Pianist Sodi Braide will be in Cape Town to play Mozart with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra. He spoke to PETA STEWART about the concert:
Pianist Sodi Braide is coming to Cape Town to play Mozart, but fresh in his memory is a concert he just presented in France of works by Mediterranean composers with cello, voice and oud, a traditional Moroccan instrument.
On 20 June 2019 he will perform the 24th Piano Concerto by Mozart, K 491, with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, written in the key of c minor, a concerto he finds intriguing for its darker side and drama and even the fact that it evokes fear.
“Mozart wrote only two of his 27 piano concertos in minor keys, two of his 20 piano sonatas in a minor key, and 2 of his 41 symphonies. I enjoy performing these, as they head off towards the romantic music era,” he says. Also on the programme are La Calinda by Delius and the First Symphony by Kalinnikov. Daniel Boico conducts.
Sodi Braide was born in Britain to Nigerian parents, moved with them to Ireland and took up the piano there when he was three. He left for Nigeria where he was spotted by a French teacher who recommended him for a scholarship to France. He was just 13. It was there that two Polish teachers instilled in him a love of Chopin but it was one of his teachers, Francoise Thinat at the Ecole Normale, also in Paris, who had a profound influence on his music-making. Along the way, he also studied in the Conservatoire National Supérieur, Paris with Jacques Rouvier, in Madrid, with Dimitry Bashkirov at the Reina Sofia School, and at the Lake Como Piano Foundationin Italy.
Neither of his parents were professional musicians but his father played the piano and his mother sang and they were always very supportive. “They ensured that when I went to France so young, I had good families with whom to stay,” Broide says.
He still lives in France, and last year accepted a job to teach at the Conservatoire in Geneva.
Return to South Africa
Braide has been to South Africa before, numerous times to perform and once for a competition.
In 1994, he went to visit his parents who were living in Lesotho where his father was teaching agricultural engineering, and was invited to perform at several concerts and recitals in Bloemfontein. John Roos, then organizing the UNISA Piano Competition, was in the audience and invited him to apply for the competition and in1996 he took one of the main prizes. (He has also won prizes at the Leeds and Van Cliburn competitions.) Then, in 1999 he was back in Bloemfontein to perform the Brahms Piano Concerto no. 1. He also performed the Beethoven Piano Concerto no. 2 in Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Durban, and gave recitals in Pretoria in the 1990s.
Before coming to South Africa, Broide was in Paris performing with a singer, a cellist and an oud. “The concert programme resonates particularly at the moment, since it embraces exile and migration, and cultural exchanges over the last century with works by composers such as De Falla and Ravel along with a number of other composers from Corsica, Algeria and Morocco,” he explains.
Mixing things up
Braide returns to Europe to teach at an academy at Alsace in the summer, give a recital in Geneva and in November will present a programme in Paris with the music of Bach interspersed with readings from a book by Ornela Vorpsi of her childhood in Albania.
It’s clear that Braide, who confesses to a love for the classical repertoire in recitals, chamber concerts and with orchestra, also has a love of more adventurous events.
“I love to mix things up, presenting classical works with contemporary ones, bringing in cross-over like Moroccan music. If I had to do the same thing year in and year out I would be bored to death!” he laughs.
What: Pianist Sodi Braide with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra
Where and when: Cape Town City Hall on 20 June 2019
Tickets: Computicket
WS
