A coffee table book will be launched in the course of the year. This is the only orchestra in Africa to have achieved this, and not without financial problems.

From the first concert in February 1914 with the new Cape Town Municipal Orchestra when unreserved seats cost one shilling to today’s sophisticated ensemble, the orchestra has always made its mark on Cape Town. Although there have been various incarnations as the orchestra merged and melded to offer the best product for the times, there has never been a time when Cape Town was not served by an orchestra.

Through overseas tours, the CPO has also made an impression in countries such as the UK, USA, Taiwan and Spain’s Canary Islands.

Funded by the Council fully until 1987 and then partly for the next 10 years, the CPO relies on government and corporate sponsorship and funding to augment what it receives from ticket sales and gate money.

Guests at the first concert included Jan Smuts; the programme for the first concert began with the Meistersinger overture by Wagner, and ended with a march, Lorraine, by L Ganne. In between, there was Schubert Unfinished Symphony, a Welsh Rhapsody by E German, another overture, this one to the Merry Wives of Windsor by Nicolai, part of Grieg’s Lyric Suite, and works by Järnefelt, Sibelius, Brahms, Monkton and Talbot and Waldteufel. Theo Wendt was on the podium, and he stayed there for 10 years, until his salary was arbitrarily cut by 20% by the city council and he went to start an orchestra for the SABC and in Durban.

The cost that first year for six violinists including the leader - Ellie Marx - one viola, two celli, one bass, two clarinets, one oboe, one bassoon, two cornets, one trombone and one drum was less than 5000 pounds, including 500 pounds for the conductor, a far cry from the 50 000 pounds fifty years on and today’s annual budget for 45 full-time musicians of more than R20-million. The municipal orchestra gave two concerts a week, on Thursday and Sunday in the City Hall, and numerous others on the Pier, at the new Sea Point Pavilion and other outdoor venues. There were sacred concerts, popular concerts, children’s concerts, concerts devoted to composers, a plebiscite concert where the audience was allowed to choose the music, afternoon tea concerts. Later came the lunch-hour concerts in the United Tobacco factory and the railway workshops and the first national tour.

The orchestra in Cape Town has always been a portent of things to come, and many of the greatest musicians came to the city on their way up. Others came at the peak of their powers, and some names of note to walk into the gracious Edwardian City Hall are Jascha Heifetz, Sir Henry Wood, Noel Coward, Richard Tauber, Claudio Arrau, Julius Katchen, Yehudi Menuhin, Pierre Fournier, Charles Mackerras, Gina Bachauer, Henryk Szerying, the Suk Trio, Alicia de Larrocha and, in 1962, Igor Stravinsky. Alfred Brendel’s fee in the 1960s was just R800! South Africans who made their mark included Lionel Bowman, Elsie Hall and Cecilia Wessels, Laura Searle, Yonty Solomon and Helena van Heerden.

The orchestras have made a tremendous contribution in setting up Cape Town as an international tourism hub and taken music education and skills transfer seriously. The first outreach began under the CTSO, leading to the CPO’s huge outreach projects which reach thousands of people a year across townships and towns in the Western Cape.