1 March: Alasdair Beatson at Wigmore Hall
I had a wonderful evening yesterday. Society members John, Les and Sara accompanied me to Wigmore Hall to listen to pianist Alasdair Beatson and, he was sensational! You will remember Alasdair as the accompanist to Tom Gould in our first recital this season last September.
His programme, full of technically demanding pieces, had so much to look forward to and included several of my favourites! Alasdair started with Mendelssohn’s Sonata in E. He introduced this Sonata to me last November when he played at Bishopsgate Institute. Ever since, I’ve been a fan of this beautiful Sonata.
4 March: Razumovsky Academy at Wigmore Hall
Back to Wigmore Hall again, this time to attend a concert by the Razumovsky Academy’s exceptionally gifted young musicians. They were truly impressive!
Joel Sandelson, a 15 year-old cellist, was astounding. He performed the World Premiere of Lowell Liebermann’s Sonata No.4 Op 108. I am no expert on the cello, but was just startled by what he could do with this instrument. His capability to produce deep and matured sounds and his capacity to interpret and manipulate such complicated music was just amazing. He played another piece – the fast, jolly and amusing Spinning Song by Popper. It looked technically mighty difficult to me; my goodness, his left thumb remained on one string while other fingers moved extremely quickly onto another string, and the bow moved over these two strings to make lovely sounds. I have not seen anything like this before and it was totally impressive. I can only praise his talent and the confidence that goes with it.
7 March: Alexander Romanovsky at Wigmore Hall
It started as a disastrous evening; for a 7:30pm concert I left Woking with my in-laws slightly after 5:30pm, thinking there would be plenty of time to arrive early and relax. What we didn’t predict was the horrendous traffic - it was just solid from Putney through Chelsea, and we were unable to move for a long time. We just sat in the car helplessly – there was nothing we could do.
John and I had talked about going to this concert, but he decided not to come in the end as we left it too late to buy good seats. I, however, could not resist the temptation, knowing the programme included Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes and Rachmaninov’s Etudes-Tableaux; a dream-come-true for me!
16 March: Yundi the Chopin player at Royal Festival Hall
Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise, Sonata No 2 “Funeral March” and Polonaise in A flat “Heroique”! How could I not get excited??? And even more so if Yundi was playing them!
These days, there are so many talented and gifted musicians from my part of world (and his), the Far East. I used to think that there was a huge invisible hurdle these Far Eastern musicians couldn’t overcome. In order to understand and interpret Chopin’s compositions, I simply thought that you needed to belong to and have grown up in the same part of world as him, with a deeper understanding of the bitter history, people and religion, and a sense of belonging. I believed that this is something people grow up with, not something you can acquire later on in life. Until, one day several years ago, I heard Yundi playing Chopin.
Read more: 16 March: Yundi the Chopin player at Royal Festival Hall
