Sunday, September 07, 2025

Sunday music and art at the Prince Albert Kaleidoscope Festival

The Sunday concert was held in another historic Building on Church Street
in the Pink Drawing Room at The Central Private Hotel (now known as Garfield’s Place)
Featuring Artists Louise Lansdown and Emma Farnsworth (violas), Elliot Tingley (cello)
and Tony Alcock (double bass)






Louise Lansdown is the very talented and able organizer of the Music Festival and hopes to repeat it next year
Violist, educator, researcher and philanthropist, Louise is currently Assistant Head of Strings (viola)
at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) in Manchester
and Professor of viola at the Yehudi Menuhin School (YMS)

Along with her viola students,
she is the founder of a major cross-continental collaborative string teaching project called “ARCO”
ARCO Soweto was founded in July 2015 in Soweto, Gauteng
in partnership with the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in the UK, where Louise was Head of Strings
She and her partner  bassist Tony Alcock live in Prince Albert in their house called Molly
She commissioned some of the music played in the concert

With the title Long Walk to Freedom this concert remembers the struggle, and in particular highlights the Rivonia Trial
with four movements from Monthati Masebe’s Trials that Trail for solo viola
and Grant MacLachlan’s Yihle Moya and Shosholoza for solo double bass
There are two new commissions and world premieres in this concert, both by South African composers -
Gqeberha based Jan-Hendrik Harley and Stellenbosch based Arthur Feder
Harley has composed a short suite for solo double bass ‘Molly’ (the name of Tony and Louise’s house in Prince Albert)
in honour of Tony Alcock’s 60th birthday and Feder a duo for viola and double bass inspired by the Karoo, “In die stilte van die Karoo”
The festival finished with three Argentinian and Uruguayan Tangos
arranged for two violas, cello and double bass by cellist Elliot Tingley
All but these African composers and the music was inspiring

Programme

πŸ‡ΏπŸ‡¦ Grant MacLachlan (1956*)
Yihle MoyΓ  and Shosholoza for solo double bass
πŸ‡ΏπŸ‡¦ Monthati Masebe (1995*)
Golden (Arthur Goldreich)
A healthy Grave (James Kantor)
Kathy (Ahmed Kathrada)
Madiba, Dlomo, Yem-yem (Nelson Mandela)
Trials that Trail for solo viola
πŸ‡ΏπŸ‡¦ Arthur Feder (1987*)
World premiere, new commission for viola and double bass “in die stilte van die Karoo”
 πŸ‡ΏπŸ‡¦ Jan-Hendrik Harley (1980*)
Molly Variations for solo double bass. New commission and world premiere **

Two Tangos (arr. for two violas, cello and double bass by Elliot Tingley)
πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Ύ Gerardo Matos Rodriguez (1897-1948)
La Cumparsita
πŸ‡¦πŸ‡· Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992)
Libertango
Oblivion

Applause!  The music was so well played and so inspiring

Tony Alcock

Louise on Viola



Emma Farnsworth (viola)
She is a recent graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music and passed her final exams with Distinction

Elliot Tingley (cello)

 Emma Farnsworth (viola)


and a visitor just arrived from the UK 


Sitting on the sunny stoep is something South Africans love to do 

The quiet charm of the old houses

Like us, making plans for lunch
We had formally booked a restaurant on line only to discover that they only open in the evening on Sundays
so we had to find another. Rude. Our second find was a huge success. See our article on the Lazy Lizard

Trees do survive in this dry environment

Coral Tree in bloom in this very arid environment; they get only 100 mm of rain a year
Erythrina lysistemon is a species of deciduous tree in the pea family, Fabaceae. It is native to South Africa.

And the vivid Tiger Striped Daisy
It is described as a common characteristic of certain Gazania rigens species
(also called African Daisies or Treasure Flowers) Osteospermum 

We took a walk down Church Street and visited the Prince Albert Gallery
It is filled with some of the best Art we have seen in a very long time

Very inspiring

And so much mixed media too
The landscape pictures in oils are so inspiring. There is a photographic area as well

Lynne is studying watercolours and was very inspired by this small painting of an olive branch

All the stories we have produced since 2012 can be opened from the archive list near the top of the column on the right of this page

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