Cape Town's premiere orchestra, the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO), will for the first time perform at the Stellenbosch International Piano Symposium.
The orchestra will accompany the finalists of the prestigious Hennie Joubert Piano Competition, which runs from 14 to 18 March and forms part of the biannual symposium.
Ten finalists from across the country have been chosen as semi-finalists who will compete for the five finalist positions. The winner will receive R22 000 in prize money, as well as the Hennie Joubert Trophy and a gold medal.
The second prize is R15 000 and a silver medal, while the third prize is R10 000 and a bronze medal. Category prizes will also be presented.
The five finalists will have the opportunity to play one movement from a piano concerto with the CPO, which will be conducted by maestro Corvin Matei. The finalists' concert is on Friday, 18 March at 20:00 in the Endler Hall of Stellenbosch University's Konservatorium.
The Piano Symposium started in all earnest on Wednesday, 16 March. Over the next five days (until Sunday, 20 March) piano students from across the country will receive master classes and lectures from some of the best piano pedagogues in South Africa.
Three internationally acclaimed pianists – the Russian-Israeli Ilya Friedberg, and the Americans Antonio Pompa-Baldi and Nicholas Phillips – will join the South Africans on the symposium faculty.
For music lovers there is a feast of concerts to attend – both lunch-time and evening performances.
The faculty staff members will all be on stage on 17 March in a concert with piano works such as Chopin's Nocturne in E major Op.62 No.2, Debussy's "Ondine", Prokofiev's Sonata No.7 Op.83, as well as a prelude by the contemporary Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin (born 1937).
A solo recital by Pompa-Baldi can be heard on 19 March, when he will play the Holberg Suite and Sonata Op.7 by Grieg, as well as Six Etudes Op.23 by Anton Rubinstein.
The Symposium concert series ends on 20 March with the "Piano Extravaganza" – with ten pianos on stage! In this concert, the faculty members will perform works for two, three, four and six pianos. The evening will end with a rendition of Rossini's William Tell Overture performed on ten pianos.
Tickets for the concerts are for sale at Computicket. Festival passes, participant and observer entries, as well as day passes may be obtained from Fiona Grayer at the Department of Music on ( 021 808 2358. For a detailed programme of the symposium, visit www.pianosymposium.co.za.
