MUSIC REVIEW: Public Concerts as part of the 22nd International Piano Summer School at Chetham's School Of Music, Manchester. - Week 2 #1

Chetham's School Of Music in Manchester have been running International Piano Summer Schools for the past 22 years, and this year they have opened many of the concerts given by the working professionals tutoring the courses up to the public. What a lovely idea; during a month of when traditionally, the theatre and music worlds estivate for the month, music-lovers are now given the opportunity of seeing world-class artistes performing short concerts at a world-class venue for a fraction of the cost of a standard concert.

The concerts today, Sunday 20th, were many and varied. The first, in the afternoon, was a concert given by three current Chetham's students, and they absolutely blew us all away! First to take the stage was 12  year-old Julian Zhu, who played 2 works by Chopin. [Polonaise in C# minor and Etude Op10 no4]. Zhu had, for someone so young, an incredible connection to the music, allowing the music to come alive and sing under his fingers, whilst being able to bring a lot of his own personality and emotion into the piece as well. This was simply a bravura performance! Rebekah Yinuo Tan was second, and handled the changing dynamics and bombast of her chosen piece - Liszt's Rhapsodie Espagnole - with accustomed ease. At 17 years' old her knowledge and understanding of the work was incredible, and skilfully took us through all the different emotions and styles that Liszt crammed into this work. The third and final pianist this afternoon was a young man whom I have seen performing for quite a few years now, and had the privilege and pleasure of watching this uber-talented individual grow as he gets older and more experienced. At just 17 years' old, Edward Harris Brown is a name to watch out for, he is certain to make it big in whatever he turns his hand to... jazz, freestyle, composition, classical... such is his versatility  This afternoon he presented a long experimental mash-up; starting with Scarlatti's Sonata in A, and then extemporising a bridge between that and his own composition 'Wide Asleep', and again another impro bridge to his final piece, Fats Waller's 'Aint Misbehavin''.The Scarlatti was light, swift and elegant; his own composition was surprisingly mature and lyrical, owing a huge debt to the likes of Debussy and the Impressionist Movement, whilst the jazz was simply joyous and full of jazzmatazz. Fabulous!

At 7pm this evening, we welcomed pianist and Chetham's Head of Keyboard, Murray McLachlan to the stage for him to play Chopin. McLachlan started with a curio, a piece that he had himself  transcribed and reworked as a piece for the left hand alone, called 'Homage A Godowsky', this was essentially Chopin's Nocturne no 2 (opus9). He then played all four of Chopin's Ballades together consecutively, which, apart from CD recordings I have never heard done before and listening to them performed live one after the other was a most interesting experience. There is no doubt at all that McLachlan understood these pieces and played them with both elan and skill. There was emotion, there was passion, and yet he never allowed these to spill over into the playing, keeping the melodies light and flowing, making the music sing.  McLachlan finished his concert with another 'homage'. This time it was a composition by Ronald Stevenson titled, 'Fugue On A Fragment of Chopin'. Written in 1949, this piece was very much in the late Romantic, early 20th century style, but had a couple of modern surprises in there too. A tuneful and enjoyable piece, quite dramatic in places. For his encore, we heard two short pieces, transcriptions of Scottish folk songs. 

Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 20.8.23