photograph by Margrit Schmidt
Recent Reviews
Evening Standard, 29th April 2013 – Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert,
St John’s Smith Square
” . . . there was some fine piano playing . . .
an exquisite Schubert’s G flat Impromptu by Tessa Uys . . .”
Barry Millington
Forthcoming Concerts
City of London Recitals
Wednesday 15th May Schoeman / Uys Duo Recital at Rothschild, London EC4
Monday 3rd June Solo Recital St Lawrence Jewry EC 2 at 1 programme details here
Monday 10th June Solo Recital St Lawrence Jewry EC 2 at 1 programme details here
Monday 17th June Solo Recital St Lawrence Jewry EC 2 at 1 programme details here
Monday 24th June Schoeman / Uys Duo Recital St Lawrence Jewry at 1 pm EC2
Central London Recitals
Monday 23rd December Schoeman/Uys Duo St Martin in the Fields at 1pm
Outer London Recitals
Saturday 22nd June Schoeman / Uys Duo Recital St Michaels Highgate N6 6BJ
Friday 12th July Schoeman / Uys Duo Recital at St Barnabas, Ealing at 1 pm
Sunday 13th October Tessa performs with the Ubuntu Ensemble – Blackheath Concert Halls
August Summer Festival Recital Series at St Lawrence Jury
Wednesday 8th August Solo Recital at St Lawrence Jewry August Summer Festival EC2 programme details here
Out of Town Recitals
Thursday 9th May Tessa performs with the Ubuntu Ensemble Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
Saturday 25th May Schoeman/ Uys Duo perform The Brahms Requiem with the Roxburgh Singers, Melrose, Scotland
Thursday 25th July Tessa Uys Solo Recital at Blenheim Palace(by invitation only)
Sunday 22nd September Tessa performs with the Ubuntu Ensemble – Libertas, Devon
Broadcasts
Sunday 5th May Ben Schoeman and Tessa Uys Piano Duo play Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, transcribed for 4 hands by Xaver Scharwenka on KYKNET SA TV
Biography
Born in Cape Town into an exceptionally musical and theatrical family Tessa Uys is one of South Africa’s most distinguished concert pianists. She was first taught by her mother Helga Bassel, herself a noted concert performer who fled to South Africa to escape Nazi persecution. Her father, Hannes Uys, was a formidable champion of choral music in South Africa and founder/director of one of the country’s leading children’s choirs.
Tessa Uys gave her first public performance at the age of seven and made her concerto debut at 13 with the Cape Town Municipal Orchestra conducted by David Tidboald. At 16, whilst still at school,she won a Royals Schools Associated Board Scholarship and continued her studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London where she studied with Gordon Green. Here she won many prizes, and in her final year was awarded the top prize, the Macfarren Medal. Further studies in London with Maria Curcio and in Siena, Italy with Guido Agosti. Shortly after this, Tessa Uys won the Royal Overseas League competition. During the past three decades, Tessa Uys has established herself an impressive reputation, both as concert performer and as a broadcasting artiste, performing at many of the major concert venues throughout the world. She is also in demand as examiner,teacher and adjudicator.
Tessa Uys made the first broadcast recordings of the Godowsky transcriptions of 12 Schubert songs for both BBC Radio 3 and Radio Hilversum in Holland. She has given thirteen recitals at the Wigmore Hall, as well as at St John’s Smith Square, and Southbank. Her wide-ranging repertoire encompasses Scarlatti and Brahms, Chopin and De Falla, Rachmaninov and Leos Janacek. She has recorded Bach’s Goldberg Variations for BBC Radio 3, and subsequently toured this demandingly virtuoso work throughout the UK, Europe and South Africa. Her empathy for Schumann’s music has been compared to that of Cortot, and is characterised by that empathetic approach so closely associated with her eminent predecessor.
Tessa Uys has played under such distinguished conductors as Sir Neville Marriner, Walter Susskind and Louis Fremaux, Matthias Baemert and Nicholas Kraemer. She has also enjoyed the distinction of working with the film director John Schlesinger on his film ‘Madame Sousatzka’, starring Shirley MacLaine. In 1994 she was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. In the year 2000, to mark the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death, she recorded the Goldberg Variations released as a double CD for GSE Claremont records. Since her last recital at the Wigmore Hall Tessa Uys has performed in South Africa,
Germany and the United Kingdom.
In recent years, Tessa Uys arranged an emotive journey of a Bluethner grand piano.The piano belonged to her German-born mother,who took it from Berlin to Cape Town in the late 1930’s. Now the instrument has made it’s final voyage back to the land of it’s creation, where it occupies the pride of place at the Berlin Jewish Museum,completing an elegant parabola from Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa to new eras in both lands.