Meet Martin Helmchen

A morning chance to brush up your German and Dutch, from my next victim! ...seriously, this guy looks like becoming something very, very special. I will be doing a pre-concert talk with him at the Queen Elizabeth Hall tonight before his recital in the International Piano Series, where he'll be playing Bach, Messiaen and Schumann.

His new recording of Schubert is the pick of the month in BBC Music Magazine. He's won the Clara Haskil Competition and has been a BBC New Generations Artist and one of the select fellowship-holders on the Borletti-Buitoni Trust scheme. And he's only 26. I will be foregoing the world premiere of Vladimir Martynov's new opera at the RFH tonight in order to hear him.

In case you are considering going to the Martynov, though, rumblings suggest that it is very 'listenable' and that the singers are completely fabulous - well, they would be, as they include Joan Rodgers, Tatiana Monogarova and Mark Padmore. LPO & Vladimir Jurowski take it to New York next week. Here is an article by Jurowski himself about the piece from The Guardian the other day: "Torture by beauty". He says: "Some of the sounds and harmonies he employs in Vita Nuova are exactly that: tortuously beautiful, maybe more than an average European listener can take." (Why does this feel familiar, I wonder?)

The two Mishas hit London

Micha and Misha - Mikhail Rudy and Misha Alperin - hit Kings Place with Double Dream on Wednesday and Friday: classical Russian meets jazz supremo in a wonderful two-piano extravaganza, composed/improvised/inspired. The performances are part of Mikhail Rudy's 'curatorship' days at the hall entitled Piano Dialogues; on Thursday he is bringing together Janacek and Kafka in Letters to Milena, a musical and literary exchange of the type I adore, with narration from actor Peter Guinness. Each evening you can also see the brand new documentary about Micha, starting at 6pm, free.

Regretfully, though, his planned late-night recitals are now not going to happen. I wonder whether this is because Kings Place, for all its excellence, is ideally supposed to help regenerate the seriously grotty bit of London that moulders away behind Kings Cross station. Good new venues should ideally be a great device to pull an area up, but this can take a very long time - it can be 20 years, or sometimes (as at the South Bank) 50. For the moment, there is nothing much at Kings Place except Kings Place itself and, though I am convinced the venue is the best thing to happen to London's musical life in decades, I could understand a classical audience not wanting to emerge into the murk after 11pm, when you tend to put your head down and leg it to the tube pdq. A pity, though, that we will not be hearing Micha play Scriabin.

Soon, more news about another Russian pianist we won't be able to hear elsewhere, for very different reasons...

Meanwhile, here's a taste of Double Dream.

Benjamin's premiere really is a first

Blimey, guv. George Benjamin's one-act opera Into the Little Hill ended up enjoying its London premiere yesterday in the spot the audience probably would have liked to be in all along: the bar. Ten minutes into the show in the ROH's Linbury Theatre, the lights went out, as Alan Rusbridger reports in the Grauniad. The power cut only affected the theatre, so everyone was offered free drinks in the bar while they tried to sort it, but eventually the doughty performers cut the Gordian Knot at 10.15pm and announced they'd do the performance right there instead.

"The audience, which included the Arts Council chair, Dame Liz Forgan, and the former defence secretary, Michael Portillo, stood, sat, crouched and perched on the floor and assorted chairs for the 40-minute work," writes Mr R. There's a video on the site, here, so you can see the scene for yourself.

But...drumroll...is it possible that a Jealous Rival Composer engaged in a Spot of Sabotage? Miss Duchmarple Investigates...

This is what I was really looking for...

...when I found the Muppets and got distracted. Now for something completely different - after all, we can't have Valentine's Day 09 on JDCMB without some serious Gypsy violin playing! What follows is the real thing.

When I give talks about Hungarian Dances, people often ask me if it's based on a true story or stories. The answer is: mostly no, but some of the stories have turned out to be true! Another FAQ is: would this be possible? That the grandparent could be a Gypsy violinist, then marry out of the Roma community and have a grandchild who'd become a classical musician?

Here is a fabulous example of a grandfather and grandson who have gone down exactly that path. First here is the renowned 'primas' (violinist bandleader) Pali Pertis (Pertis Pali in Hungarian), serenading a very Valentiny scene with the actor Jávor Pál.



Now, meet his grandson: the young Hungarian violin star Barnabas Kelemen, here performing a stunning Leclair duo with his wife, Katalin Kokas.



Lots more information about Barnabas and examples of his playing on his website, here.

Happy valentine's day, or something

It's extraordinary what a YouTube search on the words GYPSY VIOLIN will reveal.