Between Worlds: the premiere

I reviewed ENO's world premiere last night of Between Worlds, Tansy Davies's new opera with librettist Nick Drake on the awe-inspiring topic of 9/11. The piece? Quite a lot of problems where different aspects were at odds with each other, but some of us wept anyway. The performance? Superb. My review is in The Arts Desk, here (£).

Now Tchaikovsky announces contestants

Hot on the heels of Leeds, Moscow has declared its participants for this year's Tchaikovsky Competition. In four categories - piano (61 accepted), violin (50), cello (49), voice (40 male, 39 female) - there are only two from the UK, and they are both pianists: Oleksandr Grynyuk and Alexander Ullman (who is indeed going for 'the triple'). Quite a few non-UK nationals are studying here, though, including, we're told, six at the RCM.

Among the female singers, all but nine of 39 are Russian. Your grasp of cyrillic, though, has to be rather good to determine exactly who they are. I find it somewhat unsettling to log in to the site to read the list, only to discover that Russian contestants are listed in cyrillic lettering, along with one from Belarus and one from Moldova. Everyone else is in our plain old usual alphabet. Honest, guv. Have a look.

Lucky at Leeds?

The Leeds International Piano Competition, which takes place this August and September, has announced the 79 pianists who have been selected from more than 300 applicants to take part. While numbers are overwhelmingly dominated by musicians from the Far East, there's also a relatively strong showing from home, with four UK contestants and a fair number of others who are studying at this country's conservatoires. Ashley Fripp. Alexander Ullman and Yuanfan Yang are set for a very busy autumn as they are also off to the Chopin Competition. Will any go to Moscow too and try for what one might call The Triple?

Interesting to see some rather well established names on the Leeds list, though. While Yuanfan Yang is the best-known to British audiences, having entered the BBC Young Musician of the Year twice and won the piano section the second time, Lukas Vondracek has a strong career already and Vitaly Pisarenko, who's playing soon for the Keyboard Trust, has some fairly astonishing reviews to his name. Alexander Panfilov was an impressive gold medal winner at the RNCM in June. Constanza Principe from Italy has been studying at the Royal Academy of Music, while Pisarenko and Ullman, along with Tamila Samindjanova, Samson Tsoy and Pietro Gatto are or were all at the Royal College.

The full list is on the Leeds site, here.

Meanwhile on the jury, this is supposedly Dame Fanny Waterman's last competition. The founder of the Leeds, she has just turned 95. Full list of jury here.

Dear TV crews, please can we have the old format and see the WHOLE FINAL, LIVE, this time? Like we used to in the days when the likes of Mitsuko Uchida, András Schiff and Peter Donohoe were competing? The Cardiff Singer of the World is now a BBC effort and some of us pianophiles think that Leeds ought to be as well. It does make a difference. It really does.

Here's a clip of Federico Colli's winning Beethoven last time. Only a clip. From the very end.

BBC Music Magazine Awards: playing of integrity and passion

The BBC Music Magazine Awards took over Kings Place the other night and offered an evening that would in old-fashioned pop-psychology terms have been termed a "warm fuzzy". It was Leif Ove Andsnes's birthday, for starters, and he didn't only walk off with the Concerto Award, but also with Recording of the Year for his recording with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra of Beethoven concertos nos 2 and 4.

Accepting the prize, the Norwegian superstar - who, we're told, is now one of the country's biggest exports - explained that he had had to postpone the recording because at the time it turned out that his wife was having their twins three months early; they remained in hospital for two months. But all is well, the recording took place at a later point - and he says he is delighted with the results both of the recording and of the twins. Tony Pappano was there to present his prize, then sat down at the piano and struck up Happy Birthday. So now pretty much the entire UK music business can say it has sung with Tony Pappano.

It was a fine night for keyboard players, all in all. Benjamin Grosvenor won the Instrumental for his gorgeous album 'Dances'. Mahan Esfahani was Newcomer of the Year for his CPE Bach Sonatas (with his old record label, Hyperion) and he was there to perform a fabulous example from it on the harpsichord - as well as delivering an impassioned tribute to the inspiration he'd received as a lad listening to the playing of the person who presented his prize, Trevor Pinnock. And the inimitable Oliver Condy, editor of BBC Music Magazine, initiated the whole evening by telling us a story about the time he had to perform the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony in Cambridge recently and the digital organ malfunctioned...let's just say that Hoffnung could not have bettered this account.

The one person who nearly succeeded, if on video, was the pianist Alexander Melnikov, whose recording of Beethoven trios with Isabelle Faust and Jean-Guihen Queyras won the Chamber Award. "A lot of jokes probably begin with 'A Frenchman, a German and a Russian decide to play trios together'..." he began in the most deadpan of tones...

In person once more, we were treated to a performance of one of Elgar's Sea Pictures by the amazing Sarah Connolly in tribute to her recording of these plus The Dream of Gerontius with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sir Andrew Davies that scooped the Choral Award. Opera went to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg from Glyndebourne, with Gerald Finley as Hans Sachs and Vladimir Jurowski conducting; DVD was for Being Traviata, with Natalie Dessay in rehearsal; and vocal went to Joyce DiDonato for her 'Stella di Napoli' album. Premiere award was for Unsuk Chin's concertos respectively for cello, piano and sheng, and Orchestral was the late Claudio Abbado's Bruckner 9 with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.

You can see the full list of winners and shortlisted discs, and listen to extracts, here.

Can't think of a single thing to argue with, really, so let's raise a glass, or a coffee (depending at what time you're reading this) to a roster of wonderful winners - devoted musicians every one of them, who deserve what little celebration this crazy world can give them. At a time when other pianists seem mired in controversy - Valentina Lisitsa being dropped from Toronto for political reasons, Gabriela Montero desperate to reveal the corruption of Venezuela and Khatia Buniatishvili causing fuss by bothering to respond to an iffy review - while we can't separate music and politics, because one never can, we can at least keep celebrating the music  first of all. Because if it wasn't for music, these would be grim times. Music can carry us to a better world. Here's hoping it always will.

Here's Benjamin.

Pianist lands a dream job

Piers Lane. Photo: (c) Keith Saunders

And the dream job lands a great guy. The Australian pianist Piers Lane has been announced as the new artistic director of the Sydney International Piano Competition. 

It's a fine and respected event in one of the contest world's most gorgeous cities, inaugurated in 1977 by its founder Claire Dan, founder of the Cladan Cultural Exchange Institute. The finals take place in the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House.

Lane won the prize for Best Australian Pianist at its inaugural competition and was on the jury in 2004; besides being an ever-popular presence on the concert platform he is artistic director of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville and has spearheaded in London the annual Myra Hess Day at the National Gallery.

He is a sought-after adjudicator, a tireless treasure-trove raider in the rare repertoire department, and a recording artist whose discs for Hyperion are a constant delight. He's also a thoroughly lovely bloke and a man of integrity. The world of music competitions needs such people.

Maybe Leeds has missed a trick by letting him slip through the net to the other side of the world.

Update - here's an interview Piers gave to the ABC re his appointment.