On August 10, the Minnesota Orchestra played the first concert on its South African tour in Cape Town’s City Hall. Below are photographs of the City Hall’s auditorium where the concert was played and of its exterior (with Table Mountain in the background).[1]
The concert opened with the Orchestra playing the South African and U.S. national anthems and then Jean Sibelius’ “En Saga, ” an 1882 tone poem which the composer said was “ the expression of a state of mind. I had undergone a number of painful experiences at the time and in no other work have I revealed myself so completely. It is for this reason that I find all literary explanations quite alien.” (Sibelius and the Orchestra’s Music Director, Osmo Vänskä, are both Finnish natives.)
South African soprano, Goitsemang Lehobye, then joined the Orchestra to sing “Harmonia Ubuntu,” which was commissioned for this tour and which had its world premiere at the Orchestra’s home in Minneapolis on July 21, 2018. A review of the world premier of this work said it had a “bublingly eventful score that effectively referenced African rhythms and melodies, and peppered the orchestral textures with a Wasembe rattle and a djembe” African goblet-shaped drum. [2]
The work’s South African composer, Ndodana-Breen, who was in the audience for both of these concerts, said this work was inspired by Mandela’s exemplifying the African values of ubuntu—the knowledge that one’s humanity is tied in harmony to the humanity of others. The lyrics, which were drawn from Mandela’s speeches and writings, are the following (in English translation):
- “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
- “For to be free is not to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that enhances the freedom of others.”
- “If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with them. Then he becomes your partner.”
- “In the end, reconciliation is a spiritual process. It requires more than just words. It has to happen in the hearts and minds of people.”
- “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”
- “We understand it still that there is no easy road to freedom. We know it well. That none of us acting alone can achieve success. We must therefore act together as a united people for reconciliation, the birth of a new world.”
- “Let there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.”
- “There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways you yourself have changed.”
- “After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.”
- “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fail.”
- “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”
The concert concluded with Leonard Bernstein’s Overture to Candide, an operetta first performed on Broadway in 1956, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, which had its premiere in Vienna in 1808.
After a few standing ovations, Vänskä, for the first encore, turned again to Sibelius. But for the second encore, the director returned to the podium with a surprise.
After single drum beats were joined by marimba and horns, the Orchestra musicians started singing “Shosholoza,” a song originally sung (in call and response style) by all-male African workers working in diamond and gold mines and later sung by the prisoners on Robben Island. Mandela described it as “a song that compares the apartheid struggle to the motion of an oncoming train” and went on to explain that “the singing made the work lighter.” Here is one English translation of the lyrics: “Go forward. Go forward, from those mountains, on this train from South Africa. Go forward. Go forward. You are running away. You are running away, from those mountains, on this train from South Africa.” It is so popular in South African culture that it often is referred to as the country’s unofficial national anthem.
As soon as the Orchestra started singing this song, the crowd erupted. They laughed, they clapped, they pulled out their cellphones. Then many of them sang along.
Before leaving this account of the Cape Town concert, it also should be mentioned that this city played an important part in the life of Nelson Mandela. Roughly 4 miles west of Cape Town across Table Bay lies Robben Island, where Mandela spent the first 18 years of his imprisonment. And on February 11, 1990, after over 26 years of imprisonment, he was released from Victor Verster Prison, roughly 40 miles east of Cape Town and immediately went to the front steps of its City Hall for his first speech as a free man for a crowd of 50,000 people and a worldwide television audience; this speech will be covered in a later post.
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[1] Minn. Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra in Cape Town, Blain, Beethoven, with South African flavor, StarTribune (July 23, 2018); Ross, Packing instruments and loads of goodwill, StarTribune (Aug. 5, 2018).
[2] Minn. Orchestra, Sommerfest Program;Blain, South African composer celebrates Mandela’s Message, StarTribune (July 20, 2018); Ross, Ode to Minnesota and South African Joy, StarTribune (July 22, 2018); Blain, Beethoven, with South African flavor, StarTribune (July 23, 2018); Ross, Packing instruments and loads of goodwill, StarTribune (Aug. 5, 2018); Ross, In a historic moment for Minnesota Orchestra, music echoes the words of Nelson Mandela, StarTribune (Aug. 10, 2018)(the digital version of this article has beautiful photographs of the concert).
[3] Burns, SOUTH AFRICA’s NEW ERA; on Mandela’s Walk, Hope and Violence, N.Y. Times (Feb. 12, 1990).