PAST CONCERTS
The Cape Town Symphony Singers
Performance at ST Mary's Cathedral
Conducted by Levi Alexander
Join the Cape Town Symphony Singers at St Mary’s Cathedral!
We’re heading off on tour soon — but first, don’t miss these two special performances:
Sung Mass
- Sunday, 27 April 2025 | 10:00
- Sung Mass
- Music by Lotti, Bruckner & Rossini
- Free Entry
Tour Farewell Concert
- Saturday, 3 May 2025 | 19:30
- Tour Farewell Concert
- Works by Pitoni, Rachmaninoff, Klatzow & more
- Entry by donation
Thank you to everyone who was there to give the choir a warm send-off before they head to the Czech Republic, Hungary & Poland!
Last Night of the proms
festival of bells
conducted by richard cock
hosted by the rotary club of wynberg
Thank you to everyone who supported us at this year’s Last Night of the Proms concert at Cape Town City Hall.
It was an honour to be part of such a joyful and meaningful celebration alongside so many talented performers. The energy, the music, and the enthusiastic audience made it an unforgettable experience.
We are grateful to the organisers, fellow musicians, and especially to our wonderful supporters — your presence and encouragement mean the world to us.
FAURE REQUIEM
WITH MUSIC BY FAURE, MOZART, AND FRANCK
FEATURING GUEST CONDUCTOR GARY MATTHEWMAN
On 18 April 2025, the Symphony Choir of Cape Town joined forces with Cape Town Opera and the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra for a stirring Easter concert at the Toringkerk in Paarl. Conducted by British maestro Gary Matthewman, the programme featured Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem alongside works by Mozart and Franck. The performance showcased soprano Sisikelelwe Mngenela, baritone Conroy Scott, and the combined voices of the Cape Town Opera Chorus, Children’s Chorus, and the Symphony Choir of Cape Town in a memorable celebration of sacred music.
BORN THIS DAY
PRESENTED BY THE SYMPHONY CHOIR OF CAPE TOWN AND THE CAPE TOWN CHILDREN'S CHOIR
Conducted by Levi Alexander
It is an honour to perform the South African premiere of Vaughan Williams’ Hodie. The work was composed 70 years ago and is beloved by listeners, having been part of their Christmas playlists for many years. Now, finally, we enjoy this magical work live!
The Symphony Choir is delighted to collaborate with the Cape Town Children’s Choir directed by Bronwen Leith. It has been an absolute joy to work with this treble choir – hearty congratulations to them!
Vaughan Williams takes us on a picturesque journey through the spectacular use of colourful modality and orchestration, casting our imagination into an almost cinematic musical experience of the Nativity
story.
In an increasingly secularised society, Christmastide has become a time for excess expense and misdirected merry-making. Through the music and text of Hodie, this work beckons the listener to begin a journey to a more tender and deeply moving Nativity story. The music and ambience encourage all to gather together in a huddle, hush voices, and shed the light of a flickering lamp on the Infant in the manger. Just as the angels, lowly shepherds and noble pilgrims gathered in the stable in great anticipation of new beginnings, so we gather here this evening, to uplift our souls with this most glorious Nativity story and find renewed joy and energy to embrace the full beauty of life.
The Symphony Choir of Cape Town wishes you a most glorious Christmastide, filled with love, hope, and joy. May you rest well, enjoy the time with family and friends and be re-energised for a new year, which holds much promise.
Levi Alexander
Director, Symphony Choir of Cape Town
a plea for peace
Presented by The Symphony Choir of Cape Town
Conducted by: Levi Alexander
‘Better is Peace than always War’ – This is the definitive message which begins the final movement of Karl Jenkins’ “The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace”. The work is the main feature of The Symphony Choir of Cape Town’s collaborative concert to be held in the Cape Town City Hall on 16 and 17 August 2024 at 7 pm.
The Armed Man was commissioned for the millennium by Britain’s Royal Armouries Museum and dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo crisis. It is a contemporary mass based on the 15th century French song L’homme armé (The Armed Man) and set in the framework of the Christian Mass but using both sacred and secular texts by authors and poets including Rudyard Kipling, Jonathan Swift and Tennyson. This work is a subtle but powerful protest with cynical yet poignant undertones which graphically highlights the pain, horror and futility of war, culminating in a prayerful acknowledgement that peace, healing and comfort are at hand.
To complement the main feature, the programme includes two movements from Gustav Holst’s popular orchestral suite, The Planets. The wind ensemble will play “Mars – the Bringer of War” followed by “Jupiter – the Bringer of Jollity”. In addition, we will perform John Williams’ “Hymn to the Fallen” from the Steven Spielberg movie, Saving Private Ryan. This most powerful and emotional melody evokes a feeling of hope and strength with overall tones of reverence.
The Symphony Choir of Cape Town is delighted to be collaborating with the SACS Boys High School Choir and the Herschel Chorale with accompaniment by the Windworx and Stellenbosch University Symphonic Wind Ensembles. This concert is a heartfelt, sobering and hopeful Plea for Peace in our troubled times by approximately 250 voices and musicians and conducted by our inspired director, Levi Alexander.
Bach Christmas Oratorio
Weihnachts oratorium
Exult, Rejoice – Jauchzet Frohlocket!
“Jauchzet, Frohlocket!”
After another busy year, there is so much to celebrate: being alive and well, family, friends, colleagues, community, music, relative peace and stability.
Shake off your burdens and let your spirit dance free in the glorious music of Bach.Whether your journey is religious and this performance sets you off on a glorious Adventide as you prepare your heart for the coming season – “Offne dich, mein ganzes Herze, Jesus kommt und
ziehet in.” (BWV 61, Soprano Aria); if your presence is for a sensational aural and spiritual awakening; or if you are here because you love good classical music, there is nothing that compares to the glitter and joy of Christmas – revel in every minute!
Thank you for supporting the Symphony Choir of Cape Town, our choir members, musicians and soloists – we truly appreciate it. I’d like to wish you all a blessed Christmas and a wonderful New Year.
Levi Alexander
Director, Symphony Choir of Cape Town
A Celebration in song
Walton, woodborne, Rutter, Parry
Conducted by: Levi Alexander
The Symphony Choir of Cape Town is committed to performing classical oratoriostyle choral music. Each year, we hope to collaborate with school and youth choirs to pass on some of the traditions of this music and ensure audience development. This year we are delighted to collaborate with the fantastic SACS High School Boys Choir and St Cyprian’s Girls High
School Choir. The learners have made a tremendous effort to learn these substantial choral works – hearty congratulations on their superb effort and thank you to Warren Patientia and Riaan Oosthuizen for their preparation.
The SCCT also enjoys collaborating with other musical institutions of excellence. This evening we are privileged to be accompanied by the combined Windworx and Stellenbosch University Symphonic Wind Ensembles. These bands are at the forefront of wind band music development and promotion in South Africa. Here’s to wind bands sharing the professional stage in future! Thank you to Riaan van Wyk and Pamela Kierman, the managers of these two bands.
The programme starts with William Walton’s rousing Crown Imperial, a nod to the coronation of King Charles III. In tonight’s programme, we perform four wind band arrangements by Paul Noble, who has taken a keen interest in the performance of wind band and choral music in Cape Town and is eagerly awaiting the recording of this evening’s performance.
During a tour with the SACS Concert Band to Austria in 2017, I happened to come across the Rohrau Mass by Cape Town-born composer Shane Woodborne, who for many years has been resident in Austria. This moving work will premiere in South Africa this evening. Shane is delighted with the news that we are performing his work and has given his autographed score, from which he conducted the work’s first performance.
The major work this evening is John Rutter’s Magnificat, or Song of Mary, which sets to music the words spoken by the Virgin Mary when she visited Elizabeth. It is a joyous piece, as we rejoice in the joy of life and music, the unity of our community celebrating its diversity, the overcoming of our personal and collective adversities, and a prosperous future for us all – a
celebration in song!
The performance ends with Hubert Parry’s glorious masterpiece, I Was Glad. We could not resist indulging in this triumphant anthem, given this evening’s magnificent, combined choirs, extraordinary wind band, and resonant acoustics – truly an anthem of the soul! We hope you enjoy every minute of our programme.
Levi Alexander
Director, Symphony Choir of Cape Town
ORATORIO DE NOËL
A Dedication to kathy collins who was a faithful member of our choir for many years
Christmas Concert "Cantique de Noël
In an increasingly secularised society, Christmastide has become a time for excess expense and misdirected merry-making. This programme, through its music and text, beckons the listener to begin a journey, a journey to a more tender and deeply moving Nativity story. The music and ambience encourages all to gather together in a huddle, hush their voices, and shed the light of a flickering lamp on the Infant in the manger. Just as the angels, lowly shepherds and noble pilgrims gathered in the stable in great anticipation of new beginnings, so we gather here this evening, to uplift our souls with this most glorious Nativity story and find renewed joy and energy to embrace the full beauty of life.
The opening Carol and Marian Hymn summarises the nativity tale and the fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah. It tells of an infant child of a royal bloodline, described here as a spotless rose, who is rooted in the Tree of Jesse, a symbolic device that depicts the descent of Jesus from Jesse of Bethlehem, the father of King David.
The Ceremony of Carols is a compilation of beautiful reflective texts. It emphasises the infancy of the Christ-child in its tender accompaniment by the harp. The sixth movement is particularly evocative, “This little Babe so few days old, is come to rifle Satan’s fold”. Incredible poetry and wonderfully exciting musical interpretation by Britten in the very close knit canonic entries cast one’s mind to a most thrilling medieval battle with its archery battalions.
The Christmas Oratorio is an intimate and tender setting of the nativity. A most gorgeous work that strips Christmastide of its secular thrill and draws the listener’s heart to awe and wonder. The Symphony Choir of Cape Town wishes you a most glorious Christmastide, filled with love, hope, and joy. May you rest well, enjoy the time with family and friends and be re-energised for a new year which holds much promise.
Levi Alexander
Director, Symphony Choir of Cape Town
Dvorak Mass in D
St Georges Cathedral
Conducted by: Levi Alexander
It is easy to get bogged down by one’s day-to-day routine, the stresses of life and the uncontrollable circumstances thrust upon us as a nation. This evening’s beautiful musical journey beckons us to stop, reflect, become mindful and rejoice in spirit and in song for the many things for which we can be thankful. We can easily become blind to the beauty and wonder of our surroundings and the joy of community and friends.
This programme guides and demonstrates the ways in which we can rejoice in gratitude.
The Vaughan Williams opening anthem Let all the World encourages all on earth to sing praises. Britten’s cantata Rejoice in the Lamb exemplifies praise and worship of different things and animals, such as an array of flowers, a cat named Jeoffry, and a mouse. Christopher Smart, the poet, also includes the interesting use of the alphabet as well as an instruction to praise through musical instruments. Dvořák’s Mass in D Major is solemn praise in the use of the liturgical text in a most sonorous and moving setting. The concert concludes with sound advice for us all: “Love one another with a pure heart fervently”.
I pray this musical journey transports your soul to a place of light and joy, inspires the mind, and invigorates the spirit.
Levi Alexander
Director, Symphony Choir of Cape Town
A Baroque Christmas
Lutheran Church, Strand Street
Christmas Concert "Cantique de Noël
In the season of Advent, the church enters a time of expectation, preparation, and hope for the future. Secularly, society comes to the end of a busy work year and looks forward to a time of rest, rejuvenation and a time with family
and friends. Mostly, Advent is a time of great expectation and anticipation for a time of joy, love and peace.
The COVID pandemic has resulted in great loss in all spheres of society and the economy. Life as we knew it has completely changed and threatens never to revert to the old ‘normal’. Yet, there is still a sincere hope that the future will bring good tidings, health and joyous moments for all.
This concert reflects on the theme of hope for the future and a new dawn through its strong Advent theme. The musical text of our performance of motets, cantatas and canticles by Monteverdi, Bach and Vivaldi refers to current bewilderment and refuge in the hope of the future.
It felt appropriate to start with Monteverdi’s Cantate Domino (“Sing a new song unto the Lord”), as the SCCT embarks on a period of new directorship, a fresh approach and new and exciting repertoire. In Vivaldi’s Magnificat we can identify with Mary and rejoice in the prospect of better times. Bach’s Ärg’re dich, o Seele, nicht was performed on the third Sunday of Advent in 1716 and beckons the listener to be patient, for better times are indeed coming. We end with the triumphal sounding of the much-loved Vivaldi Gloria, derived from the words of the angels announcing the birth of Christ in the Gospel of Luke.
Join us on this musically and spiritually reviving journey of hope and expectation.
Levi Alexander
Director, Symphony Choir of Cape Town
Mass in Modern Times
Lutheran Church, Strand Street
Conducted by: Levi Alexander
Mass is the word used to describe the central act of worship in a church in many Western Christian faiths. Mass is also about spending time in the presence of God and receiving his grace and blessings. The word mass comes from the Latin phrase ‘Ite missa es’, which is used at the end of the service and means to send out. In modern times the phrase ‘Ite in pace glorificando vita vestra dominum’ – go in peace glorifying the Lord by your life – has been added.
The title of this concert, Mass in Modern Times, pays homage to this poignant phrase with a beautifully curated programme of short works. The Symphony Choir of Cape Town invites you to share in this Mass and to go in peace. Peace is what is desperately needed in the modern world right now.
Levi Alexander
Director, Symphony Choir of Cape Town
