Johannesburg - Virtuoso New York pianist Tian Jiang usually plays in the world’s most prestigious concert halls, but last weekend he settled, very happily, for a grass lawn in the middle of the bushveld.
History was made last Saturday in the Timbavati Game Reserve when Jiang took his seat at a baby grand piano and played his heart out in the bush at Motswari Lodge under a canopy of stars, the first time a concert pianist has performed in a setting where the Big Five roam.
And what a concert it was, unfolding as it did alongside a symphony of crickets and frogs in their watery orchestral pit, a slow river into which a crocodile had plopped just two hours before – and to a mysterious night audience of animals large and small in their vast hall of wilderness.
The human concertgoers, 38 of them, were cosied up on sofas and chairs set out on the lawn, drinks in hand and tuned into the sublime music by Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin and Jiang’s own compositions.
Dressed in the same black suit he will wear at Carnegie Hall in New York next month when he plays to an audience of nearly 3 000, Jiang took this intimate bush performance seriously.
He had practised most of the previous night, and for hours on the day. As he made his way at 7pm to the baby grand, lit only by a three paraffin lanterns balanced on books on small stand tables, the scene was wonderfully decadent, reminiscent of Kenya’s Happy Valley of the 1940s.
Although nature’s tune at times overpowered Jiang’s masterful and beautifully textured performance, he received rousing applause and a standing ovation at the end.
“It was very special to hear the symphony of Africa behind me. Classical music is the most refined of human accomplishments, and it was performed for the first time here, in this raw, wild setting. What an amazing contrast,” Jiang said afterwards.
For Jiang, this was the fruition of a dream that started 10 years ago. A long-time lover of the African bush, the idea first hatched in a whimsical conversation with his friend and agent in South Africa, Anthony Watterson. Jiang later met and befriended the artist Marion Geiger and her husband Fabrice Orengo de Lamazière, owners of Motswari Lodge, one of his favourite bush retreats.
Last year, the friends set the plan in motion to have Jiang play at the lodge. It made perfect sense to the Geiger family, who have owned this luxury hideaway for more than 40 years, beginning with the purchase of the Motswari reserve by the late Paul Geiger (Marion’s father), who happened to be an ardent Mozart fan.
The logistics of getting a piano didn’t really sink in, however, until it was time to prepare for the concert. “I started looking for baby grand pianos in Johannesburg, but transporting it would have cost a fortune,” said De Lamazière. As luck would have it, a pianist and piano tuner in Nelspruit, Johan le Roux, just happened to own a baby grand.
Le Roux readily agreed to disassemble it, pack it on his truck and drive it over to Motswari where it was assembled the night before the concert. Le Roux spent the next morning tuning it.
Earlier this year Motswari joined the Newmark group portfolio. Newmark will now handle the sales, marketing and management of the lodge.
Jiang has made no commitment to further such concerts and the 30-odd guests were invited privately. But does Motswari expect this event to boost sales?
Newmark managing director Neil Markovitz, who attended the concert with his wife Lisa, said: “Sometimes you have to take the commercial realities out of the scenario, because it’s an event driven by love and passion and soul, and it just makes sense.”
For Jiang, conquering new frontiers has become the staple of his life. He began as a child prodigy born and raised in Shanghai during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. He later went to the US after winning a grant to study at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and completed his classical training at the Juilliard School in New York.
As we sat in the boma having dinner after the concert, Jiang revealed a gruelling schedule that sees him in Cape Town today for a private recital at the Queen Victoria Hotel, then off to China and back home to the US for more big concerts. However, while his natural environment is an acoustically perfect hall in one of the music capitals of the world, he has expressed an interest in working with local underprivileged children, and to possibly integrate them with his own music at one of his future concerts in South Africa. “The aim is to get him back here in 2014 for some big concerts,” said Watterson.
As for the Motswari concert, the Geiger family and Markovitz are quietly confident the bush will lure him back and he’ll again be tickling the ivories under the stars. After all, while most of his Saturday night audience trickled out of the reserve after Sunday breakfast, the baby grand having been packed up and taken back to Nelspruit, Jiang and his German wife, Yasmin, opted to stay on for another three days to better acquaint themselves with the members of his “beautiful African symphonic orchestra”. - Saturday Star