Cara Hesse & Laura Pauna

Piano Duo

SOUTH AFRICA

2006 IBLA Grand Prize Piano Duo Winners Cara Hesse and Laura Pauna have just returned from the IBLA FOUNDATION Winners Presentation Concert Tour.

It included their New York Carnegie Weill Hall Debut in addition to performances at New York University, Radford University and University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

They were received by great critical acclaim.

Please visit the PRESS link in www.ibla.org to access the reviews of their brilliant performances!  

"Beethoven would have been impressed." (Wiesbadener Tagblatt: February 2007)

Beeld calls them: Twin musical personalities of note.(September 2006)

"The virtuosity... was nothing other than formidable." (Die Burger: August 2005)

Laura Pauna and Cara Hesse have been playing together for over 7 years. Cara and Laura are the winners of IBLA Grand Prize 2006, the 3rd prize at the "Valentino Bucchi" two piano competition in Rome (2006), and the Sarah Lahat prize for duo piano (Tel-Hai International Piano Master Classes 2005). They are also the winners of the ATKV-Musiq chamber music competition in South Africa from 2001- 2004.

This duo has recently performed in countries like Germany, South Africa, Poland, Italy, Israel and the USA, in such prestigious venues, as the Jerusalem Theater, Carnegie Hall (NY) and the Z.K. Mathews Hall in Pretoria. They have also performed as soloists with all the major orchestras of South Africa from 1993- 2004. They will soon appear again, with The Cape Town Philharmonic, in February 2008.

They are the first piano duo team from South Africa that ever obtained a Bachelor of Music degree and a Performance Licentiate from the University of Cape Town (UCT), and The University of South Africa (UNISA), respectively. Hesse and Pauna have received several awards and prizes from UCT, such as the Leonard Hall memorial prize (2003), the A. Persuer bursary (2003) and the first prize at the Eric Chisholm Centenary competition (2004).

Cara Hesse & Laura Pauna are currently studying in Hanover, at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater, with Einar Steen-Nokleberg, and piano duo, Sivan Silver and Gil Garburg.