Seatavern

Gerhard Joubert returns to the Johnman Cottage! This programme will include a wide variety of music written for the keyboard/piano over the past few centuries, with a special emphasis on French music - there will be Rameau, Fauré, Franck, Debussy, Ravel and Messiaen, arguably the 6 most well-known French composers (apologies to Satie and Saint-Saëns fans). Amongst this group of composers, the most substantial works will be Fauré’s early Ballade, Op. 19, a rarely performed masterpiece, and an arrangement of one of the last compositions Franck wrote, the 2nd of his three Chorals for organ. This will be heard in a remarkable arrangement for the piano by Blanche Selva (1884-1942), who was a great French pianist. In addition to the French part of the programme, there will also be some Bach, Beethoven and Medtner.

Gerhard Joubert is a laureate of many national music competitions, including first prizes in the Pieter Kooij Competition (2018), Atterbury National Piano Competition (2021) and the Johann Vos Open Category (2022). The Laura Searle Prize for Piano Concerto Playing has been awarded to him twice (2021 and 2023). In 2021 he received the first prize at the National Youth Music Competition after performing Liszt’s first piano concerto with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO) under the baton of Brandon Phillips in the final round. In 2023 Gerhard received the first prize and a special award for the best performance of a classical sonata at the 7th Unisa National Piano Competition. In 2021 he recorded the Schumann Piano Concerto with Bernhard Gueller conducting the CPO. The prestigious Human Naudé Music Scholarship was awarded to him in 2023.

Gerhard frequently collaborates with singers and instrumentalists, receiving the first prize and other special awards with singer Janice van Rooy at the inaugural Neues Lied Competition for Art Song Duos held in 2022 and performing Brahms’ Piano Quintet in the final round of the Schock Foundation Prize for Chamber Music of 2024. Recent concerts include two performances of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto at the Maynardville Open-Air Festival 2025, three performances of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto in collaboration with Cape Ballet Africa and the CPO, as well as a performance of the complete Nocturnes for piano by Gabriel Fauré in May 2025 as a celebration of the composer’s 180th birthday.

In 2024 Gerhard completed his Honours degree under the tutelage of Prof. François du Toit at the South African College of Music, having studied with him since 2017. Gerhard has been accepted at the Basel Hochschule für Musik in Switzerland to pursue a Masters in Performance beginning in September 2025. He has received masterclasses from pianists Albie van Schalkwyk, Esthea Kruger, Jan Hugo, Kate Liu, Emanuil Ivanov, Antonio Pompa-Baldi, Florian Uhlig, Henri Sigfridsson, Bernd Goetzke and Jan Jiracek von Arnim amongst others.