In the latest recital at the St Bartholomew's Piano Festival, pianist Rachel Fok delighted the large and appreciative audience with her total command of tone, colour and dynamic.
Rachel, a native of Hong Kong where her parents still live and work has lived in the UK since the age of 14. For the last 5 years she has been a student at the RNCM in Manchester. She admitted she preferred the cooler UK climate.
Her programme included works by Mendelssohn, Ravel and Chopin. In a change to the advertised programme she concluded with the Etude Op.40 No.8 "Finale" composed in 1984 by Nikolai Kapustin who was born in 1937.
Kaputsin trained as a classical pianist at the Moscow Conservatory but in the 1950's he acquired a reputation as a jazz pianist, arranger and composer. His compositions use jazz idioms in formal classical structures. Its inclusion served also to emphasise the many "jazz" harmonies that Ravel clearly imbibed in the heady atmosphere of Paris at the turn of the 20th century. Rachel's performance of his Valses Nobles et Sentimentales was exquisite.
Such assured control of the piano comes at a price as Rachel explained: "I need to practice 7 hours a day but I cannot afford to have a piano in my flat. Unfortunately there is no lift in my apartment block and it would cost £100 a step to carry a piano up to my third floor flat!"
Rachel will complete her studies in the summer and she intends to return to Hong Kong to pursue a career as a piano teacher which she assured me is very well paid there!
The final recital is on Saturday, 28th February, at 2pm when Chiahu Lee will perform music by Bach, Haydn and Medtner.
Guest post by Philip Underwood.
