Concert grand inaugurated
2008-12-11
Christine Siebrits
THE historic Goodnow Hall resounded with the haunting strains of Frederic Chopin’s Piano Concert no 2 in f on a sweltering Sunday afternoon played by the soloist Bennie van Eeden. Sunday’s concert was also the official inauguration of the renovated 1927 Concert Grand piano. In spite of the energy consuming heat, a large number of music lovers attended the concert. The Welsh-born John Ashton Jones conducted the orchestra, the well-known Camerata Tinta Barocca. He met his South African wife, Lynette, in London and spent quite a number of years in South Africa where he was actively involved in teaching music and establishing youth orchestras. The soloists were the tenor André Serfontein, Peter Amon on horn and Bennie van Eeden on piano. The Goodnow Hall was finally completed in 1886, largely due to the untiring efforts of Miss EA Cummings, who managed to collect sufficient funds for the building of the hall. Miss Cummings originally came to South Africa from Massachusetts in America. The plans for the building as well as most of the funding came from a cousin of her mother, a certain Mr Goodnow who lived in Worcester, Massachusetts. All was not plain sailing, however, as the ship, Olga R, bringing the wood from America was stranded off the Cape of Good Hope coast near Mouille Point. All was not lost as most of the wood could be rescued from the ship and the rest washed up on the beach. There was fortunately no damage to the wood, but because it was submerged in the sea for quite a long period, it was a darker shade.
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