Lize Briel (24), a student at the Conservatoire of Music at Stellenbosch University (SU), made history by becoming the first woman to win the Alexander SA Composers’ Competition.
Briel’s piece, “Echoes: A Minimalist Dialogue”, was judged the winner at a concert in the Hugo Lambrechts’ Music Centre in Parow on Saturday (9 March). During the concert, the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchesta (CPO) was under the direction of Jeremy Silver.
Briel, a student of Antoni Schonken and Arthur Feder, won R50 000, an all-expenses paid trip to Germany to have her winning composition performed with the Junge Nord-deutsche Philharmonie (JNP) in April, and the title of composer-in-residence with the CPO for a year.
The runners up were Owen Dalton (“Century Machines”) and Kerwin Petrus (“Suite for Orchestra”).
Non-voting chairperson of the panel Hendrik Hofmeyr noted that the judges did not have an easy task to choose between these pieces and the other two in the finalists, “Colour Sketches” by Chesney Palmer and“unravelling” by Micaela Loubser.
The competition attracted more than 30 entries from all over the country and is a sign that classical music is alive and well in South Africa, explained CPO CEO Louis Heyneman.
“All contestants wrote pieces of up to 15 minutes for core orchestra with the use of African instruments as an option. Two used the uhadi (Briel used four), and several used instruments like the marimba and African drums to show that there is place for a synthesis of Africa and the West in modern classical music,” he revealed.
