Come view the northern lights in orchestral splendour
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The North-West University (NWU) Potchefstroom campus is ready to dazzle the community with its annual symphony orchestra performance on Sunday, 11 May 2025. This year’s theme is ‘Northern Odyssey’, and features a diverse selection of classical and contemporary pieces inspired by the Nordic region.
On the programme are Finlandia by Jean Sibelius, a medley from the film How to train your dragon, music from American singer and songwriter Billie Eilish, and Finneas’s No time to die with featuring Okuhle Nkhoma, an opera singer at the NWU School of Music & Conservatory. The programme also includes music from the blockbuster film Frozen, arranged by Bob Krogstad. The orchestra mainly consists of NWU students.
A highlight of the programme is Tinus Botha’s performance of Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor. Botha is an associate professor at NWU who specialises in piano performance, teaching methodology, and keyboard skills.
“The Grieg concerto envokes several emotions through moments of drama, grandeur, lyricism, and playfulness,” Botha told 3SM. “The uniqueness of this specific art form is that the same performance often makes people feel different things; for instance, a melody that makes one listener nostalgic can make another person feel forlorn. Many performers feel that they have succeeded in their task if they were able to envoke any strong emotional response from the listener,” Botha told 3SM.
He said the concerto has a special place in his heart because it made him fall in love with the piano as a child. “The piece is a cornerstone of the literature for piano and orchestra, and I invite everyone to come to the concert and see why this is the case.”
The conductor for this event is André Oosthuizen, the regular leader of the NWU Symphony Orchestra and the NWU Wind Ensemble. Oosthuizen has been leading the wind ensemble since 2013.
• Tickets are available at tixsa for R80. Scanning the QR code on the NWU Orchestra poster will also take you to the booking site.