Janet Gogerty's Blog: Sandscript - Posts Tagged "piano"

Tonight was the live final of the BBC Young Musician Competition, with three British teenagers each playing a concerto of their choice with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, guest conductor Kirill Karabits. In the elegant setting of Usher Hall, Edinburgh, those of us at home were anticipating two and a half hours of fine entertainment and we were not disappointed.But the previous pre-recorded programmes, showing the five section finals, are also of great interest to those of us with a nosy disposition. In between the music we get a glimpse into the lives of the young musicians and hopefully into their homes. What are their parents like, have these children been hot housed, do their homes indicate vast wealth or are we seeing a child prodigy? The variety of backgrounds and personalities is fascinating. One set of parents cheerfully admitted to being tone deaf, while another large family sent five of their children on the train down to London every Saturday for music school. It is well documented that little Mozart was carted around Europe by his father, catching various serious illnesses, it is a wonder he survived to adulthood, but would he have been so famous if his parents had 'only wanted him to be happy'. Is there such a thing as genius? Any acclaimed musician almost certainly spends many hours practising; musical parents, talent, intelligence and the right shaped hands for the chosen instrument, are not enough without a love for the music and hard work.
In my novel 'Brief Encounters of the Third Kind' Emma Dexter and Paul Jones are the young golden couple of classical music. He comes from a family of musicians and has worked hard to become a renowned cello soloist. Emma's family are ordinary and her amazing talent confirms her mother's secret belief that her daughter is not human. Emma is a brilliant violinist, pianist and composer; at a concert she can play her own piano concerto in the first half and her violin concerto in the second. But truth is always stranger than fiction and on the radio I was amused to hear of a young female violinist who played a concerto in the first half of the concert; when the pianist was suddenly taken ill, the violinist volunteered to play Grieg's Piano Concerto after the interval - to rapturous applause.
In the final tonight were a percussionist, a recorder player and a pianist. How could the judges decide between three brilliant, but very different musicians? Two little known concertos were followed by pianist Martin James Bartlett playing one of the most popular (and difficult) pieces, Rachmaninov's Variations on a Theme by Paganini. The three players were all interviewed as they came off stage and all said they had had a wonderful time,confirming the validity of such events. The contest is held every two years; while the judges decided, the 2012 winner, Laura van der Heijden played beautifully Tchaikovsky's Roccoco Variations, confirming her talent.
And the winner? In 2012 when he was fifteen,he got through to the final, this time seventeen year old pianist Martin Bartlett won.

The 2014 BBC Proms Season is in full swing and if you can’t get to the Royal Albert Hall you may listen to every concert on BBC Radio Three. You can also watch some of the concerts on television and listen to people talking about The Proms.
I was watching ‘Proms Extra’ when they discussed the dynamic violinist Julia Fischer, who played Dvorak’s Violin Concerto in Prom 5 with the Tonhalle Orchestra. This young woman also plays the piano and has played at least one concert with concertos on both instruments. It was at this point that reality became stranger than fiction.
In my novel ‘Brief Encounters of the Third Kind’ Emma Dexter, almost the same age as Julia Fischer, plays both violin and piano at her concerts. From a very ordinary family, Emma’s talents astonish everyone and her mother fears this is proof she is not human. Perhaps Emma is more amazing than most of the world class musicians we admire; she is also a composer and in the early years of the Twenty First Century her music is acknowledged to be among the great works. I expect many talented soloists would be envious of the phenomenal memory that enables Emma Dexter to dispense with practising. Read the novel to discover how Emma and her mother search for the truth, how ordinary people cope with extraordinary events.
If you read the Radio Times or the Proms Guide you may find concerts of Emma Dexter’s music listed; then you will know reality is stranger than fiction.