Pittsburgh played host last week to a remarkable chorus from South Africa. Apart from being first-class entertainers, the Drakensberg Boys' Choir, 40 or so singers between ages 9 and 15, were also a cross-section of modern, post-apartheid South Africa.

The largest group in the choir was white, but there were also so-called Coloreds, one Indian and Africans from a number of tribes in South Africa. The school is located in the Drakensberg mountains of the KwaZulu-Natal province. Its academic standards are high; the level of musicianship of the choir members is very high. They sang entirely without sheet music.

The second part of the Drakensberg choir's program, organized and choreographed by the boys themselves, was rendered entirely in African languages. The roles of performers in particular songs were not differentiated on the basis of ethnic group. Whites drummed, stomped out the dances of African miners and sang in the Sotho, Zulu and Xhosa tongues. Africans sang from the works of classical French composer Maurice Ravel. A South African white Afrikaner song from the Anglo-Boer war, "My Sarie Marais," is in the choir's repertory although they did not perform it Thursday.

The concert was a sellout in the Allegheny Center Alliance Church on the North Side. Reinforced by the parents and friends of the Pittsburgh Children's Festival Chorus, the Troubadours, Bel Canto Singers and the Talisman Choir, who sang the middle set of the concert, the crowd gave the "Drakies" an ecstatic reception. The boys were lodged with Pittsburgh families, another manifestation of the city's hospitality at its best.

The Drakensberg group was made welcome. They richly deserved the reception they received, both as a chorus and as a demonstration of what modern South Africa is producing.