Christina McEwan
WHILE many guest conductors have experience of music making in different countries, not many have held title positions on three continents. Bernhard Gueller, here for two concerts in the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra’s spring season and for the Friends on Orchestral Music gala on Thursday, is one who has.
Music director of Symphony Nova Scotia in Canada since 2003, for four years until 2009 chief conductor of Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra and principal conductor of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra from 1997 to 2000, he has had to work in different circumstances. In Germany, for instance, making music is a lot easier from a financial point of view. There, financial constraints are minimal; government funding is pretty constant for the big orchestras at least, and while there have been closures and amalgamations of orchestras, there is much more security. Gueller’s own Radio Symphony Orchestra in Stuttgart, one of the top five radio orchestras, merged with the orchestra in Baden-Baden to the consternation of many.
“Working in countries like South Africa and Canada are much more personal,” he says. “Here the musicians are part of the fabric of society, and mix with the audiences. In Germany, there is much more of a distance. “That we are integral to the community makes music making more tangible and we are always aware that the continuation of good music is something we must constantly help manage.”
In South Africa and Canada, orchestras are dependent on corporate and private funding, though Canada offers some really strong government programmes. The Canada Council for the Arts, the province of Nova Scotia and the city provide a quarter of the orchestra’s annual CND $4 million budget, and ticket sales another 30 percent, a figure which matches the CPO’s and is much higher than box office takings of most other orchestras. More than half of the CPO’s annual budget of R24m comes from the public sector.
Like the CPO, an endowment fund makes one listen to the future, ensuring there is a future for the grandchildren. The CPO’s active youth development and education programme can only be assured if the core business is funded, and that is not always so attractive to corporates needing a tax benefit offered only for education. No orchestra, no future for the youth!
Putting seasons together is another way in which orchestras differ. As music director in Germany, he says, “I sat down for one full day with the CEO and we fleshed out the entire season of nine months with a wishlist of artists. Then the CEO would take this forward and discuss any deviations by e-mail with me. In Halifax, I have a programming advisory committee which makes suggestions, not only about the main symphony concerts, but about the various other concert seasons like Pops, Baroque and Retro Pops. In celebrating its classical musicians and supporting their performance opportunities with funding, Canada has created a wealth of top-drawer artists, some of whom are now living in America.
“In Germany, of course they have the best on their doorstep, and the mix is truly international. South Africa’s pool of great musicians is, of course, smaller, and some of the best, like Pretty Yende, have moved for the most part abroad. François du Toit, for instance, the soloist in the Beethoven Piano Concerto cycle next February, is one who came back and is engaged by all the orchestras and recital series frequently.”
Sizes of orchestras also differs according to budgets. The CPO’s permanent core is 47, while Symphony Nova Scotia’s is 37, both augmented continually by ad hoc players. The permanent core is what keeps the size of the budget in check, says Gueller. “The CPO is also so committed to education and outreach to staff the orchestras of the future that it already has a core of young musicians who play as regular ad hoc musicians. In Nova Scotia, there is also no longer an emphasis on teaching music in schools, and while the orchestra reaches out a great deal in terms of schools concerts the youth are taught in the Nova Scotia Youth Orchestra, privately and later in the universities, two of the several in Halifax and the surrounding towns have excellent music faculties.
Then there is programming. Most orchestras throughout the world are dependent for 20 to 30 per cent on box office income, but not so much in Germany. So there’s a constant challenge in programming works that are accessible to the audiences (usually established composers) with new or lesser known music which challenges the musicians and satisfies the commitment to programme works by local composers. Canadians tend to embrace new works by Canadian composers; German audiences are also quite adventurous. In contrast, South Africans do tend to think twice before buying tickets to modern local composers. That wasn’t true, naturally, when Krzysztof Penderecki visited South Africa in 2006 to conduct his own works. It was also probably not true when Stravinsky came to town more than 50 years ago.
Other differences between Canada and Souh Africa also extend to the audience itself. “Although South Africa has 52 million people compared to Canada’s 35million, the audience-going population is much smaller,” Gueller says. “The number of trained musicians is far fewer for obvious reasons: Apartheid never allowed the majority of the population the chance to hear an orchestra let alone learn an instrument, which cannot be fast-tracked.” That’s why Gueller feels it’s important to spend what should be his “off season” in Africa. “Music is a long-term investment,” he explains. “The local orchestras are augmented by others who were born in, on the whole, Europe. But outstanding singers the country has in abundance.”
Performing seasons also differ. Local orchestras perform throughout the year. In Cape Town, there are usually 20 symphony concerts over four seasons. Johannesburg used to have four seasons of six weeks each, with each concert repeated, and a second repeat often in Pretoria before it went into business rescue (Gueller was principal guest there); Germany’s season runs from spring to autumn, as do orchestras in Canada. Musicians in Canada and South Africa also have to be much more flexible. “Orchestras need to play various and varied kinds of programmes – pops and crossover and here in particular opera and ballet music as well as for musicals. Collaborations are important to the value placed on an orchestra by the community.”
Gueller will conduct the FOM Gala concert on Thursday with Italian pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi playing the Second Brahms Piano Concerto. The programme will begin with the Third Symphony by Brahms.
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