Brahms’ Requiem and Tebogo Monnakgotla in the concert hall

This is a review. The author is responsible for the opinions in the text.

She is undoubtedly one of Sweden’s most important orchestral composers, Tebogo Monnakgotla. Star violinist Johan Dalene travels around with her sophisticated violin concerto, inspired by the far-flying dragonfly. The Royal Philharmonic opened its season with their childlike, exuberant “Sugar High” and will premiere their cello concerto in April to mark the Konserthuset’s 100th anniversary.

Now on this week’s program is Tebogo Monnakgotla’s beautiful song cycle, composed to texts by Africa’s first major modernist, Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo (1903-37). She often returned to this condemned poet of Madagascar.

Rabearivelo was stripped of his aristocratic family status with French colonization, but still embraced French culture – he saw Baudelaire and Rimbaud as equals. But when the French prioritized two basket weavers as representatives of Madagascar at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937, Rabearivelo took his own life.

Tebogo Monnakgotla wrote his composition for the baritone Luthando Qave – the South African Sakhiwe Mkosana performed in the concert hall. He also has a beautiful and noble timbre, but monochrome and rigid in his phrasing. Monnakgotla’s orchestral color, on the other hand, shimmered as so often in rich timbres, elegant in the wake of Ravel.

As a soloist in Johannes Brahms’ Requiem, Mkosana then had to switch from French to German. This is how his career began at the Frankfurt Opera, where the soprano Karolina Bengtsson can now be found. Swedish conductor Sofi Jeannin spends her time between London, Paris and Copenhagen, where she works mainly with choirs.

Here Sofi Jeannin led the Philharmonic with Eric Ericson’s Chamber Choir in Brahms’ powerful but very human Requiem Mass. A strictly reserved, almost measured interpretation without any obvious romantic bloat. A bit of German swell would probably have improved the somewhat dull choir sound. Instead, the highlight was Karolina Bengtsson’s beautifully moving solo.

Read more concert reviews and other writing by Camilla Lundberg