Piano season on the BBC
11 September 2012
Piano Season on the BBC is a six-week season (15 September until 6 November) celebrating all things piano. The season will explore the piano’s
wide-ranging influence from the 1700s to the present day, as well as
delve into the lives of the people behind the piano and the music
created for it.
Highlights include coverage of The Leeds
International Piano Competition, a Jazz Battle live from Trinity Laban
College Greenwich, a downloadable A-Z of the piano, Peter Donohoe’s 50
Greats, an online masterclass for budding pianists and
personalities such as Woman’s Hour’s Jane Garvey and Olympic medal winner Samantha Murray taking up the
challenge of learning the piano for the first time, with eight of them
taking part in the season finale, a Gala Concert in Cardiff on the 29
October. The season will
culminate on 6 November with a special episode of Imagine on BBC One
focusing on Lang Lang as he turns 30.
Monday nights will be 'Piano Night' when BBC Radio 3’s Live in Concert
will offer listeners a series of piano recitals, from different
corners of the nation, given by an array of international artists. Past
Leeds finalist Sunwook Kim will play Beethoven and Schubert and Russian
Evgenia Rubinova presents a programme of music from her native country;
Ukrainian Alexei Grynyuk plays Chopin and Liszt; Pascal and Ami Rogé
play French music for two pianos; while Radio 3 New Generation Artist
Igor Levit performs Rzewksi’s celebrated and fiendishly difficult
Variations on The People United Will Never Be Defeated; Ashley Wass
and Huw Watkins team up to perform Robin Holloway’s pianistic
tour-de-force The Gilded Goldbergs.
