Peta Stewart
One of South Africa’s favourite pianists, Petronel Malan, is back in the city to play the mighty Emperor Concerto with the Cape Town Philharmonic April 13. She will also play for the Cape Town Concert Series April 22.
Petronel may have lived in America these last 25 years, but she is a South African at heart, visiting her family secretly at least twice a year – and wearing South African designers like Henja Schaap, Hip Hop clothing, or Chris Levin gowns on her American engagements. She has 75 or 80 gowns, in a designated room in her Dallas home and is bringing several of them for her nationwide tour of a dozen or so engagements.
In another 100 years people will still be listening to Mozart and Beethoven
It is American engagements that keep her pretty busy for the rest of the year … concertos, recitals, chamber music and festivals at which she not only performs but teaches master classes. She also does plenty of guest teaching at universities in Texas, the countryside around which she compares to “the old Transvaal,” passing one cattle farm after another.
Music is Petronel’s life. “I am so privileged to play this amazing music. It’s timeless and in another 100 years people will still be listening to Mozart and Beethoven. They won’t be listening to the pop music of today.” She says she is quite selfish about it, loving what she is doing for its own sake and if people get pleasure from her playing well that’s just a bonus! Of course it’s not a bonus – she’s been called “dizzying” and “formidable” and she does confess to loving the idea of exposing people to such beauty.
There’s another side to Petronel, and that’s history.
She has made five CDs, the fifth one, Transfigured Brahms, came out about a year ago. She will perform some of that for Concert Series and hopefully as an encore for the CPO!
“I do my own research for my CDs; sometimes it takes me a year just to find the right repertoire. I like discovering lost and unrecorded repertoire. For instance, I was invited into the dusty basement of an acquaintance in Paris, and found the Reger variations on a theme of Mozart, transcribed for solo piano and recorded it for my Mozart CD. A score of a work by Joachim Raff was in a small library in the United Kingdom and a friend copied and faxed it to me. It was recorded on my Beethoven CD. It’s a like a scavenger hunt! I often visit the Library of Congress when I am in Washington D.C., but with the internet it is easier to find these scores now.”
Petronel also present lectures for various music organizations, talking about historic piano topics like the lineage of piano teachers, a medical look at why the great composers died (from their correspondence,) forgotten female pianists after Clara Schumann (like Annette Essipova or Ilona Eibenschütz), or the legacy of Theodore Leschetizky.
A student of Adolph Hallis, Joseph Stanford and Albie van Schalkwyk, she went to Texas to study with teachers that included Steven De Groote and graduated from the University of North Texas with a DMA degree. Winning five gold medals in different international competitions in 2000 made her realize that America would be her second home.
Petronel Malan plays the Beethoven Concerto no 5 (Emperor) with the Cape Town Philharmonic on Thursday, April 13, at the Cape Town City Hall. Daniel Boico conducts the CPO in a Bach/Stokowski Toccata and Fugue and the First Symphony by Mahler, Titan.
She will also play works by Mozart, Heller , Schütt, Rachmaninov and Dohnányi for the Cape Town Concert Series on Saturday, April 22.
Who: Petronel Malan
When: Thurs, April 13, Cape Town City Hall
Tickets: http://online.computicket.com/web/event/autumn_symphony_season_concert
_3/1107199328/0/7743288
CT Series: Saturday, April 22, 2017 Tickets: http://online.computicket.com/web/event/petronel_malan_piano_recital/1100394125/0/76915502
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