November 20, 2003
By Tshepiso Mogotsi
ONE of the biggest ever symphony concerts, with a massed choir of 200 voices and an orchestra of 100 musicians, will take place in Johannesburg this weekend.
The Sasol Pro Musica Production Company, under the baton of Maestro Weiss Doubell, will be performing Gustav Mahler's evocative Resurrection Symphony on Friday 21 November at 8pm and on Sunday 23 November at 3.30pm at the Johannesburg City Hall.
The Resurrection Symphony, officially known as Mahler's Symphony no. 2, "is a beautiful and powerful work that requires a substantial chorus and orchestra", says the production company's public relations officer, Cecil Doubell.
For this reason four choirs, the Pro Musica Opera Chorus, the Johannesburg Bach Choir, the Musica Mundo Choir and the Pretoria Technikon Vocal Art Choir, will perform with the Sasol Pro Musica Orchestra. There will be 200 choir members and 100 members of the orchestra on the City Hall stage.
The soloists for the two performances are soprano Hanli Stapela and contralto Lize Thomas.
The five movements of the symphony convey an emotional range that develops from brooding depths to blinding triumph. "The first movements contain elements of nostalgia, gloom and brooding music which pervades the development and visionary moments and imply eventual triumph," say Terry Barfoot and Donald Mitchell, authors of The Klemperer and Mahler 2, Totenfeier.
Two shorter movements follow, "ranging from a memory, a ray of sunlight, some long-forgotten hour of shared happiness to a dark scherzo", Barfoot and Mitchell add.
Funded by the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund, the mammoth undertaking has been jointly organised by Weiss Doubell, founder and artistic director of the Pro Musica Company; Kobus Buys, chorus master of Pro Musica Opera Chorus; Walter Butt, musical director of Johannesburg Bach Choir; Siegfried Pretsch, conductor of Musica Mundo Choir; and Henning Wagner, choir master of Pretoria Technikon Opera Students.
Tickets for the two concerts are available at Computicket from between R60 and R120.
For more information about The Resurrection Symphony concert or the Pro Musica Theatre telephone Cecil Doubell on 011 674 1357/8.
The Pro Musica Production Company, founded by Weiss Doubell the company's artistic director, has been performing classical music for more than 20 years. It was established in 1981, based at the Roodepoort City Theatre in the Roodepoort Civic Centre, Florida Park. The theatre has been renamed the Pro Musica Theatre.
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