Playing to the seekers of excellence

GEOFF SIFRIN

But society has matured, and become less threatened by the different ways people might identify themselves, whether it be African, European, or something in between.

Anyone parachuting into the huge Linder Auditorium on the campus of the University of the Witwatersrand on Saturday to hear Italian pianist Mariangela Vacatello perform works by European composers including Mozart, might have thought it was a wholly European event.

The 1 000-plus auditorium was packed to the rafters with an audience almost exclusively middle-aged and white. There was hardly a black face to be seen, aside from the waiters serving in the restaurant. Superficially, it looked like the 1960s, when apartheid was alive.

Of course, in those days, there was a curfew for black people in white areas, and they could not have attended anyway. They had to keep to places such as Soweto, and carry a “pass” signed by their white employer, to be in a white area.

Saturday’s performance left the audience breathless, and demanding more. After a standing ovation, Vacatello gave several encores, the last ending with Mozart’s lively Rondo Alla Turca, with a jazz beat.

She came to South Africa under the auspices of the Johannesburg Musical Society, a more than 100-year-old institution currently managed by Avril Rubenstein, in partnership with Richard Cock’s Johannesburg International Mozart Festival (JIMF).

On Sunday, the Linder, which has over the years been host to significant luminaries such as Pinchas Zuckerman, saw a grand performance of the Mozart Requiem by the Johannesburg Festival Orchestra and the Symphony Choir of Johannesburg, programmed by JIMF, and conducted by Cock. There was not an empty seat and again, an almost exclusively white audience. They were there not because they were white, nor because Mozart was European, but because that is the kind of music they love.

The dichotomy seems crude. And it is. There are many black lovers of European classical music in this country, as there is a growing interest in opera by black practitioners. But overwhelmingly, there is disproportion in audiences such as that of the Mozart Festival.

Does the skewed make-up of audiences indicate that South Africa’s non-racial project has failed? In this racially obsessed country, the likes of black populist politicians like Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema question the place of whites in the country. Showcasing these so-called “European” works could be interpreted by mischievous politicians as a statement that whites are not African, but European, and not deserving of African status.

What place does this divisive argument have in the new South Africa, which is confused with identity issues, and is witnessing the withering of the rainbow-nation dream?

With elections coming soon, racist rhetoric will intensify as parties with a “white” image such as the Democratic Alliance compete against parties with a “black” image such as the African National Congress and EFF.

Malema knows how to ride that wave. His party attracts votes through racial bombast. But in the broad sense, most people no longer regard it as sinful, politically or artistically, to be Eurocentric.

Too often in the recent past, art has received accolades not because of its quality, but its maker’s identity. This is dangerous and misleading. Mozart may have been born in Europe about 260-odd years ago. He may have been born white-skinned and male. But these are not the reasons he is loved. He is loved because of the brilliance of his work.