Sublime piano: Young Pianist of the North competition; Nils Frahm

A piano acquaintance alerted me to the sixth Young Pianist of the North competition which finished on Saturday. Unable to get to any of the competition rounds, I did make the masterclass in Newcastle on Saturday 30th November featuring pianists from the main category with teaching from Pascal Nemirovski, Bernd Gretzke and Françoise Thinat.

Each teacher in turn provided feedback to the young competitors, who played repertoire including sonata movements by Beethoven and Mozart, interspersed with some Chopin. It was interesting to see how the young pianists operated under pressure - those who could successful deconstruct and reinterpret based on teacher suggestions, and those who couldn't!

I didn't purchase a programme so sadly don't have detailed notes of the pieces performed. The standout performer - one to watch, indeed - for me was 17 year old Elizaveta Klyuchereva, who had Pascal Nemirovski in beaming smiles!

The broad themes from comments and suggestions by all 3 teachers were: first figure out what you want to hear (even before sitting at the piano) and what you want to say (using full range of emotions); think about phrasing; listen to your playing - especially for quality of sound/intonation and to hear all the voices/parts of the piece; make sure (especially for Chopin) that the piece is always musical and never brutal.

A little light relief after the end of the masterclass ended up in Reflex, where I found Nils Frahm's new album, Spaces, which is a record comprising live recordings. At first listen I was mesmerised - an absolutely fantastic album.

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