Peter Klatzow
Peter Klatzow (1945-). Teacher, conductor, composer.
Contents
Biography
Peter Klatzow was born in Springs, Transvaal, in 1945.
Training
He began piano lessons at the age of 4 with Sister St Dennis from the St Imelda Convent in Brakpan. He later studied the piano under Lily Shapiro (1957), Julienne Brown (1958-1960) and Aida Lovell (1961), and composition under John Blacking. Klatzow acknowledges Aida Lovell as an important musical influence during his formative years.
Klatzow matriculated from St Martin’s School in Johannesburg in 1962 and, having been awarded a South African Music Rights Organisation (SAMRO) scholarship in 1964, he enrolled as a student in the Royal College of Music in the United Kingdom where he studied piano, composition, orchestration, and conducting. Klatzow’s composition teacher was Bernard Stevens, and he took orchestration lessons with Gordon Jacob.
He also studied in Italy and France (with Nadia Boulanger).
He was awarded a DMus for published work in Composition in 1999.
Career
He left Europe in 1967 to lecture in Piano, Harmony and Composition at the Rhodesian College of Music, Salisbury (now Harare, Zimbabwe). From 1967–1968 he also conducted the Salisbury Municipal Orchestra, before moving back to South Africa in 1969–1973 to become a music producer for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). He began teaching at the University of Cape Town in 1973. In 1979 he became Senior Lecturer in Music and in 1986 he was elected Fellow of UCT. He was appointed Director of the South African College of Music in 2007.
Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance
As composer
He composed the music for:
- the short opera, Words from a Broken String, to a libretto by Michael Williams (2010).
- Tintinyane, with text based on Corlia Fourie's Die meisie wat soos ’n bottervoël sing.
- ballets: Hamlet; Veronica Paeper's ballet Drie Diere ("Three Animals")
As director
1983: The Beggar's Opera (co-dircetro with Mavis Taylor for UCT Opera School and UCT Drama Department)
Awards
While in England he was the recipient of numerous awards, scholarships and prizes. In 1965 he was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Prize for Commonwealth composers, the Ascherberg, Hopwood and Crewe Prize, and the Octavia (RCM) travelling scholarship for his Variations for orchestra.
He has been the recipient of several international compositional prizes including second prize in the Casals Centenary Competition (Barcelona) for The Temptation of St Anthony for cello and orchestra (1977), first prize at the English Stroud Festival International Competition for Night Magic II (1978), and first prize at the International Guitar Festival in Toronto (1978) for Contours and Transformations.
In South Africa he was awarded the Nederburg Prize for his full-length ballet on Hamlet, the Molteno Gold Medal from the Cape Tercentenary Foundation for ‘lifetime services to music,’90 and the prestigious Helgaard-Steyn prize (R45,000) for From the Poets (a suite for piano commissioned by SAMRO for the 1994 UNISA Transnet International Piano Competition), which was premièred by Anton Nel.
Sources
Denis-Constant Martin. 2013. Sounding the Cape Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa. African Minds.
Gerhardus Stephanus Scheepers. 2019. 'The Life and Work of Roelof Temmingh (1946-2012): A conductor's guide to selected works'. Unpublished Doctoral thesis (Doctor of Musical Arts). University of Washington.
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