BBC Young Musician 2014
19 May 2014
This
is the fifth time I have written here about the biennial BBC Young
Musician competition. Reading through my previous posts (you can read
them all at:
http://culturaldessert.blogspot.com/search/label/BBCYoungMusician)
I think I have probably done enough moaning about the TV coverage. I
have some sympathy for the points made in this article in The
Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/bbc-young-musician-2014-forget-the-format-give-us-the-music-9364814.html
but, apart from my ongoing sadness that we are no longer treated to
five concerto performances in the final, I really enjoyed this year's
competition. Possibly for the first time, I managed to watch every
minute of the coverage on BBC Four (which is no mean feat if you want
to be ready to watch the concerto final live!). And my record of
spotting the winners is improving: this year I picked three of the
five category winners, correctly predicted the three who would make
it through to the final and identified the overall winner before the
start of the semi-final. More importantly, the 2014 concerto final
was the best I can remember. All three performances were worthy of
winning the title and all were immensely enjoyable – showcasing
three teenagers with a very special blend of technical virtuosity,
personality, musicality and emotion. It's a cliché but it is
incredibly difficult to compare Elliott Gaston-Ross's performance of
the percussion concerto 'African Rise/Manhattan Rave' by Dave Heath,
Sophie Westbrooke playing Gordon Jacob's 'Suite for Recorder and
Strings' and Martin James Bartlett performing the 'Rhapsody on a
Theme of Paganini' by Rachmaninov. But I think the young pianist was
the correct winner – an astounding performer in an outstanding
concert.
Labels: BBCYoungMusician, Music, TV
posted by Robin Simpson @ 3:31 pm
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