FESTIVALS
Festivals At The Zimbabwe Academy of Music
The Bulawayo Music Festivals
The first Bulawayo Music Festival took place in April 1997 – a one-off, week-long multiple celebration of anniversaries: the 60th of the Bulawayo Philharmonic Orchestra, the 40th of Performing Arts Bulawayo, the 20th of the National Symphony Orchestra – and, for good measure, the 100th of the arrival of the railway in Bulawayo. A steam safari commemorated this last with a special train transporting the musicians and audience from Bulawayo to Victoria Falls where there was a water-borne concert on the Zambezi – and no one who was there will ever forget Tasmin Little playing the Bach E major Partita to an entranced hippopotamus.
Prior to that there had been a week of concerts that had also involved among others Marilyn Hill Smith (soprano), Leslie Howard (piano), Piers Lane (piano), Donald Hunt (organ), the Odeion String Quartet and Edward Greenfield. As well as the concerts there were performer interviews, and talks on Elgar from Donald Hunt and Walton from Edward Greenfield who had known the composer well. The latter also presented a special “Greenfield Collection” in Bulawayo and subsequently devoted an entire edition of his weekly radio programme to the festival.
An important aspect of that festival and all its successors was outreach to schools and young people: three hundred schoolchildren were part of the audience at the opening concert and various performances were mounted in the western suburbs including one in St.Columba’s Church where over six hundred heard Tasmin Little and Piers Lane perform.
That first festival was so successful that it inspired a second, even larger successor two years later which, like the first, included a marathon orchestral concert, this one featuring, after the overture to Idomeneo, four major concertos: Beethoven’s “Emperor” (Hamish Milne), Brahms’ Violin (Elizabeth Wallfisch), Chopin’s No.2 (Seta Tanyel) and Dvorak’s Cello (Colin Carr). The Odeion Quartet was in attendance again, as was Jeanette Micklem. Dame Felicity Lott and Graham Johnson gave the opening concert and there was particular pleasure in this as Graham was at school in Bulawayo and received his early musical education here at the Academy before becoming the city’s most famous, though by no means only, musical export.
The third festival in April 2001 very nearly didn’t happen, a reflection of the increasing economic difficulties in Zimbabwe. It was reduced in both length and number of performers with Leslie Howard and Nokuthula Ngwenyama (viola) joining the Odeion Quartet who generously gave their services. Even so there were four days of wonderful music culminating in an orchestral concert that was in many ways Derek Hudson’s swan-song when the slightly more manageable programme included Mozart’s Prague Symphony and E flat Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, and Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto.
While the dollar plunged to ever deeper lows and the spectre of violence grew, funding for a 2003 festival seemed impossible. However, at short notice Performing Arts Bulawayo, of which Michael Bullivant had been chairman for nearly twenty-five years, determined that there should be another, out-of-sequence, festival in December 2002 to coincide with the total eclipse of the sun that would be visible from large parts of Matabeleland. It was fraught with difficulties with performers pulling out due to the country’s bad publicity, and an American piano trio failing to get an anticipated grant less than two weeks before the Festival was due to start, but the trio’s violinist, Rebekah Johnson, travelled at her own expense and played a major role.
Beginning with a performance of Messiah in a packed St.John’s Cathedral, with over a hundred listening from outside, the Eclipse Festival ran for a week, and involved musicians and performers from Britain, the United States and South Africa as well as Zimbabwe, though this time there were no high-profile visitors. The eclipse was witnessed in the early morning from the top of a kopje fifty miles south of Bulawayo and there was an open-air concert in the late afternoon that particularly marked the event, including as it did “The sun whose rays” from The Mikado, Finzi’s Fear “no more the heat o’ the sun” and, for good measure, Rusalka’s Song to the Moon! This Eclipse Festival was also notable for including a theatrical evening directed by Caroline Clegg, The Spirit of Africa, a fusion of poetry, dance and largely African music.
Over three years passed as Zimbabwe descended further into chaos, and for a time both hyper-inflation and the political scene seemed to make further festivals out of the question. However, with an optimism not entirely justified by its bank balance, Performing Arts determined that there should be another and aimed for June 2006: provisional bookings with musicians were made early in 2005 and a decision was finally taken late in the year that a festival would go ahead and that its scope would not merely match its predecessors but surpass them.
Despite major problems and three withdrawals for various reasons (none of them connected with events in Zimbabwe), it proved possible with the generous support of the Beit Trust and MBCA Bank to bring no fewer than five musicians from Britain – Leslie Howard on his tenth visit, Benjamin Nabarro (violin), Ania Safonova (violin/viola), Matthew Sharp (cello) and Michael Brownlee Walker (piano) – and to involve many local performers too.
And not only were there twenty concerts in the main festival programme but as many more took take place as part of “Make It Happen”, an “alternative festival” featuring more than four hundred performers which ran in tandem with the classical music and featured many other kinds of music – pop, jazz, African, gospel, mbiras and marimbas, a youth orchestra from Harare and school choirs – as well as dance, poetry and drama. All of this was in the adjacent Trade Fair arena and a gate was knocked in the Academy wall for easy access. But it was the wall rather than the gate that won and the two halves of the festival never fully came together as had been hoped.
There was never any doubt that a sixth festival would follow. As the country teetered ever closer to the abyss, and at the time of the festival appeared to be poised on the very edge as horrific violence increased prior to the run-off presidential election, music again triumphed and was able, as Leonard Bernstein put it, to “name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable”.
There were no fewer than ten visitors, the new Odeion String Quartet from South Africa and six musicians from Britain. Again there was a last-minute withdrawal, this time because of “the situation”, but most of the programme was saved through the wonderful co-operation of the other musicians, most notably Jeanne-Louise Moolman of the Odeion Quartet who shouldered an immense additional load. For the first time there was no orchestra but compensation aplenty was found in an impressive list of chamber works that dominated the seventeen concerts: four quintets, six quartets, seven trios and music for two pianos in addition to the usual duo and solo recitals. Another highlight was the Zimbabwean celebration of Leslie Howard’s sixtieth birthday when there was a repeat of the Wigmore Hall concert for that event followed by a dinner at the Bulawayo Club with a specially designed grand piano-shaped birthday cake. There was also an extensive programme in the grounds and daily guitar and percussion workshops culminating in the performance of Morgan Szymanski’s Zambezi Sarabande.
That performance preceded music for strings by Mozart and Leslie Howard, and the final work in 2008’s festival was Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Liszt’s arrangement for two pianos. A choir of 150 included over a hundred schoolchildren, virtually none of whom could read music and there were anxious moments in rehearsal for Beethoven’s demands are considerable. In the event it was a triumph (the notorious 12-bar top A especially so!) and, although much too early to herald the new Zimbabwe that still remained so elusive, Beethoven’s great hymn to freedom can rarely have had greater resonance or a more appropriate setting for its enduring message:
All men shall be brothers where your gentle wings beat,
Your magic unites those whom rigid custom divides.
The seventh festival gradually evolved around those taking part. In the last two festivals, the emphasis had increasingly been on music that could rarely be heard in the normal run of concerts in Bulawayo – trios, quartets and quintets ñ and this time the opportunities given by the presence of a quartet of pianists and a double bass player opened up many more possibilities.
There was a wealth of works for two pianos in the programme as well as some for three (including a concerto) and even four whilst no fewer than five chamber works included the double bass, ranging from such a well-known piece as Schubert’s much-loved “Trout Quintet” to rarities like Bottesini’s String Quintet for two violins, viola, cello and bass, and a sextet by Mendelssohn for the probably unique combination of violin, two violas, cello, double bass and piano. There was also the septet by Saint-Saens that added a trumpet to the strings and piano in a work quite as entertaining as the Carnival of the Animals.
The opening and closing concerts featured youngsters in large numbers but this was by no means their only involvement in the festival. The Peterhouse Orchestra joined the festival for two days, Trevor Lax conducted wind and brass workshops, and performers visited many schools and altogether played to over 4000 children. One major highlight was The Mukamba Tree, a work specially written by Richard Sisson for the festival on a local theme and involving all the visiting performers in addition to as many children as could be accommodated on stage, well over 200!
There was also a small orchestra for the opening concert. It was a far cry from those early days when there were over sixty on the platform at the City Hall, about a quarter of whom, were specially brought in from South Africa. The “Festival Chamber Orchestra” numbered no more than fifteen and included several of the visitors but it added another dimension to the 2010 festival and accompanied Vivaldi’s Gloria among other works.
The eighth festival was perhaps the most ambitious of all. No fewer than twenty-one musicians came from beyond Zimbabwe’s borders including two string quartets, and there were large-scale concerts featuring hundreds of performers from right across Bulawayo plus contingents from Harare.
Highlights included a performance of Carmina Burana with soloists, a choir of 150 (more than two-thirds senior schoolchildren), an additional children’s chorus, two pianos and eight percussionists, and the first performance of a major commission from Richard Sisson, The Song of the Carnivores, which involved almost 600 children from thirteen schools in both eastern and western suburbs as well as Harare and many of the professional musicians. There was a final orchestral concert with a programme of three concertos by C.P.E.Bach, Haydn and Mozart plus The Carnival of the Animals, concerts devoted to Mendelssohn (including the octet) and Schubert (four instrumental works all derived from his songs) and much else including pop and gospel concerts, a jazz band and an Africa Day Celebration. One rather different event was a late-night silent film concert with live accompaniment including Laurel and Hardy’s Big Business with Leslie Howard as pianist! He also appeared in another unusual role leading a sing-along at the end of the pre-festival dinner which had been interspersed with music from several of the other musicians.
Sadly this festival, spectacularly successful in so many respects, will be best remembered for the arrest and imprisonment of Petroc Trelawny on the grounds that he was performing without a work permit. The festival also made a substantial loss and those two factors, together with stiff new conditions with regard to work permits, led to the postponement of its successor. However, after much thought and with the very generous support and co-operation of the musicians, not to mention the financial support of NMB Bank Limited, a ninth festival took place after a four year hiatus and, if smaller in scale and less ambitious than its immediate predecessors, it nevertheless provided memorable music-making of the highest quality.
Some of the performances were as good as anything that has been heard in Bulawayo, truly world class. The core of the programmes was a series of sextets, quintets, quartets and trios, several of which had probably not been heard live in Zimbabwe including Taneyev’s massive Piano Quintet which received a stunning performance from Leslie Howard and the Odeion Quartet. There were also the Franck Piano Quintet, two string sextets, two string quartets and two piano trios, so an absolute feast of chamber music that would have graced any festival anywhere!
Amongst the other performers was Nokuthula Ngwenyama making a most welcome return and she featured as composer as well as performer with three well-received works including “Sonoran Storm” for unaccompanied violin which was choreographed by the Amawumbo Dance Company.
Sadly, audiences were not as good as at previous festivals but those who were there certainly recognised the standard of performance. There was real concentration and very enthusiastic applause with standing ovations, by no means common in Bulawayo, at around half the concerts. Without exception people were thrilled by what they heard – a few comments:
Those of us who were fortunate enough to attend were transported to musical heaven.
I realised once more how incredibly lucky we are to have world-class musicians visit us, and play so generously.
It was a great privilege to hear those masterpieces played with such skill and sensitivity.
It was musically superb.
The musicians themselves felt that their performances were of a high standard and Leslie Howard (by no means easy to please!) wrote: “I think there were some seriously great performances, and that means you’ll just have to start thinking about the next one …” And a member of the Odeion String Quartet: “… a fantastic week of music”.
Whether there will be a “next one” remains to be decided. Currently there are no plans but Bulawayo remains proud of its claim to be Zimbabwe’s musical capital and the festival has twice risen from its presumed ashes so a tenth may not be beyond the realms of possibility!