a review by Julia Meredith
Writing about young musicians is challenging. What they have achieved is already so remarkable – getting up on stage in front of scores of strangers, after years of practice, to do their best for the great composers – you don’t want to say anything which might discourage them. On the other…
by Julia Meredith
Ingenue or Ninja? (not really!)
With her pale oval face, simple red frock and neatly-tied raven’s wing hair, Lauren Zhang came onstage looking like an obedient child about to play for the end-of-term concert.
True, she carried no music, and had a purposeful calm that suggested a lack of ingenue nerves, but few could have…
by Julia Meredith
Anyone at St James this Saturday night would have been struck by two things. The buzz of anticipation beforehand, and then, when the St James Sinfonia took their seats, how young many of the players were. Of the 44 musicians, 31 were products of the Schools Music Service, the youngest all of 12…
‘Here is a poet of the keyboard’
The Guardian’s phrase, not mine, but entirely true of Wednesday night’s young pianist who seemed to be playing from another world, far away, breathing a rarer, finer air than we mortals in St James.
Pavel Kolesnikov lived in Siberia until he was 18. When he emerged on stage, he seemed…