RIVERSDALE is a busy agricultural service-orientated town. Nestling at the foot of the Sleeping Beauty Mountain Peak is a place of beauty and an indigenous flora paradise. It’s in this peaceful community that Megan-Geoffrey Prins was born 26 years ago. He’s the young pianist who is giving a recital at the Nederburg Debut Concert on 26 June at 5pm.
Born into a music loving family, Prins can’t remember a time when church choir singing and piano playing weren’t part of his life. “For that I must thank my mother Amelia. She taught me a love of music and was my piano teacher as far as my Grade V11 exams. Unlike most kids, I never fussed about practising three or four hours a day. Music brought me such joy, that at eight my parents organised lessons with Mario Nel in Stellenbosch, travelling the 283km (there and back) twice a month.”
Nothing impeded young Prins’s progress. In 2000 he won the Sanlam National Music Competition’s Most Promising young musician and the next year, aged 11, beat 60 competitors to win that same competition. “As with most of these competitions they take place over four rounds and we are expected to play several pieces from different genre. We have to cover something from the great masters to more contemporary pieces. So for that particular competition I chose a movement from a Beethoven Sonata, a movement from a Handel Suite, and pieces by John Joubert and Zoltan Kodaly.”
The year 2005 saw Prins move to study under Nina Schumann and after matriculating from Stellenbosch High, attended Stellenbosch University gaining his BMus in 2012 specialising in Piano Performance. Then it was off to Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) to study with Antonio Pompa-Baldi, gaining his Masters in Performance in 2015.
Having recently completed the first chapter of his theses in which he discusses the poetic and educational value of Sergei Lyapounov’s 12 Transcendental Etudes composed in response to Liszt’s 12 Transcendental Etudes, Prins has set his sights on graduating from CIM with his Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) in 2018.
In between earning degrees, and winning innumerable competitions, he is carving out a performers career for himself.
Regarded as a pianist of remarkable technical facility and musicality, Prins has given many recitals, performed with various chamber groups as well as played concerti with South Africa’s major orchestras. He’s been heard in Italy, France, USA and Mozambique. He also frequently collaborates with performers for the Stars in the Classics concert series in Cleveland, USA.
His programme for his debut with Nederburg comprises Haydn’s Sonata in C Minor, Hob XV1/20; Rachmaninov’s Variations on a Theme of Corelli Op 42; Oliver Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l’enfant-Jesus(No 11, Premiere communion de la Vierge) and Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Op 35 Books 1 & 11 by Brahms.
Asked why he chose those pieces, Prins talked about a few of the technical intricacies. Using the table as a piano, he gave a practical finger demonstration. He explained that in the Brahms as the left hand does octave jumps, the right trills with the 4th and 5th fingers while playing melody with the right thumb. And in the Rachmaninov the melody/theme is played in octaves while he is “being displaced” all over the keyboard.
However, he is very conscious that the physical part in piano playing and true artistry is only accomplished with intellectual understanding and study, and that takes years and years. Visiting Cape Town until August with more concerts on his itinerary, this unassuming young man is already making his mark.
l Book: 021 877 5123, concerts@distelco.za