Mark Nixon, well-known pianist and a seasoned performer from Cape Town that resides in London, is currently on his seventh concert tour of South Africa in the past decade.
Of his 12 scheduled concerts in the country this season, Nixon performed in Windhoek where he also gave masterclasses to talented students, Mossel Bay, George, Paarl at the Nederburg Wine Estate, and he was the guest artist of the Helderberg Village Music Society in Somerset West. On 12 August Nixon performed at Klein Karoo Klassique in one of the very last concerts before the classical music festival drew to a close. The details of further concert engagements are listed lower down.
Nixon is a graduate of the University of Cape Town, the Amsterdam Conservatory and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. His teachers have included Laura Searle, Lamar Crowson, Håkon Austbø and Graham Johnson. He was also the Anthony Saltmarsh Junior Fellow at the Royal College of Music, London.
His concert programme includes music from his recent CD, merely titled “Mark Nixon”. The programme begins with four dramatic and stirring song transcriptions by Franz Liszt: Widmung (Schumann), Auf Flügeln des Gesanges (Mendelssohn), and Isoldens Liebestod (Wagner); followed by Johannes Brahms’ emotional Six Piano Pieces, op 118. The remainder of the concert celebrates the 150th anniversary of Claude Debussy with the colourful suite Estampes and three piano pieces: Masques, D’un cahier desquisses and the virtuosic L’isle Joyeuse.
His CD recording that appeared last month, among others furthermore includes Aufenthalt by Schubert, transcribed by Liszt, and under the Debussy selection, Two Arabesques.
He has received many prestigious awards, including first prizes in the Adolph Hallis and Nederburg-UNISA National Piano Competitions. In 1997 he was awarded the SAMRO Overseas Scholarship and the UNISA PJ Lemmer Overseas Scholarship. In 2000, 2001 and 2008 he was selected as a Young Concert Artist of the National Federation of Music Societies in the United Kingdom (now known as ‘Making Music’).
His engagements have included many concerts in Holland, France, United Kingdom and South Africa. He regularly performs as a soloist, is part of the King’s Piano Trio and he is also a founding member of London Song Circle. He is currently Head of Keyboard at King’s College School, Wimbledon in London.
In 2010 he released a CD entitled ‘Songs’ with the soprano Erica Eloff to much acclaim. The recording includes works by Grieg, Wolf, Rachmaninov, Pieter de Villiers and the world premiere recording of James Wilding’s Slaap klein beminde. This is a gripping poem of the sixties by Breyten Breytenbach, set to music for soprano and piano trio by Wilding.
Copies of his new Brahms, Liszt and Debussy CD will be on sale at the concerts and his website, www.marknixonpianist.com, where interested readers can have a listen to various recordings of his music, as well as live recordings at concerts. The CDs will sell at R150 each at the concerts. It will also be stocked in good music stores countrywide.
The rest of his concert tour schedule that ends at the end of August is as follows:
- Friday 17th at 19:30 – Pietermaritzburg – Music Revival
- Monday 20th at 19:30 – Beethoven Hall at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, where he will give masterclasses on
- Wednesday 22th at 19:30 – Humansdorp in the NG Kerk Moedergemeente
- Thursday 23rd at 19:30 - Port Elizabeth Music Society at the Nelson Mandela Memorial University
- Friday 24th at 20:00 - St Andrews, Cape Town
- Sun 26th at 15:00 – Brooklyn Theatre, Pretoria
Enquiries: 012 348 8298