Peta Stewart
It’s all about balance, says pianist Ariane Haering, who is the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra’s soloist in the final concert of the Summer Festival season at the City Hall on Thursday, 30 January, 2025. Bernhard Gueller will conduct the CPO in Grieg’s Lyric Suite and Enigma Variations by Elgar.
Ariane is not only a multilingual pianist with a big solo and chamber music career in Europe. She is also duo partner of violinist Benjamin Schmid (her husband), the mother of four children who each play two instruments, and the organiser of concerts and festivals for her renowned Alban Berg Ensemble Vienna. She also creates fundraising benefit concerts in which her entire family joins her on stage.
Her children have had the benefit of being surrounded by music since their birth – in fact her daughter Cosima took her first steps when Ariane was in Gauteng performing with the JPO. (Cosima is now at University in Switzerland studying composition and jazz singing.)
Ariane herself had parents who loved music, and there was always music in their home in Switzerland though neither was a musician. Her sister, four years older, played the violin. By the time Ariane was five she wanted to play with her sister and the next year started taking lessons. She learned to read music quicker than she learned the alphabet, she remembers, and was soon spending hours each day sight-reading.
By the time she was nine she was accompanying student pieces and it resonates with her, she says, since her life never changed, for she married a top violinist whom she still partners on stage!
Ariane was born in a small town in the French part of Switzerland and had the privilege of being taken to concerts there and in close by.
Till Eulenspiegel
“Music mattered, and once I heard Till Eulenspiegel I had to get a recording and I listened to it non-stop for a year. I accompanied my first violin sonata when I was 10 and suddenly, musically, I felt grown up and new doors opened. The great interpreters entered my life when I was 14 and I heard Pollini and Brendel and Argerich live. I lived the emotions and they helped me hang on to my dream to be a performer, something I had decided at the age of 12.
Conservatory in Lausanne
“I was 12 when I went to the Conservatory in my home town of La Chaux-de-Fonds, attending normal high school at the same time and learning a lot about time management because that has helped me balance my life today. I received my bachelor’s diploma and my teaching diploma at the age of 16 and then had a year to wait until I could enter the Conservatory in Lausanne so I was delighted to be accepted to North Carolina School of the Arts in the US for that year. It was a great experience and it opened my horizons – got me out of my comfort zone, taught me about international competition. But now as a parent I wonder how my parents let me go away so young!”
Ariane now lives in Salzburg where the home language is Austrian-German though French is pretty much up there too. Her involvement with the Alban Berg Ensemble Wien – she was a founder member of the ensemble of string quartet, clarinet, flute and piano in 2016 – takes up so much of her time.
“We are having a wonderful journey, performing all existing repertoire especially of the 2nd Viennese School but we are also commissioning new works for our septet so we offer a mix of contemporary and traditional works. We have a season of concerts each year – for five years our season was in the Musikverein in Vienna and this year it will be in the Konzerthaus in Vienna, which has one of the best acoustics in the city. Vienna is perfect for me – it’s not so much of a challenge to leave the family for four days or so. But I am looking forward to leaving them for my week with the CPO!”
Dramatic Mozart
She is also looking forward to the specific Mozart Concerto she will perform – No. 20 in D minor, K. 466.
“It’s one of the most dramatic and expressive pieces that he has composed. You know the drama in the Requiem and in Don Giovanni which are in the same key. There is a strong appeal which calls for reflection, with some amazing romance in the middle. Mozart is a genius when it comes to balancing the drama with a lighter voice, performed by my right hand. He reconciles drama with peace and harmony, especially at the beginning of the second movement. The start of the 3rd movement has some hair-raising chords, calling up a whirlwind of emotions. I will pay homage to Clara Schumann as a composer and performer by playing her cadenzas. This concerto was played by almost everyone from Beethoven to Busoni to Clara herself.”
What’s next? As the children leave home, Ariane will set aside time to teach. “I have a few students but little time so I am looking forward to being able to pass on to the next generation.”
The concert will be preceded by a talk by Albert Combrink at 18:45. The dress rehearsal at 11 am is open to the public.
Who: Pianist Ariane Haering with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra; conductor Bernhard Gueller
Where Cape Town City Hall
When: 30 January 2025 at 7.30pm
CPO concert tickets: Here
Dress rehearsal tickets: Here
WS
