Rebecca Leung at St Barnabas Ealing

in Association with the Beethoven Society of Europe

Finalist in the Junior Section of the BSE competition there is certainly nothing junior about her piano playing.

At eighteen she is just about to transfer from the Junior to the Senior Royal Academy of Music where she is studying with that renowned teacher from the Gordon Green School:Christopher Elton

She presented each piece with a short but well researched talk on Beethoven,Chopin,Debussy and Ravel.

Let me just say that the French music ignited a passion and fantasy which can often happen with young musicians who suddenly discover that they have in their hands the means to play this exciting multi coloured repertoire.

It is the difficult job of the teacher to find just the pieces that can open that secret door.

La Cathedrale Engloutie played with some superb technical control allied to some sumptuous sounds on this well used Boesendorfer piano.

A piano with so much still left to say in it for those who know how to delve deep into its soul and wallow into its sumptuous bass notes and seemingly infinite depth of sound.

Feux d’artifice too showed of her sense of colour and the apparition of the Marseillaise at the end over some beautiful shimmering sounds was every bit as telling as the the great Cathedrale Engloutie had been arising out of the mist.

It had ignited the fantasy of this young musician and she was totally involved in a way that her Beethoven and Chopin were not.

The so called “Moonlight” Sonata was beautifully prepared as one would expect from a student of Christopher Elton but together with the Chopin it lacked the weight needed to project the great melodic lines in the way that will come more naturally to her with maturity.

The last movement of the Beethoven was very excitingly played and if rather overpedalled she was not helped by the very elusive acoustic of St Barnabas.

She kept the momentum from beginning to end never wallowing in sentimentality or allowing her to be distracted from the goal of the final few bars cadenza.

The same with the Chopin Fantasie in F minor where the very complex climaxes were very impressively played .

Less pedal and more weight will come with her future studies but there is so much to admire in her playing already that it is only obviously a question of maturing and perfecting her already quite considerable musical and interpretative understanding.

Jeux d’eau offered as an encore to a large insistent audience produced again some magical sounds that appeared so natural and convincing .

The shimmering water disappearing as it had begun from a mere murmur.

She said that she was preparing the Ravel Concerto too for future performance so she is obviously a name that we will be hearing a lot more of in the not too distant future.