Cape Town is lucky to have Lise de la Salle (pictured left) performing the monumental 3rd Piano Concerto by Rachmaninoff. Lucky because Lise is one of the most sought-after, powerfully poetic pianists working in Europe, America and Asia today, and lucky because she was able to fit these few days into her schedule. She will be the artist with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra on Thursday, 10 September 2026, in the Spring Symphonies season with Daniel Raiskin on the podium, reports PETA STEWART:
Catching up with Lise de la Salle was not easy – but we managed the day before school was beginning in Paris (school starts when you are three) and she and her four-year-old daughter were spending the day together, baking a chocolate cake.
For Lise, though, it is all in a day’s work, albeit a challenging day!
“I am so lucky on many levels. I have a very supportive husband who loves music, works remotely and takes over with help from my mother when I am travelling, and a very supportive agency whose principals are my friends and understand that I have had to change my schedule. Two and four week concert tours are not possible at the moment. I am also in the fortunate position of being able to choose my engagements. Cape Town was perfect because I will only be there for a few days, so I won’t miss my daughter or she me for too long. It is a new way of living and working. But I will come back with my family to take in the sights!”
For Lise, life is such a joy.
“There’s a different level of energy now. Becoming a mother actually enhanced my work – I think I feel everything much more intensely which means I bring a lot more to the music. I think my focus has improved. Musicians are like athletes – they are prone to injury and in the last year I have had to adapt my way of playing because of nerve and muscle compression in my right hand. It was a bit freaky when the electrical information didn’t reach my fingers. Constant physiotherapy had made it possible to continue with practising but injuries make you think. This made me change my technique, and now I think I have a better understanding of what I do and I think I play in an even more direct way. One thing I learnt is that you need to work with your body, not tell it what to do!”
Picking out a highlight in her life wasn’t easy but pinpointing a dream was – to play with the Berlin Philharmonic. Having performed with some of the world’s greatest orchestras from the Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Philharmonia to the Munich Philharmonic and Vienna Symphony, that’s not an impossible dream!
In love with music
“I am very much in love with music, and I know I am privileged to be doing what I love and treasure. It can easily become something you take for granted. I know I am lucky to get repeat engagements. In my life there are no guarantees and there are bills to be paid! I am at a strange stage of my life – when you win competitions as a youngster everyone wants you. When you are older you may become a legend, and have an aura. When you are in the middle, neither young nor a legend, it’s not that simple, but I am lucky that I can choose and adapt my schedule to suit me and have the never-ending joy which has lasted me 20 years and won’t fade.”
Lise, by the way, is only 38!
She started to play the piano at four and although her parents were not musicians there was always a love of music, and her grandmother taught piano.
“I started playing for fun, and after several spontaneous sessions my mother saw there was something there,” she laughs.
She gave her first concert at the age of nine and went on to forge a distinctive career which includes concerts, outreach concerts, master classes, recitals, a little teaching and recordings. Her discography is extensive and includes critically acclaimed recordings. A small selection will be on sale through Peter Kramer at the concert and dress rehearsal.
Communication like breathing together
Lise is honest, open and direct and “I don’t play games or use people to move up the ladder. I want to work with musicians with whom I have immediate rapport. It’s rare that there is love at first sight or an intellectual connection that strikes you both, but when it happens it is incredible. This communication is like breathing together and the audience sees this. “
Proof of this is in these words of a critic in the Washington Post who wrote: “For much of the concert, the audience had to remember to breathe … the exhilaration didn’t let up for a second until her hands came off the keyboard.”
What: Lise de la Salle, piano, with the CPO
Where and when: Cape Town City Hall on Thursday 10 September 2026
Concert tickets: Artscape Dial-A-Seat 021 421 7695 and Webtickets
More information: The other work on the programme is Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15 in A Major, Op. 141. The dress rehearsal at 11am is open to the public; there will be a pre-concert talk at 6.45pm. If you are unable to be at the concert, you can listen to the live broadcast on FMR 101.3.
WS
