Booking opens on Friday, December 1, on the Quicket platform for the CPO’s third annual Franschhoek Chamber Music festival, which runs in the beautiful winelands valley from February 15 to 18.
All ten concerts will be held in the excellent acoustic of the historic Dutch Reformed Church and feature special guest stars, the Berlin-based Bushakevitz siblings. The concerts, all masterpieces of the chamber music repertoire, will showcase all the CPO musicians as they display that they are far more than orchestral musicians in the intimate chamber musicians setting.
For the first year, Cape Town Philharmonic Youth Orchestra musicians, who have always performed for concertgoers around the hospitality tent, will be featured in one of the concerts.
Peter Martens, curator of the festival, says that amount the works which include larger groups, the CPO is presenting a few solo items like Avigail Bushakevitz performing a Bach Partita, or Bruch’s pieces for clarinet (Ferrol-Jon Davids), viola (Petrus Coetzee) and piano (Ammiel Bushakevitz). Amongst the contemporary pieces wlll be a piece by Peter Louis van Dijk, a Novelette for Bass (Roxane Steffen) and quartet and Arvo Pãrt’s Fratres, written for piano (Ammiel) and violin (Avigail), to which percussion ((Eugene Trofimcyzk) has been added. The Bushakevitz siblings play several times, together, and with other musicians, and one of the high points will be the four concertos of The Four Seasons by Vivaldi.”
The festival has always championed South African music, and Peter Louis van Dijk is this year’s choice. The festival is also proud to present two female composers. Louise Ferenc and Fanny Mendelssohn, neither of whom need to stand back for their male counterparts, he says.
Founders Nic and Ferda Barrow are delighted with the line up in this festival, but that their dream to bring chamber music to the winelands has been such a resounding success. “We are particularly pleased with this mix of classical and contemporary works and of course the inclusion of two female composers,” they say.
For Louis Heyneman, CEO of the CPO, “This has been a perfect opportunity to take great music to a wider audience which has proved to be so appreciative in the past. It is part of our mandate to enhance the quality of live for all communities and performing in the winelands is a privilege.”
Tickets will be available on December 1 on the Quicket website. Tickets are R260 per concert with a 10 percent reduction for a subscription; early bird specials at R234 are available until 7 December 2023
The full programme can be accessed here https://fcmf.co.za/. More information from info@fcmf.co.za
