Action, please

A few fabulous musical events this week and next, all of which deserve that elusive thing called an audience but, being at Kings Place, are not as yet assured of having one. I reckon music-lovers just haven't clocked yet that this terrific venue exists -- it's not in a place where you can exactly bump into it. Get on your hiking boots and balaclavas and head for Kings Cross:

Today til Saturday: BIG HUNGARIAN LISZT BICENTENARY FESTIVAL with ace fiddler Barnabas Kelemen, Dezso Ranki & Edit Klukon who will play the Faust Symphony on 2 pianos, brilliant clear-toned pianist Denes Varjon, the Joyful Company of Singers and many more. Barnanas is first up this evening, and there's a pre-concert talk by Karl Lutchmeyer. But please ignore the note online saying that Barnabas is playing Liszt's 'finest violin sonatas' - you're right, there aren't any - he is actually playing Liszt's own violin version of some great piano pieces. And Bartok Romanian Dances and First Rhapsody & Faure's Sonata No.1. Full programme here.

Next week: TASMIN LITTLE AND FRIENDS in 'VIOLIN JOURNEYS'. Tazza, John Lenehan, Piers Lane, Paul Watkins, David Le Page and more in a fiddletastic whirl, plus mesmerism, masterclasses and Messiaen. (Infuriatingly, I am going to be elsewhere next week, but if I wasn't, I'd be there.) Here is Tasmin's sneak preview podcast.

BUT even if you do nothing else today, please read this inspirational and impassioned speech by the fabulous author Philip Pullman about the perniciously stupid, absolutely misguided current plans to close down our libraries.

A Leap of Faith, aka Mozart from Daniel Ben Pienaar

OK, I know this animation isn't exactly JDCMB usual style. But I want you to hear the piano playing on the soundtrack. Currently it is all I can find on Youtube of Daniel Ben Pienaar playing the Mozart piano sonatas.  

Pas mal, hein? I've recently been sent the complete set to review -- it is just out on Avie Records, though the above video suggests that bits have maybe been floating around Magnatune for a while -- and as a whole it's the most fresh, vital, intelligent, inspiring Mozart playing I have heard in literally years.

If you enjoyed my post 'Let's hear it for.. the Mozart Piano Sonatas', then you'll love this recording. Daniel Ben plays the C minor Fantasy and Sonata as if it has stepped straight out of Don Giovanni. The sicilienne slow movement of the early F major sonata is as raw, painful and amazing as that of the big A major piano concerto or Pamina's 'Ach, ich fuhls..'. There's brilliance aplenty, too, as you can hear above. But essentially DBP (as a growing circle of pianophile admirers call him) meets the sonatas head on, throws out all the silly received opinion crap about them being tinkly salon pieces or rarified only-for-fortepianos early stuff, and embraces them as the full-on, every inch WAM, works of genius that they really are. I'm far from being the only critic who loved them: he's been highly praised in The Sunday Times and Gramophone as well, for starters. Get the album here.

So where has DBP been all our lives? I first came across him some while ago when he was recording Bach -- his Goldberg Variations is again among the richest, most thoughtful and provocative accounts of the work I've come across -- and I know he lives somewhere in London and teaches at the Royal Academy of Music, whose principal, Jonathan Freeman-Atwood, is the producer of the Mozart set and has recorded trumpet and piano works with him. He is South African and won the big competition in Pretoria a while back. He has also recorded more Bach, Orlando Gibbons (yes, on the modern grand, and jolly good it sounds) and lots of Schubert.

But that animation isn't so silly. In recording all the Mozart sonatas, and not being afraid to make his own very personal and profound statement with them, DBP has indeed taken a leap of faith. He has the air of an artist who will take a plunge from a high tower and sprout wings at the crucial moment. In the week of Mozart's birthday, I'd like to suggest that perhaps this set will be those wings.

Speaking of wings, those who tweet might like to know that there'll be a Mozart party on Twitter on the birthday itself, Thursday 27 Jan. Use the hashtag #mozartchat ... see you there.
@jessicaduchen

Friday Historical: Menuhin and Kentner play Schubert

There is nobody like Schubert. There was nobody like Menuhin. There was no pianist like Kentner. So, just because we can, just for the sake of incredible music and musicianship, here they are. For the rest of the recording, click through the video to Youtube and you should find the other three parts pop up in sequence.

A Magical Musical Tour at Southbank Centre

Here's my piece from today's Independent: meet Olly Coates, artist-in-residence at Southbank Centre and "curator" of the Harmonic Series. All you have to do, for a fiver, is pitch up by the box office at 7.45pm on the appointed day and Olly will lead you to a surprise space for a weird and wonderful mix of magical new sounds. No.1 is on 30 January with pieces by, amongst others, Michel Van Der Aa, Zemlinsky, Mara Carlyle and, with Streetwise Opera, Emily Hall's The Nightingale and the Rose. But where? Dunno. See you there.

Curiouser and Curiouser!

I couldn't interview Tchaikovsky about Swan Lake, but had a great time talking to Joby Talbot, who's written the first full-length original score commissioned for a new ballet at Covent Garden in 20 years. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland opens on 2 March and sounds, well, curiouser and curiouser. Joby tells me about writing a waltz that is like "Johann Strauss gone bananas" and what the White Rabbit will have in common with the Great Gonzo. All here in today's Independent.

Pity we went to print before I could grab @LondonBallerina Lauren Cuthbertson's latest tweets from rehearsals (she's dancing Alice on opening night), which involve the Duchess, a frying pan and a foot - hers. "Lesson learnt.... dont get your foot hit by a pan if you wanna get on point any day soon :(" and then "it wasnt hot.... the duchess did it in the kitchen scene!! Booooo!!!!" The Duchess is being danced by one Simon Russell Beale. Off with his head?

Here's the video trailer at the ROH site. There's more info, too, in a section aptly entitled READ ME. And here is the site for booking.