St Mary Le Strand where the candles were shining brightly today illuminated by the piano genius of Magdalene Ho.
Standing in at very short notice for an indisposed Murray McLachlan she wallowed in Beethoven,astonished in Fauré and ravished with Schumann only to simply revel in the delectable virtuosistic flights of fantasy in Saint Saens.

Just back from the Walton Foundation on Ischia,Murray McLachlan called whilst on the train from the airport to ask if Magdalene could substitute for him the next day as a family necessity had meant he could no longer travel from his home in Manchester to London.

Magdalene Ho A musical genius in Paradise

I immediately got in touch with Warren Mailly Smith the promoter and concert pianist in his own right to say that she would be happy to play.

I knew a little about Warren’s activities but was flabbergasted when he told me the extent of the concerts he not only promotes but where he actually plays himself too. Concerts that just this month includes the two Chopin Concertos,three Bach Concertos and Beethoven Concerto n. 2 in a complete series,as well as recitals of an extraordinary amount of piano repertoire.Hats off indeed especially as he also gives work to his colleagues who are desperately in need of venues in the Capital City with a public ready to partecipate with enthusiasm and love.

‘If they don’t want to come,you can’t stop’ em’ , Boris Berman very spiritedly and philosophically exclaimed after a poorly attended recital in my Euromusica series in Rome. A series that in thirty years of activity would occasionally find that a concert date coincided with a football match or the sun would be shining and the so called ‘elite’ of Rome would rather go to the beach than listen to one of the great pianists of our time.A concert by Alicia de Larrocha once coincided with the final of the World Cup!

This is what Warren sent me on my insistence about knowing a little more of his activities :

‘I’m promoting 450 concerts this year and performing as soloist in about 150 of them, so please take your pick’.

‘The Steinway B tonight at St Mary Le Strand is my own, which I have purchased to facilitate recitals and chamber music in London.’

http://www.citymusicpromotions.co.uk is my company

http://www.Piccadillysinfonia.com is my orchestra

And http://www.ticketsource.co.uk/cm is the box office for all the events I am promoting.

Hats off indeed especially on entering this beautiful church which has become a magical oasis of peace and beauty since the pedestrian precinct has revealed that it is so much more than the central island of a roundabout for London’s busiest traffic .I could appreciate as an ex theatre manager with what attention he was promoting all these activities :

Magdalene played part of the recital she had just performed on Ischia but looking on the web site of Warren’s concerts she very professionally noted that just the day before had been dedicated to piano music by Brahms .So instead of op 116 Fantasies that she had played a few days ago she substituted it for the ‘Davidsbundlertanze’ op 6 by Schumann.

I have heard her play it before and it was one of the works that won her the much vaunted Gold Medal at the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition in Vevey at the age of 19. Now aged 20 I could hear it again! Having heard her play it in Milan and Florence for the keyboard Trust last winter.

Magdalene Ho in Florence and Milan The exquisite finesse and noble style of a musical genius………the final word

An artist of Magdalene’s sensibility means that her performances are never a printed page being repeated but a living breathing thing that takes wing afresh every time she opens that magic sound world that is in her hands.

I have reviewed these works in Florence and Ischia in much more detail but the atmosphere and beauty she transmitted last night demanded me to exorcise the enormous emotions that she had been able to share with us in this noble edifice.

The opening of Beethoven’s two movement Sonata op 78 she played much slower than I remember as she allowed this gloriously profound Adagio to resound around this noble resonant acoustic.It showed us the string quartet quality of Beethoven’s most profound creations as he came to the end of a turbulent life and had resigned himself to only being able to hear such wondrous sounds in his head.The last string quartets and the theme and variations of his final sonatas for piano op 109 and op 111 spring to mind already in this Sonata as this young artist allowed the music to unfold with poignant timeless dignity.

Fauré’s last nocturne resounded around this beautiful edifice with seemless golden strands that were as I imagine the composer must have conceived them.Washes of sound that built up to an aristocratic inner passion inhabiting a strange inconclusive world of sumptuous beauty.The final chords were like palpitations of a world weary heart and demonstrated this young pianists maturity and complete understanding of a world that she had found the key to and could transmit with desolate searing intensity.The Schumann too in this acoustic where streams of sounds and glowing melodic outpourings were enriched by the golden aura that surrounded them.The second of the dances ‘Innig’ was played with a simplicity and golden sound as seen from a distance that she was to reproduce in the seventeenth dance.There was red hot passion too in the fourth dance ‘ungeduldig’ which made the disarming simplicity of the fifth ever more radiant.The precision and clarity she brought to the sixth was quite extraordinary as to how she managed it with this resonant acoustic. Where there is a will there is always a way!

Magdalene’s wish to make the music speak transcends any technical considerations as it does for those few artists truly blessed by the ‘Gods’. The clarity and high spirits she brought to the twelfth ‘Mit Humor’ was nothing short of miraculous and the great chorale of the thirteenth was of breathtaking sumptuous beauty.The fourteenth – one of the most beautiful of all Schumann’s creations – was played with simplicity and a glowing warmth just as the fifteenth was played with passionate romantic abandon that was equally overwhelming.The final two dances as seen ‘from afar’ were the things that dreams are made of and as Schumann himself writes in the score :’Quite superfluously Eusebius added the following; but in so doing, much happiness radiated from his eyes.’

Magdalene had wanted to offer a Brahms Intermezzo as an encore but at my request in order finish on a high note she played the Saint Saens ‘Etude en forme de valse ‘ .In her hands it worked its magic and had the audience on their feet in awe and admiration of a pianism of a past age that of great artistry when musicians were also magicians.

What a privilege to be able to visit this extraordinary historic edifice that has survived fires,wars ……..and even developers!