As part of the exciting new Strand Rising Stars Series, in association with The Keyboard Trust, enjoy an exceptional recital at the beautiful candlelit venue of St Mary le Strand. A unique opportunity to hear new some of the brightest new stars of the piano world.

Bach/Busoni – Chaconne in D minor, BWV1004

Debussy – Étude No.7 pour les degrés chromatiques

Oran Johnson – A Solstice Nocturne

Ravel -Oiseaux Tristes from Mirroirs

Brahms – Variations and Fugue on a theme by Handel, Op.24

A new series for Warren Mailley- Smith to add to the 300 that his City Music promotes every season not only in London but also Manchester and Edinburgh.
Many of the concerts he plays himself with a wide ranging repertoire from Chopin to Gershwin and he even donates his beautiful Steinway to the series he promotes in St Mary Le Strand.

Warren Mailley- Smith A man for all seasons A love of music illuminated by candlelight

Many concerts are given to illustrious colleagues too who otherwise would be all too rarely heard in the overcrowded but culture starved metropolis.

With an eye to the up and coming new generation a new series has been formed in collaboration with the Keyboard Trust and a first series began yesterday with Sherri Lun whose star was certainly shining brightly yesterday.

A church that is an oasis in a city bustling with life and that rises so magnificently in the centre of the Strand in a newly created pedestrian precinct that includes the Courtauld Gallery.

There was a radiance to the sound from a resonance that was perfect for the beautiful music that arose from this artists hands like an eagle rising over the setting sun .A beautiful church of the just dimensions for chamber concerts that lit by candlelight that gave the warm glow of being enveloped in a magical velvet web.
Nowhere more was this evident than in the central part of Sherri’s programme which was a group of very atmospheric works by Debussy and Ravel.A tris of works whose centre was a beautiful Nocturne by Oran Johnson ,who was present at the concert to hear his music transformed into a magic spell by this very sensitive artist.

‘Pour les degrés chromatiques’ is a study in chromatic scales but here it was a web of magic sounds out of which arose an apparition of ravishing beauty ( similar to Ravel’s Barque sur l’océan). It is one of those moments of breathtaking beauty that seduce the senses far more than any words could ever do. Of course there was the technical perfection that this study demands but there was much more besides – a soul arising in the beauty of an edifice that was the ideal preparation for Oran Johnson’s ‘Solstice’.There was magic in the air as the beautiful golden sounds filled the glorious candlelit atmosphere and we were transformed for a moment in time ,where the bustle that surrounds St Mary’s was of another age.Out of this atmospheric haze emerged Ravel’s saddest of birds where I have never been so moved to hear in such a contest as today’s. Usually played as part of the complete Miroirs following on from busy moths and turbulant seas, here it was simply a vision of the serene paradise that Ravel had allowed his birds to escape to.

The concert had opened with the greatest of all works ever written for a solo instrument :Bach’s mighty Chaconne transformed by Busoni into a work that might very well have been written for the keyboard of Busoni’s age rather than for a solo violin a century earlier. A powerful performance as it had been in St James’s Piccadilly but here today it was played with fleeting brilliance and sumptuous delicacy as this young artist was able to savour the sounds that were arising from her hands and wafting on high with the extraordinary potency of poetic beauty and aristocratic power.

Sherri Lun at St James’s Piccadilly Poetry and grandeur with crystalline clarity and impeccable musicianship

It was the same effect for Brahms’s 25 variations and Fugue on Handel’s disarmingly simple theme from his harpsichord Suite n. 1 in B flat HWV 484. A work normally given to advanced students together with the Wanderer Fantasy and the 32 Variations in C minor to acquire a technical perfection allied to musical values. Rarely is the work heard as a long poem of subtle beauty with streams of glorious sounds of horizontal not vertical beauty. From the very opening theme the ornaments were like bird calls not just tightly spun springs.The variations too spread over the keys and filled the air with wondrous poetic sounds that is rare indeed compared to other less poetic interpretations where hurdles are mounted with athletic glee rather than artistic sensibility. Electric excitement lead to the glorious triumphant transformation of Handel’s innocent little melody.

But Sherri and her mentor Christopher Elton realise that this is not the climax of the piece but just an opening to the heroic fugue where the true climax lies with the tolling bells that ring out in the right and then the left hand as the fugue goes unimpeded forward illuminated by sumptuous Philadelphian sounds of full orchestra.

A triumph for this young artist who is indeed a rising star and on her way in the next few days to Japan to match her artistry with others in Hamamatsu where has been especially selected to compete.
Artistry of this calibre is not really the fodder for Circus entertainment but the International Competition Circuit is just one way of sharing a young person’s artistry with millions of followers worldwide via the excellence of streaming.
Time was against us as Warren Mailley -Smith just an hour later would be playing Trios by Beethoven and Mendelssohn in an ambience warmed by Sherri’s succulent music making.

But Sherri had one more piece she wanted to share with us and here really was a star shining brightest tonight. Her own sumptuous transcription of the Elegy from Shostakovich’s Ballet Suite.We are so used to the percussive music of Prokofiev and Shostakovich but in a sensitive artists hands they can reach the true soul of these much misrepresented composers and show us a world of radiance and beauty as Sherri demonstrated today .

Sherri Lun (2024 Winner Birmingham international Piano Competition) Named ‘2020 Performing Artist of the Year’ by the South China Morning Post,  Sherri Lun majored in piano and viola as a junior student of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. She is currently studying with Prof. Christopher Elton at the Royal Academy of Music with a full scholarship supported by the Academy and the Hong Kong Scholarship for Excellence Scheme. In 2013, Sherri was selected as a Young Scholar of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation. After her concerto debut with the Midwest Young Artists at the Ravinia Festival at age 11, she was invited to perform again at Ravinia the following year, as well as in Millennium Park (Chicago) and at the Fondation Louis Vuitton (Paris), followed by collaborations with the Salzburg Chamber Soloists, Hong Kong Youth Orchestra, and the Kölner Kammerorchester.