Music festival features performances on a non-competitive note.

When the top prize at a musical competition is a medal, young classical musicians hope for note-perfect performances that will score with the judges.

There will probably be some sweating on the stage of the Norris Theatre for the Performing Arts this weekend, adrenaline being the lifeblood of performers. But it will flow from a passion to please and impress an audience with fine music--not to win a gold or silver disc.

“I just want to make music, and not be under the pressure of playing every note right,” said Rex Liu, a 15-year-old Rancho Palos Verdes violinist who’s already a veteran of those quests for perfection called competitions. “I don’t want to make a sporting event out of art.”

Making music with Liu will be 22 other musicians playing piano, violin, cello, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn. The performers, ages 8 to 24, will appear Saturday and Sunday in the Young Artists Peninsula Music Festival at the Norris. The Palos Verdes Ballet will dance as an added attraction.

“We want the audience to see what heights these young people reach,” said Erika Chary, a Vienna-born concert pianist and music teacher who lives in Rancho Palos Verdes and founded the non-competitive festival 12 years ago.

“When you’re in a competition, you get the first prize or you lose,” Chary said. “Here, everyone takes part and gets a rapport with the audience--and flowers, attention and publicity.”

Each of four concerts will feature different musicians. The four-concert weekend is free to the public--a deliberate bid for audiences, which ran up to 300 per concert at last year’s festival. “It’s free so all will come,” she said.

Buoyed by the memories of hundreds of young people who have been in past festivals, Chary says people are mistaken if they think it’s a weekend of “little kids playing.”

The talent of her own piano students and other young musicians she knew of prompted her to start the festival, which in earlier years was held in schools and church halls. “I began to feel that people should know about them,” Chary said. “There is some astounding playing from these people.”

A glance at biographies in the festival program shows that some of the musicians play with community or college orchestras, others have won competitions and toured Europe and Asia as soloists.

Guest artist this year is Martin Bujara, a 29-year-old German pianist who was in the 1984 festival and has since started a career as a soloist and piano teacher. He performs regularly with the Hanover Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Liu, who is playing in the festival for the first time, said it’s a special occasion for two reasons. It’s the first time he has performed in his own community--”I’ve lived here eight years”--and marks his public bow as a member of a chamber group, the Pro Arte Trio.

At 13, pianist Howard Kim of Palos Verdes Estates is a veteran of three other festivals. He was 7 the first time he played and remembers his anxiety: “They (the other players) were all bigger than me and played harder pieces. I heard clapping and saw people get flowers and I hoped I would.” As things turned out, he did and walked off the stage “quite happy.”

This year, most of the performers are from Southern California, although past festivals have attracted musicians from England, Germany and Japan.

And although the festival is not a competition, there are auditions in the spring in which a panel of judges selects performers based on their ability to play a “balanced program, please an audience and sound professional,” Chary said. Every year, up to 70 musicians are auditioned, either in person or through tapes that are sent by those from outside Southern California.

Chary said the festival is dependent on music-loving volunteers, as well as corporate and individual donations for the $10,000 it takes to run it.

Local families play host to visiting musicians during their stay for the festival. And the visitors don’t spend all their time rehearsing for the weekend of music. “We take them to Disneyland and give them a good time,” Chary said.

During the performances, they’ll return the compliment.

What: Young Artists Peninsula Music Festival.

Where: Norris Theatre for the Performing Arts, Crossfield Drive and Indian Peak Road, Rolling Hills Estates.

When: Saturday, 3 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 1 and 4 p.m.

Admission: Free.

Information: 377-8891.