Peta Stewart
When you grow up humming the tune to the national anthem not because it’s the national anthem but because your grandfather M L de Villiers wrote the music for Die Stem, then there’s not much chance music will not be a great part of your life! For Johan de Villiers, conductor of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra and The Libertas Choir in its performance of Mendelssohn’s great oratorio, Elijah, at The Endler Hall in Stellenbosch on November 19, that proved to be the case.
A teacher and researcher
De Villiers, who is actually a mathematician, runs a parallel life as a teacher and researcher for the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, which takes 50 graduates from all over Africa for a Masters’ degree. He retired from Stellenbosch University where he is still an extraordinary professor of mathematics, and conductor. He’s also a full-time grandparent!
He has been involved in music all his life. “I grew up thinking that everyone just played music along with taking up another career,” he says. “It was just what we did. Sitting on father’s lap and listening to classical music inspired me. My father was a pianist, organist and history teacher, becoming inspector of music for schools in the Free State. And it was under his watch that the erstwhile PACOFS orchestra and opera company opened.
The Stellenbosch University Choir
As a student, De Villiers was asked to take over conducting the Wilgenhof Hostel Choir from David de Villiers (the conductor based in Germany and no relation!) – “a daunting task” he recalls. Not so daunting that a few years later, when he was already teaching maths at Stellenbosch, the world-renowned Stellenbosch University Choir asked him to become its conductor, after the equally renowned Philip McLachlan retired. This came after studying at Cambridge on scholarship and being exposed to choirs such as The King’s College, and he remained choir conductor for eight years. He was able to devote half his working time to the choir and half to teaching maths, but with tours abroad and his commitment to the choir his research “went down the drain”. This was in 1984.
But he missed music and being actively involved. By then long married to Louwina, the force behind both him and what was to come, and distressed by the political landscape of the riots of 1985/6, they decided to start a choir with substantial representation of all communities to bring a message of harmony and co-operation through music. “We wanted to contribute something positive.”
There were 70 members who had won auditions, and from the first rehearsal in 1989 they “were astounded by the strong emotion impact it had – the audiences sat there, they saw harmony and they heard harmony. People reacted very strongly and this was in the dying days of apartheid.”
Young people still choose to join the choir and the size varies from year to year. “It was 70, went to 100 and then when I turned 70 last year I thought that was a good number! We audition everyone on a regular basis to ensure we maintain high standards.”
That they have succeeded is borne out by seven invitations to tour abroad. Once his choir sang in a live TV broadcast from Berlin’s Reichstag; they sang in the Berlin Cathedral, the Berliner Dom; he conducted 1200 singers and the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie in the Gerry Weber stadium in Halle in Westphalia, a stadium that has hosted singers such as Domingo and Netrebko.
In the Libertas Choir repertoire are several types of programmes – a little bit of everything a cappella classical; indigenous music commissions of choral arrangements of popular songs, and oratoria. Hence Elijah.
“We have done many oratoria, requiems and masses and I have always loved Elijah. It’s been 12 years since we last presented it, so I interested the CPO in doing it again. Louis Heyneman was keen, and when we discovered that another choir was presenting in Cape Town we decided on just the one performance in Stellenbosch. There’s been huge interest already. It is wonderful music and the choir members just love singing it.”
Who: Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra Johan de Villiers, Libertas Choir, Magdalene Minnaar (soprano), Minette du Toit Pearce (mezzo-soprano), Given Nkosi (tenor), Conroy Scott (baritone)
What: Mendelssohn’s Elijah
Where: Endler Hall, Stellenbosch
When: 19 November , 2017 4pm
Info, book tickets: http://bit.ly/MendelssohnsElijah
WS
