It was a good thing for the new generation of composers that multi-award winning Matthijs van Dijk grew up in a family where it was normal to have a composer as a father, because he has followed in his father’s footsteps – that father is Péter Louis van Dijk, one of South Africa’s pre-eminent composers, says PETA STEWART:
Van Dijk the Younger is having his Violin Concerto premiered in the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra’s Winter Symphonies at the City Hall on Thursday, 1 June 2023. Jeffrey Armstrong will be the soloist in a work he describes as “a tapestry of genres, instrumentation, and a whole lot of fun”. Brandon Phillips, the CPO’s resident conductor, will be on the podium conducting the CPO in the Capriccio Italien by Tchaikovsky and Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony.
“I’m really thrilled that Jeffrey is going to be premiering the concerto,” says Matthijs. “He is a very sensitive and passionate musician, and I think he’ll bring the rock ‘n roll flare the piece needs.”
It was more though than his father who influenced him. His mother, Susi, was a pianist, teacher and soprano, his grandmother, Anne Essek, a violist, and of course his brother, Xandi, has grown up to become a violist and a conductor.
“I was able to watch how my father worked,” he says, “and able to take him anything I had written for feedback. Experiencing how he would try and reinvent himself, and push himself to do things differently, while always bringing the same level of passion to the art, no matter the genre, left a lasting impression. I also spent hours as a child sitting under my mom’s piano, playing with wooden blocks while she taught singing, and would attend concerts that my grandmother was involved in, back in the CTSO days. A lot of my initial musical tastes also developed from whatever Xandi was listening to.
“One of my first musical memories is him asking me to join his band when he was nine and I was four – they needed a drummer. We didn’t have a drum kit at the time, but smaller percussion instruments, combined with a large wooden box and strong toddler toes made a good substitute. As a kid, I had a lot of very varied LP and CD collections I could raid, from The Beatles to Richard Strauss or Keith Jarret. The maxim ‘if it’s good, it doesn’t matter what it is’ definitely worked its way into my writing.”
Early opera
When he was nine, he composed an opera, The Magical Forest, full of cats and inspired by what he understood of The Magic Flute.“I then dabbled in short violin and viola sonatas, but I am no pianist and couldn’t play back what was in my head so I got frustrated. As a teenager I found pleasure in writing songs for bands on a guitar. It wasn’t until I was 16 that I turned back to classical composition, and wrote a string trio. With the availability of digital notation software, I was hooked and became eager to get out of school and study composition.”
Although he learnt the violin from the age of seven, there was always a love/hate relationship. “I’m glad I stuck with it, as it definitely opened up new worlds and friendships to me, such as those with then CPO concertmaster Patrick Goodwin and now head of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra Marc Uys, both of whom the concerto is dedicated. It also helped pay the bills as a freelancer and ad hoc player with the CPO and other ensembles.
“While many composers were great instrumentalists, one is kinda fed the Maestro Myth – ‘to be a great composer, other people need to play your music’. This held me back, and it wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I was comfortable performing my own art music. This lead to the formation of the new art music group The ShhArt Ensemble (later The Night Light Collective). Today, it’s rare that I play anything that wasn’t written by me or a friend of mine.”
Pop culture nerd
Matthijs owns up to being a massive pop culture nerd, which “has sparked a (potentially unhealthy to my bank account) ‘collector’ lifestyle. My home is full of movies, graphic novels and LPs. It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve started buying clothes again that don’t have a Batman or Star Wars logo.”
Naturally, he likes music that at least tries to push boundaries.
“I can say that in the last year I’ve listened to a lot of extremely slow stuff like Brian Eno, or A Winged Victory For The Sullen (the audio equivalent of climbing into a warm bath), but then I went through an intense period of listening to primarily ‘prog metal’, such as the group Liquid Tension Experiment. As I am a very strong believer of (stylistically) ‘how one composes is determined by what one’s intention is, or what one is trying to achieve with one’s music’, I spend quite a bit of time listening to new art music from around the world, to try and keep an ear on what is currently being done. It keeps me on my toes…
“I’m also passionately obsessed with South African art music. I found while living overseas, that what we have at home is precious and extremely unique. I truly believe that South Africa’s new and original art music offers something new and exciting for audiences, and has the potential of being our greatest export, with the right funding and support.”
What’s on the wish list?
“I would love to write a soundtrack to a feature film, complete an opera, and produce an album of my concertos – the Violin Concerto and for those who can’t sleep, but still dream of dancing (a concerto for violin, uhadi, umrhubhe and string orchestra) which I wrote together with Dizu Plaatjies earlier this year, plus a symphonic song cycle/concertante called Vuma! which I wrote together with long time collaborator Lungiswa Plaatjies, based on songs of hers with uhadi and mbira.”
This is a busy month for him. His work (rage) rage against the is being performed in Princeton with the Signum Quartet of which Xandi is the violist, and also as part of the Library of Congress Concert Series, as well as at Carnegie Hall. Then, the Munich Chamber Orchestra is including his R62 for viola, electric bass and two percussionists. Then it’s back to the computer to complete “a commission of a very meaty flute quartet (called WAM!) for Jeffrey’s Cape Chamber Music Collective, before heading to the Silver Mountain Music Festival at Grootvadersbosch Valley, to perform with members of The ShhArt Ensemble, Lungiswa, and her group, Ancient Voices.”
What: Composer Matthijs van Dijk’s new composition with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra
Where and when: Winter Symphonies at the City Hall on 1 June 2023
Tickets: Artscape Dial-A-Seat 021 421 7695 and Computicket
WS
