Interview with Marian Lewin on SANYO

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South African National Youth Orchestra

You have a special bond with the SA National Youth Orchestra. Do you want tell us something about your special relationship with the orchestra?

My Aunt Betty, who in her day was a leading cello teacher, was the first person to start chamber groups for young pupils. Vincent Fritelli (a Wunderkind), Pauline Nossel (doyenne of piano teachers in Gauteng) and I formed the first chamber group: a piano trio (ages 7 and 8 years old). Pauline, together with Anton Hartman, Derek Ochse, Leo Quayle and others initiated the South African National Youth Orchestra 50 years ago. They believed that playing in an orchestra was essential to the teaching process, allowing pupils to broaden their experience and ensemble playing, not learning in isolation.

Nearly all successful South African musicians today passed through Betty’s hands and SANYO (in those days called the National Youth Orchestra) – Gerhard Korsten, Gina and Wessel Beukes, Suzanne Swanepoel (Martens), Nicolette van der Spuy, Peta Ann Richardson, Srdjan Cuca, Human Coetzee, Ian van Rensburg, to name a few.

On a number of occasions I was on the panel to audition and assign players to make up the different orchestras and also coached the orchestras at the different orchestral courses. So my bond with SANYO has been long and rewarding and has a special place in my heart.

In the past 50 years there have been many highlights. Which of these were extra-special to you in particular or to the orchestra in general?

An ongoing highlight is to follow the careers of, and teach, students who were coached and taught in SANYO.

A heartfelt joy is to teach some of the previously disadvantaged and other pupils who are exposed to the joy of music, especially the emotional joy of playing with others, but most of all to see these pupils having their lives changed forever, allowing them to rise in society and benefit from prestigious and financially rewarding careers.

Any special celebration plans for the 50th birthday?

No special plans for the 50th birthday, although I understand that I, together other alumni from around the world, will be playing in the orchestra at the celebration under the baton of a famous conductor.

What contribution can the public make towards keeping the orchestra going?

Historically the SANYO has proved to have been the nursery ground and grooming mechanism for professional musicians, as well as also giving enormous joy to those orchestra members who did not follow professional music careers. These pupils have become the backbone of today’s audiences, and even more important are the parents who are encouraging and supporting their children in studying music, thus ensuring the ongoing development of the orchestra, whose members in turn will become audiences and parents of music students of tomorrow. Thus the public can, by supporting SANYO, both financially and by forming the audiences, ensure the future of a part of culture that is one of the highest levels of human achievement.

 

 

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Kommentaar

  • Mary Loonam nee Healy

    I was in the orchestra in about 1962 under Pierino Gamba. I played piccolo and second flute. My late father Victor Healy was a prominent trombone player and arranger who was a founding member of the Colosseum orchestra and played with the SABC and opera and ballet. I left South Africa for Australia in 1965 and worked as a professional flautist and am still teaching.

  • Reageer

    Jou e-posadres sal nie gepubliseer word nie. Kommentaar is onderhewig aan moderering.


     

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