Young pianist Leo Gevisser will perform the First Piano Concerto by Beethoven at the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra’s (CPO) annual Huberte Rupert Memorial Concert.
It will take place under the direction of the CPO’s principal guest conductor Bernhard Gueller at the Endler Concert Hall in Stellenbosch at 19:30 on Friday 1 December.
The CPO will also perform Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro Overture” and Mendelssohn’s “Notturno” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and his Symphony No 4 in A, “Italian”.
The 21-year-old Gevisser, whose partnership with Gueller and the CPO in June last year in the 4th Rachmaninov Piano Concerto was a roof-raising success, is studying under Jerome Lowenthal at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. He was awarded the first prize in the 2022 Miesczyslaw Munz Scholarship Competition and also invited to perform a solo recital as part of the Sparkill Recital Series in New York for the 2022 and 2023 seasons.
Before moving to Cleveland, Ohio at age 14 in 2017, Gevisser had won many prestigious national music competitions such as the Samro Hubert van der Spuy and Atterbury, and had studied under Nina Schumann and Luis Magalhaes. As part of the Young Artists’ Programme of the Cleveland Institute of Music, he won more prizes and was awarded the grand prize at the 2019 Baltimore International Piano Festival Competition, which included a recital invitation at Weill Recital Hall in New York in 2020.
He gave his concerto debut at the age of 11 and went on to perform with all the orchestras in South Africa, including the CPO, and undertook a national tour of SA with orchestras and in solo recital last year.
From the start of his musical career he has continuously been involved with the CPO’s Masidlale grassroots project, an outreach programme teaching all orchestral instruments to underprivileged children in the townships around Cape Town. He has donated a portion of his performance fees to Masidlale since age 13 years.
Tickets for this concert, which is sponsored by the Rupert Music Foundation, cost R150, including a glass of wine. Book your seat at Artscape Dial-A-Seat on 021 421 7695 and or online through Computicket.
