Conductor Schalk van der Merwe will conduct the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra at the Endler Hall in Stellenbosch. PETA STEWART speaks to the young musician:
At the age of nine, Schalk van der Merwe of Pretoria announced to his parents that he wanted to learn to play the violin. Twenty years later, the violin has taken a back seat to conducting, and Schalk van der Merwe, the winner of the 4th Len van Zyl Conductors’ Competition this year, is taking up the first part of his prize, which is to conduct the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra. He will direct the annual Huberte Rupert Memorial Concert at the Endler Hall in Stellenbosch on Friday, 29 November 2019. Michael Duffett, the South African violinist living in Boston, will play the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, while Van der Merwe will direct the overture, The Hebrides, also by Mendelssohn, and the Brahms Symphony No. 3.
Sadly, not too many South African schools offer music as a subject, so Van der Merwe’s parents had to search for a teacher. He had his first lesson a few weeks after they found one. Then they had to search for a piano teacher, for clearly his appetite for music was growing.
“Although it was never really an option to pursue music as a career,” he says, “this did not stop me daydreaming about conducting orchestras. I started studying BSc Physics at the University of Pretoria but I soon realised that music was my calling. I would walk past the Music Department every day and hear the young musicians practicing as I was heading to a lecture hall of 200+ students to figure out mathematical problems in calculus 101. It took some convincing, but my parents allowed me to enrol for a BMus. I graduated in 2015.”
Mentorship and experience
He says that as a child in primary school he would imagine himself waving a baton around.
“I had a makeshift baton in my room which I would wave along to my favourite recordings like Beethoven’s Third Symphony and even piano sonatas. There were no lessons in orchestral conducting at the University of Pretoria at the time, but during that first week in music school the head of department called me and said they would be willing to get a lecturer if I still showed interest. I was over the moon.”
That was the start of his relationship with Dutch conductor Gerben Grooten, his mentor.
“Our sessions together were always longer than they were supposed to be and he provided me with numerous opportunities to gain practical experience. “
Van der Merwe has been a conductor since 2011, is principal conductor of the Sempre Opera Company, principal conductor of the Symphony Chorus of Pretoria, conductor of the Capital Chamber Orchestra and conductor of the Helderkruin Children’s choir. He was also the University of Pretoria Symphony Orchestra’s interim conductor and has conducted many other orchestras such as the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra, the Gauteng Philharmonic Orchestra, the South African National Youth Orchestra in concert and as part of the Len van Zyl finals, the Cape Town Philharmonic.
He has toured with the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra as assistant conductor to Gérard Korsten in Austria and received master classes from Enrico Delamboye in Germany as well as Evgeny Bushkov, Daniel Raiskin and Victor Yampolsky.
At the age of 23, he conducted his first full opera, Mozart’s The Magic Flute; other operas like Madama Butterfly, Carmen, Bastien und Bastienne, Amahl and the Night Visitors, Die Fledermaus, Eine Nacht in Venedig, Don Giovanni, Il Barbiere di Siviglia and La Traviata quickly followed.
Big honour and exciting
He is so looking forward to his first full symphony concert with the CPO.
“Working with the orchestra and the soloist is already such a big honour. Not only that but working with them with such colourful repertoire is even more exciting.”
It’s a walk down memory lane for him.
“The Third Symphony was the first Brahms I ever conducted. I had to stand in for Grooten on very short notice. I remember being intrigued by the composer’s style, his unique combination of rhythm and harmony. I remember the situation with Clara and Robert Schumann and Brahms’s inner turmoil that was so apparent in his music. It was with this symphony that the Brahms bug bit me.”
What’s next? He has the next part of his prize coming up in March when he spends a week with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and its dynamic music director, Giancarlo Guerrero. Then he spends a semester with Victor Yampolsky at Northwestern University outside Chicago.
What: Huberte Rupert Memorial Concert with the CPO / Schalk van der Merwe conductor
Where and when: Endler Hall, Stellenbosch on Friday, 29 November 2019 at 8pm
Tickets: Artscape Dial-A-Seat 021 421 7695 or Computicket
WS
