KEY POINTS:
This weekend sees the final instalment of Chamber Music New Zealand's Encompass series, with the ebullient young musicians and dancers of Buskaid giving us the masters of the classical repertoire alongside the dances and songs of their own Soweto.
Rosemary Nalden is the galvanising force behind it all.
A viola player who left New Zealand in 1968 to study in Britain and eventually took up a professional career as an orchestral musician, Nalden has spent well over a decade with her Buskaid project, bringing music to under-privileged township youngsters who otherwise might never have had the chance.
She has harrowing tales of the early days, teaching violin in a run-down community hall beside a squatters' camp which she describes as "wild".
"The individuals are amazing survivors," she says, "but it is very grim and unhealthy, with a lot of crime." She talks of one of Buskaid's stars, group leader Samson Diamond who, as a 10-year-old, would walk through the camp to his lessons, carrying his violin.
"Now that's determination and passion," she emphasises, adding with a note of pride, "now he is playing with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and the Halle Orchestra."
Since they were last in New Zealand in 2003, the youngsters have performed around the world, including a much-publicised appearance at the BBC Proms this year with John Eliot Gardiner and his English Baroque Soloists playing and dancing Rameau, which will be a feature of their Auckland concerts.
Bartok's Roumanian Dances will also be presented with choreography and Nalden, who still has to experience the dancing, has been listening to the Bartok with new ears. "After all, they are dances and I think they will lend themselves well to an African slant."
Cultural balance is an issue, although Nalden stresses that her teaching is very specific.
"It's rooted in my own playing as an early music specialist.
"But I do have to allow them to express their own way of playing Western music and the way they do it is so beguiling and deeply felt."
Although the programme will include some infectious Soweto music, there is also Grieg, Mozart, Kreisler and Saint-Saens.
While Mozart might demand absolute perfection and transparency, Nalden is keen her charges have freedom when they play it.
"I asked some of them how they felt when they played Mozart. They said they felt on edge. But you've got to somehow be able to relax into the music and still have that huge control. If you are playing Grieg and someone steps slightly out of line, it's more blurred and it's not such a train smash." Travelling around the world with a band of adolescents has its own non-musical challenges; chaperoning and cheering must be vigilant.
"If they are tired, and they get tired very easily, you have to try and lift their spirits so on stage they are positive and the energy is there. That's what audiences lap up."
It is early morning in Johannesburg when I talk with Nalden and life is still not easy in South Africa.
"Crime levels are reaching an all-time high and it's quite a scary place," she explains. "There was a bang this morning and the dogs went mad - the first thought was that someone was being shot.
"The perpetrators of these crimes tend to be disaffected black youth and, if more projects like Buskaid could be provided, it must be for the good.
"I always remember an elderly lady who told me how she came to all our concerts and always sat there watching the players and thinking, 'Instead of a gun in their right hand, they have a bow'."
