Peta Stewart
If you come to the pre-concert talk on June 8, 2017, for the opening of The Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra’s Winter symphony season at The City Hall, know that Rodney Trudgeon, Fine Music Radio’s early morning presenter of Classic Breakfast from Monday to Thursday and the station’s programme manager, is freshly back from Germany.
He is flying back immediately after seeing the Ring Cycle in Wiesbaden, part of the South African Richard Wagner Society contingent, followed by a whistle stop to Berlin where he will hear Sir Simon Rattle conduct the Berlin Philharmonic in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.
Live broadcasts on 8, 15, 22 and 29 June
For Trudgeon, after all, is the English voice behind the mike for the live broadcasts of CPO concerts. Waldo Buckle is the Afrikaans announcer, and both are the voice over artists for the CPO ads on FMR 101.3. The live broadcasts this season are on 8, 15, 22 and 29 June, 2017.
Trudgeon’s recognizable voice is the voice of experience. For most of the 41 years he has been in radio, he has been on air, the last 11 with FMR. He had already spent a quarter of a century on air with the SABC and another five with Classic FM in Johannesburg and to this day continues to do a show on Classic FM.
Since he has always wanted to make classical music in all its forms accessible to as many people as possible, he is in the right job. From the studios in Artscape he able not only to share music but to inform and entertain, even educate, in programmes he presents such as People of Note, a weekly interview that features people of consequence and the music they like.
Gueller, Kennedy, Bell and more
Subjects include not only CPO personalities like conductors Gueller, Boico and Phillips, but people from the world of theatre, other performing arts, publishers and even a ship’s captain. Others he has interviewed over the years include Nigel Kennedy, Kiri Te Kanawa, Pretty Yende, Bernard Haitink, Howard Shelley and Joshua Bell.
Trudgeon was an ad hoc player in the Durban Symphony Orchestra in his home town of Durban. In 1976, he joined the SABC where he learnt at the knees of veteran broadcasters Paddy O’Byrne, Stephen O’Reilly and Christopher Bennett. Soon he had his own programme and the colloquially termed “Rodney and Richard” show in which Richard Cock, then head of the now defunct National Symphony Orchestra of the SABC, was to be no more as the SABC’s English programme turned its back on classical music. In 2000, he joined Classic FM in Johannesburg and a few years later was at FMR.
Trudgeon also wrote programme notes for the Johannesburg Philharmonic for many years, and on his relocation the CPO jumped at the opportunity to have him write programme notes for Cape Town’s symphony. It is these talks that inform the pre-concert talks, at which he brings in one of the artists if they are willing to take time out from pre-concert preparation.
Trudgeon gets overseas when he can, and for several years hosted tours to Russia, France and Germany, where he was able to hear some of the best concerts he has ever heard. “Hearing Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic performing all 9 Beethoven Symphonies was something I will never forget,” he says.
Trudgeon’s pre-concert talks take place before each concert at 7.15pm in the Sunken Lounge, first floor, City Hall. They are open to ticket holders. Live broadcasts take place on each concert night, beginning at 8pm. Tune in to FMR 101.3 on radio or on the internet for live streaming.
Who: Rodney Trudgeon
What: Pre-concert talks, 2017 Opening Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra’s Winter symphony season, before each concert at 7.15pm
Where: The City Hall, Cape Town
Live broadcasts: 8, 15, 22, 29 June, 2017
Classical music radio: FMR 101.3, Cape Town
WS
