Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen (piano cover)

Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen

Watch Adorable Evan Le Flawlessly Perform Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 8

By Rosalind Arnell , Classic FM London

Toddler Evan Le has only been learning the piano for less than a year, but can already smash out virtuosic concertos from memory.

image: http://assets7.classicfm.com/2016/30/evan-le-piano-1469453964-article-0.png

Are you ready to feel inadequate? Evan Le is only five, but is already charming audiences with his performance of this Mozart piano concerto, even writing his own complex candenzas for the piece.

Evan is not from a musical family, but has shown a pure instinct for music performance and composition. At the age of three he would listen to nursery rhymes and pick them out on a toy keyboard, and by four it was clear he had perfect pitch and an uncanny knack for memorising complex piano pieces. He has already featured on the NBC talent show Little Big Shots .

Concerto No. 8 was written by Mozart in 1776 for the Countess Antonia Lutzow, a fine pianist in her day. It requires high agility, and Mozart often used it for his own teaching.

Watch Evan Le play here:

Though he is obviously a future piano superstar Evan’s main passion is composing his own masterpieces, which have already amazed his teachers. Evan Le is a name to remember for the future - but for now you can see him perform greats such as Bach, Beethoven and Clementi on his Facebook page.

Music for reading / Musik zum Lesen: Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Debussy, Liszt, Sch...

Music for reading.Musik zum Lesen.
Enjoy. Viel Spass.

Saturday Night at the Movies - 

Andrew delves into the murky world of film noir.

image: http://assets7.classicfm.com/2016/26/spellbound-hitchcock-1467280849-article-0.png

Tonight Andrew shines the spotlight on film noir, as suggested by listener Nicholas Nicoll.

The term, which is French for 'dark film', was first given to a style of films by a French critic Nino Frank in 1946, but the name wasn't used in Hollywood till many years later. The genre embraces a wide variety of plots and characters but all have a distinctively suspenseful mood about them.

Tonight Andrew has music ranging across the decades of this mysterious genre, including Spellbound by Miklos Rosza, The Maltese Falcon by Adolph Deutsch and Chinatown by Jerry Goldsmith.

Maybe the Hardest Piece of Piano Music Ever Written

We think this might be the hardest piece of piano music ever written

By Daniel Ross, Classic FM London

Pianists everywhere, prepare yourself for possibly the most demanding piece of piano music ever written. *gulps*

image: http://assets1.classicfm.com/2016/25/kaikhosru-shapurji-sorabjis-opus-clavicembalisticum-1466433188-article-0.jpg

This is a section of the score from Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji’s Opus clavicembalisticum. It’s hard to pronounce, but even harder to play.

image: http://assets.gcstatic.com/u/apps/asset_manager/uploaded/2016/25/kaikhosru-shapurji-sorabjis-opus-clavicembalisticum-1466431796-custom-0.png

For a start, it lasts for over four hours in total, spread across 12 movements. That would be bad enough if it was dead easy to play, but of course, it’s much worse. It’s  a fiend.

Don’t let the first bar fool you - here’s the opening movement:

And here’s the final one, about which the composer himself wrote: “The closing 4 pages are so cataclysmic and catastrophic as anything I've ever done—the harmony bites like nitric acid—the counterpoint grinds like the mills of God.”

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More fun with pianos

Read more at http://www.classicfm.com/instruments/piano/features/hardest-piano-music-ever-written/#9gefP6ORJuuh3Vam.99

Einaudi Plays Piano on an Iceberg ...

... as an Arctic glacier crumbles around him

By Tim Edwards, Classic FM London

Italian pianist premiered a new piece in Svalbard to publicise Greenpeace’s battle to save the Arctic.

image: http://assets8.classicfm.com/2016/25/einaudi-performs-on-iceberg-in-arctic-1466422462-article-0.png

Greenpeace has persuaded Italian composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi to play on a specially built ‘iceberg’ within 100m of a crumbling glacier as part of their campaign to save the Arctic.

Listen to the best of Einaudi on Composed >

In the video, Einaudi is seen performing his minimalist music in the breathtakingly beautiful surroundings of Wahlenbergbreen glacier in Svalbard, Norway. As he plays one descending scale, huge chunks of ice calve off the glacier. To get to the spectacular location, Einaudicaught a ride with the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise (you can see how the film was made in the video at the bottom of the page): 

Einaudi premiered his new composition, Elegy for the Arctic , as governments gathered in Tenerife to consider a proposal to protect 10% of the Arctic Ocean.

According to Greenpeace, three countries - Norway, Denmark and Iceland - oppose the measure. The Arctic is becoming vulnerable to exploitation for fishing and oil drilling because the extent of sea ice covering the ocean has fallen to record lows in recent years.

Einaudi performs 'Elegy for the Arctic' on 'iceberg'

Best Movie Adaptions of Books

 Andrew Collins showcases the best films inspired by literature.

This Saturday, Andrew Collins will be marking Independent Bookshop Week, which aims to celebrate independent booksellers in the UK and Ireland.

Andrew will be playing music on Saturday Night at the Movies from great film adaptations of books. And he'll be including many of your suggestions of works of literature that you think have most successfully made the transition to the big screen.

Among the classics, such as Rebecca , there's a chance to hear music from the recent Jane Austen movie, Love & Friendship . And modern literature gets a look in too, including Atonement , The English Patient and High Rise .

And then there's the whole world of fantasy literature to choose from, including a certain boy wizard and the exploits of the Bagginses of Bag End.