter Martens, with pianist José Dias rounding off what they have come to call The Twilight Ensemble.

Pierrot Lunaire is Arnold Schönberg’s revolutionary setting of 21 of Albert Giraud’s symbolistic poems about Pierrot, the moonstruck sad clown of the Italian commedia dell’arte. In all its Freudian, twisted and poetic absurdity, the work is a tour-de-force for performers and audience alike, following its lead character through macabre, lascivious, ridiculous and downright blasphemous vignettes of the most colouristic and original music ever written. Von Dürckheim calls it “an absolute bucket-list work. One of those things you always dream of performing, but remain daunted by and keep postponing. It is really thanks to the Endler Concert series and an ‘alignment of the stars’ that allowed all of us to come together for this incredibly exciting project. And now the Twilight Ensemble is here to stay!” Magdalene Minnaar looks forward to finally getting to perform this work with its very unique demands on the singer – “something very much out of my comfort zone, between recitation and acting, but really not singing, full of musical complexity but also so liberating in its weirdness.”

Along with Pierrot Lunaire, the Ensemble has programmed four other works that display the incredible scope of the music of the last 100 years. From Swiss composer Frank Martin’s creative use of Irish folk tunes in his remarkable and downright filmic Piano Trio, filled with the sounds of celtic song and dance, to French composer Guillaume Connesson’s motoric and groovy beats in his Techno-Parade trio, transporting to a classical setting the raucous sounds of techno music in a loud carnival parade. José Dias is excited about performing all of these works – he notes that§ “this programme really stretches each of the musicians’ abilities on all levels. We have been rehearsing hard, trying to ‘crack’ the Schönberg, but also the wonderful intricacies of the two, very different, trios, which I think the audience will love.”

Another interesting highlight on the programme is an abbreviated version of Terry Riley’s seminal composition – In C, a work which set the trends for minimalist music in  the 1960s, and which allows players liberties within certain predetermined parameters, in order to produce a hypnotic, always original musical texture, conducive to a trance-like experience. The final work on the programme is a brand new arrangement for the Ensemble, commissioned from the brilliant young SA composer Matthijs van Dijk, who is already known and celebrated for his originality and remarkable ability to marry classical structures and textures with all sorts of other popular musical genres seamlessly in his own compositions. This arrangement of the beloved alternative rock band Radiohead’s song Paranoid Android, sets the tone for the whole programme, with its vision of a dystopian (or not so-dystopian!) reality, a world where humanity easily forgets its humanity, especially under the influence of psychedelics and other violence-inducing stimulants. But above all, it is the pulse of rock and other primal rhythms, which ties this varied, mind-expanding programme together, through the lens of virtuosic chamber music. A musical experience absolutely not-to-be-missed at the Endler Concert Series! 

TICKETS: R80 – R185

Book at Webtickets:  https://www.webtickets.co.za/v2/Event.aspx?itemid=1551012627