Peta Stewart
When Dmitri Shostakovich asks you to premiere his 13th and 14th symphonies in Germany, then you know that something very important is happening! That was the start of a friendship between Shostakovich and Thomas Sanderling, the guest conductor for two concerts in the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra’s Winter Symphonies at the City Hall season beginning on 12 June, 2025.
The friendship lasted until the death of the composer 50 years ago, but the connection continues as Sanderling releases new CDs such as the latest on DG, the third such recording, Shostakovich Discoveries: Premiere Recordings and Rarities, which includes performances with the Staatskapelle Dresden and Daniil Trifonov, Gidon Kremer and others. ARTE, the German television arte channel, prepared a documentary, which will be broadcast later this year.
This is not Sanderling’s first visit to the CPO – he conducted Mahler Symphony No. 5 in 2011, when he was also on the jury of the inaugural CPO SA Conductors ‘ Competition (then known as the Len van Zyl Conductors’ Competition), and he looks forward to being back in the city.
“Mount Everest of all violin concertos”
He also looks forward to a collaboration with Andrey Baranov, an “outstanding” violinist he can’t praise enough, in a work he calls the “Mount Everest of all violin concertos”, the Violin Concerto by Brahms. Also on the programme is the 4th Symphony by the same composer.
Sanderling will also conduct the CPO the following week, June 19, with the South African pianists Tinus Botha and Megan-Geoffrey Prins as soloists in the Concerto for Two Pianos by Mozart.
Sanderling was really born for the podium
His father, Kurt Sanderling, only took Thomas’s conducting career seriously when Thomas won his first competition, but his parents took him to all the rehearsals, whether Kurt was on the podium or not, of the Leningrad Philharmonic.
“He knew how difficult it was to be a conductor, to translate your conception to the orchestra and singers but even so I always wanted only that, “ Sanderling says, “even though I studied violin and piano at the music school in Leningrad.”
He was just 24 when he got his first position as music director in Halle.
“I was short listed for a position with the Dresden Philharmonic and the intendant of the Halle Orchestra was at my concert. He made me an offer before the results were out and I jumped at it. Who doesn’t want to be able to decide repertoire and conduct opera and symphony concerts?” He was there 11 years.
His career is phenomenal and he doesn’t let up – he was at his home in London, which has been his base of more than 40 years, for a week between concerts in Italy and Cape Town, and leaves Cape Town for Tokyo. He has little enough time to see anything but airports, planes and concert halls and rehearsal spaces but hopes to see a little of Cape Town because he loves nature and the natural beauty of our city.
Mozart Festival in Joburg
His relationship with SA is interesting – he has conducted at the Mozart Festival in Johannesburg and several times with the JPO and KZNPO, specifically one concert with Michelle Breedt in the Wesendonck Lieder. He also recorded Shostakovich with Michelle and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Germany, and Is happy to see she is the patron of the Richard Wagner Society of SA, for he has conducted several Wagner operas and remembers well conversations he had with the president of the Wagner Society, Herbert Gloeckner, sorry only that neither Michelle nor Herbert are in Cape Town when he is here.
Awards, honours, prizes
His take on the huge number of awards and honours and prizes he has won is also interesting.
“Recognition is not unimportant nowadays,” he says, “but what is most important is how the making of the right performance is. Was the interpretation a good one, right, and was the audience impressed? “
Having said that, he confesses to being most impressed, even moved, that Tony Duggan, the late Mahler doyen, made his recording Mahler Symphony no 6 the reference recording on his website. That recording, with the St Petersburg Philharmonic, also won the Cannes Classical Award in 1998.
When asked if there is still something he would like to achieve, “a good composer is the god, but a god needs a good priest to bring out the special elements of the music. Music was created so people would listen. The great conductor Wilhelm Fürtwengler righly stated that “the composer starts with ideas and intentions, then developing them. A good performer should, in his or her personal preparation, go from the opposite side – from the end go backwards and try to find the intention and ideas.”
Sanderling was music director in Novosibirsk but resigned his position when Russia invaded Ukraine.
“I had conducted Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony, nicknamed Babi Yar, in Babyn Yar in Kiev with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin in the October before the invasion, when Russian troops were still close by but tactically, we thought. Some months later Baba Yar was destroyed.”
He has two half-brothers. Stefan and Michael, who are also conductors and their paths have professionally only crossed once – when Daniel Barenboim arranged a celebration of Kurt’s life in Berlin. Kurt died in 2011, a day before his 99th birthday.
There will be pre-concert talks at 18:45 before both concerts; the dress rehearsals at 11:00 on both concert dates and tickets are on the Quicket platform or at the door at the City Hall.
What: Conductor Thomas Sanderling with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra
When: 12 and June 19 June 2025
Who: Soloists Andrey Baranov (violin) June 12, Tinus Botha and Megan-Geoffrey Prins piano) June 19
Tickets Artscape Dial-a-Seat: 021 421 7695 or Webtickets
WS
