5/2/2023 0 Comments Nocturn radio love radio edit![]() ![]() ![]() It is not about who’s the best it’s about doing something to the best of your ability because it improves your life, and if you can watch it without wanting to run out and practise a thing that brings you joy, I will be very surprised. Then it turns out that there’s a concert at London’s Royal Festival Hall and only one person gets to perform, but – surprise again! – that doesn’t really matter, because you still all get to jam out together at the end of the show, sharing your love for your instrument before you get a ticket to the concert anyway. You show up just for the love of playing, and then – surprise! – you didn’t know you were in a competition, but you’ve actually already won, because you get to meet the world’s greatest pianist, who has been listening to you all along. Photograph: mark bourdillon/©Mark Bourdillon / Love Productionsīecause, in the end, The Piano is the absolute opposite of a Simon Cowell-produced talent show. ![]() ‘It’s impossible not to wonder how many of those train travellers are seeing something that looks like fun’ … The Piano. “I promise, this is not what Abba’s supposed to sound like,” he says as a duo sing over one another during a cover of Dancing Queen, in what is probably the most scathing moment of criticism in the entire show. Mika and Lang Lang (hiding near a champagne bar in episode one, and next to the station toilets by episode two) riff off each other brilliantly, with the chart musician providing a perfect bridge between the worlds of pop and classical music for his virtuoso fellow judge. Watching the crowds cry, or clap, or tap their feet, it’s impossible not to wonder how many of those train travellers – or the audience at home – are seeing something that looks like fun, something that they could have a go at, or something that felt out of reach until they saw a self-taught bricklayer playing his own compositions, or a 21-year-old mechanic making St Pancras station jump with boogie woogie improv. My five-year-old’s review was shorter: “How can she do that? That’s incredible ” – and that’s really the beauty of the whole show. “But she plays so beautifully, and that emotion is so sincere.” “You can be a great pianist, but if you’re always performing, sometimes the emotion becomes less genuine,” says Lang Lang, once he recovers. Watching her play Nocturne in B flat minor by Chopin, the show’s judges Mika and Lang Lang are uncharacteristically speechless, the station crowd falling silent as she plays with a dexterity and delicacy that many professionals don’t have. #ThePiano /09YFNM2tOh- Channel 4 February 15, 2023 ![]() The Piano, presented by starts tonight at 9pm on Channel 4. This is the incredible moment Lucy, a 13-year-old who is blind and neurodiverse, played a highly-complex Chopin piece, leaving and speechless. Reader, did I even get a little lump in my throat when Christopher the waistcoat-wearing pub pianist was (quite kindly) told to stop singing by host Claudia Winkleman, and immediately found a new level to his performance on the keys? I’m not ashamed to tell you that I absolutely did. Or 71-year-old Liam, who has built a shed on wheels to haul his own upright around, holding back his own tears as he plays a Chopin nocturne, and explaining via voiceover that the instrument is “not always an easy friend, but a great friend”. Take Daniel, the 14-year-old who describes himself as “quite shy” and then belts out a heartstring-twanging version of the Goo Goo Dolls’ Iris with an octave-jump that gets the crowd applauding. So far, the show has been to railway stations in London and Leeds, treating crowds of commuters to everything from Debussy to Darude – with London playing host to virtuosos as young as 11 and as old as 92.Īnd, spoiler alert, there’s plenty to applaud and get misty-eyed about. But that’s exactly what happens in The Piano, the perfect showcase for the instrument’s versatility. I s there an instrument with more emotional range than the piano? Sometimes, it is tough to believe that the same collection of wood and wires can make you stamp your feet with delight one minute and wipe away a tear the next. ![]()
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