A last minute substitution brought two stars to Regent Hall .

One from the class of Eleanor Wong in Hong Kong and the other the winner of her International Piano Competition.

Both now perfecting their studies at the Royal College of Music. Alexander Doronin under the guidance of Dmitri Alexeev and Tin Lam Ng with Alexeev together with Vitaly Pisarenko.

Tin Lam Ng a superb natural pianist where movement and sound were joined in performances of glowing fluidity and mastery. He brought an extraordinary sense of style to Liszt’s ‘Pesther Carneval’ with playing of breathtaking brilliance of seduction and exhilaration. Ravel’s ‘Minuet Antique’ was of languid beauty with a flowing sense of dance , full of delicacy and colour, with a Trio of simplicity and whispered radiance.

Debussy’s Toccata from ‘Pour Le Piano’ was played with astonishing freshness and drive. A crystalline clarity where he could carve out, with subtle beauty, the radiant tenor melodic line that was to bring an explosion of passionate playing of natural mastery and exhilaration, from a young man who has fire in his veins. The long lines of Rachmaninov’s nostalgically beautiful Étude -Tableaux op 33 n. 2 were played with glowing radiance on a sumptuous cushion of velvet sounds. The Étude op 33 n. 3 allowed this young man’s poetic fantasy to transform this study into a tone poem of remarkable imagery and character.

Alexander Doronin, already winner of the Hong Kong International Piano Competition last year, brought a mastery of texture and intellect to Stravinsky’s knotty 1924 Sonata, with transcendental playing that brought this sonata to life in a way I would not have thought possible. I had studied this sonata with Nadia Boulanger friend and mentor of the composer, but today this young man demonstrated an extraordinary ‘tour de force’ of incredible subtle mastery. Stravinsky’s neo – classical style of a weaving toccata like texture was played with extraordinary weight whilst living with the abrasive caustic sounds that could soar above this seemingly impenetrable perpetuum mobile with piercing intensity.

More evident to the vast public was the masterly performance of the scintillating playing of breathtaking seductive audacity of Balakirev’s notorious ‘Islamey.’ It has long been a work feared for its technical difficulty and a show piece only for the most fearless of virtuosi. In fact it was so revered by Ravel who aimed to out bid him with his ‘Scarbo’ from ‘Gaspard de la Nuit’, that he purposely made even more technically challenging. Between these two opposite worlds was the sheer radiance and beauty of Scriabin’s Chopiniesque ‘Prelude and Nocturne ‘op 9 for the left hand alone. Playing of extraordinary control of balance with robust chordal playing on which a glowingly radiant melody could sing with such beauty that if one had not seen this young man’s beautiful arm movements one might have thought this was a three handed pianist .. A cheeky ending playing the final two notes with his right hand just showed that a great musician can also be a great showman and is what makes a complete artist which he most certainly is.

After such magnificent playing these two young pianists sat side by side as they played the ‘Pas de deux’ from the ‘Souvenirs’ Ballet Suite by Samuel Barber.

A sumptuous lunch awaited and was offered by the indefatigable Stephen Maw having ‘sung for their supper’ with such distinction!

An admirer in an audience of over 100 people who is also poetess so inspired by the music as to sketch the artists whilst they are performing.