Erin Hall, Rondebosch, Cape Town — October 2026
In July 2024, this duo awed audiences with their performance of a selection of music from Beethoven and Schubert. Presented informally in the intimate Erin Hall in Rondebosch, they are reprising the performance with a few adjustments.
Barend van der Westhuizen (baritone) and Chris Cameron-Dow (piano) return for Time with the Viennese Masters, a concert built around two composers who changed what music could say about being human. Beethoven and Schubert lived in the same city and the same era, and both understood that a song could hold as much drama as a symphony. Hearing that in a room this size, with the performers a few metres away, is a different experience from hearing it on a recording.
The 2024 programme opened with Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte, widely regarded as the first significant song cycle in Western classical music. It moved through the Pathétique sonata and a Liszt transcription of Schubert’s Ständchen, then into Schubert’s songs, including the breathless, frightening Erlkönig. This reprise stays close to that original and has been refined since.
Listen to the radio interview with Mike Mills on FMR Fine Music Radio, from 09 October 2026, below.
You don’t need to know the repertoire to enjoy it. If you love singing, piano, or simply being in a room where people are making something live, this is for you. If you were there in 2024, expect the same intimacy with a few things sharpened.
Barend van der Westhuizen holds MMus and BMusHons degrees cum laude from Stellenbosch University and has performed with the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gauteng Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Tinta Barocca Orchestra, among others.
Chris Cameron-Dow is a pianist, musical director, and composer based in Cape Town, most recently assistant musical director for Legally Blonde — the Musical at the Artscape Theatre.
