theartsdesk from Colombo: A Pianist of the World

A Sri Lankan pianist uses linguistics to create music

Since winning the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka Concerto Competition at the tender (and record-setting) age of 16, Tanya Ekanayaka has become one of Sri Lanka’s pre-eminent concert pianists. Last month she was the first from her country ever to appear in the long-running Pianists of the World series at St Martin-in-the-Fields, with a programme featuring Bach, Beethoven, Ravel and her own improvised composition, Adahas: of Wings of Roots.

Sydney Symphony, Ashkenazy, Grimaud, Royal Albert Hall

Interesting disappointments are more compelling than uninteresting ones

To be interestingly disappointed isn’t bad - it’s being uninterestingly disappointed that is. This was an intriguing Prom with a full house, possibly because of Hélène Grimaud’s presence in the Ravel piano concerto, as well as Vladimir Ashkenazy on the podium. Surely it wasn’t for Scriabin’s Third Symphony, unheard here for almost 80 years? Or perhaps Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier is so well beloved that even a dubious orchestral suite made from it lures the thousands?

Lugansky, Russian National Orchestra, Boreyko, Royal Albert Hall

Rachmaninov's Rhapsody lacks soul; Tchaikovsky's Suite exudes it

Russians can often get away with murder in concert. It's so ingrained within our Western psyche to believe that the Slav has culture, musicality, an innate aesthetic sensitivity pouring out of every toe that you could get a Russian to do the chicken dance and we'd all be ooh-ing and ah-ing about the passion of each wing flap, the brooding darkness of each wiggle, the searing, sarcastic quality of each clap. Not all Russians have a Russian soul.

Pianomania

Who'd have thought a documentary on piano-tuning could be this fascinating?

Nobody can remember seeing a film about a piano tuner before. Happily, Pianomania isn’t merely unique; it’s a riveting documentary into the bargain. It takes as its subject the micro-detailed and nit-pickingly demanding routine of Stefan Knüpfer, Master Tuner for that Rolls-Royce of the piano industry, Steinway & Sons. Among Knüpfer’s celebrated clients are such titans of the keyboard as Lang Lang, Alfred Brendel, Till Fellner and Julius Drake, all of whom appear in the film’s 93-minute span. The main driver of the narrative is the ongoing account of how Knüpfer helps Pierre-Laurent Aimard to record Bach’s Art of Fugue.

theartsdesk Q&A: Impresarios Victor and Lilian Hochhauser, Part 1

Close-up with the buccaneers who brought the Soviet greats to the UK

When the words "commercial" and "art" come together - as they do with the Bolshoi season currently at the Royal Opera House - odds are the glue between them is a three-word phrase "Victor Hochhauser presents". Victor and Lilian Hochhauser are the impresarios behind most Russian ballet seasons UK-wide, and they have a reputation for solid box-office commercial taste, which is easily dismissed as the safe option. But they are in their eighties now, and conservatism is forgivable.

Zacharias, BBC Philharmonic, Sinaisky, Royal Albert Hall

A transfigured night in the company of Schumann and the Waltz King

The Proms listings are full of concerts a bit like the one last night that seem to offer up, on paper, little of real burning interest: no big names, no star foreign orchestras, no intriguing rarities, no new works, nothing beyond one hard-working BBC orchestra and a few staple classics (a Strauss family waltz-medley and some Schumann) that could be rattled off by any professional orchestra blindfold. Be warned: these are the concerts that are most likely to transfigure your evening, stir your soul and leave you reeling.

Goerner, BBC Philharmonic, Sinaisky, Royal Albert Hall

A classy performance of Scriabin's lush Piano Concerto and a pathetic Pathétique

"Well, that's going straight onto my iPod!" declared my friend at the interval. Introduce anyone to Scriabin's lush Piano Concerto in F sharp minor - a real concert rarity - and the response is always the same: love at first sight. The tunes, the tenderness, the surging passion are all there in Rachmaninov-like abundance. And even if these qualities often come at the price of structural elegance, there is no denying the romantic potency of the work. I bet there was a surge of downloading activity last night after Nelson Goerner's classy performance at the Proms.

Ivana Gavrić, Wigmore Hall

Sarajevan-born pianist makes a stunning debut with Janácek, Bartók and Schubert

There are some recitals where you think only about the abstracted music - the harmonic arguments, the structural cleverness, the textural ingenuity - and there are others where you are forced to confront  the presence of a set of living, breathing, leering musical beasts.

Chopin Unwrapped, Martino Tirimo, Kings Place

The great Cypriot pianist ends his Chopin marathon in high encyclopedic style

So most of us blinked and missed Martha Argerich gliding into Kings Place's Argentine celebrations last week. Yet here I am writing again about this liveliest of venues' Chopin marathon, and like a would-be Prommer who joins the last night party without having been to the Albert Hall more than once in the season I'm culpable of marking the grand finale after experiencing only a slice of modest Cypriot pianist Martino Tirimo's 10 concerts devoted to our bicentenary boy. Never mind: both the encyclopedic recitals I did hear seemed to take us through a turbulent lifetime. That would be true just of the essence, the 24 Preludes which concluded last night's strange adventure. But there was much, much more to feel and think about.