London student wins International German Piano contest
NewsThe Malaysian pianist Magdalene Ho, who lives in London, has come top of the German contest.
Ho, 21, last year won the Clara Haskil. She’s a student at the Royal College of Music.
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In the Rachmaninoff, the pianist was fantastic but the orchestral accompaniment was absolutely terrible. No surprise. Look at who was conducting.
Absolutely agreed, it is unbelievable why they invited BKB to conduct. He was a keyboard warrior like Katherine Needleman, but (wisely?) decided not to air every life transgression on social media
He talks big game for someone who can’t keep time.
Magdalene is playing Chopin 1st PC at St Mary’s Perivale on Saturday 30 November at 7.30 pm with string quartet accompaniment. Will be livestreamed
The Asians are blitzing it. Once again. What’s not to love??!!
FWIW, Absolute pitch is more common among speakers of tonal languages, such as most dialects of Chinese or Vietnamese, which depend on pitch variation to distinguish words that otherwise sound the same—e.g., Mandarin with four possible tonal variations, Cantonese with nine, Southern Min with seven or eight (depending on dialect), and Vietnamese with six.
Tonal-language speakers may process musical sound as language and may acquire absolute pitch for musical tones when they later receive musical training. Many native speakers of a tone language, even those with little musical training, are observed to sing a given song with consistent pitch.
Among music students of East Asian ethnic heritage, those who speak a tone language fluently have a higher prevalence of absolute pitch than those who do not speak a tone language.
Thus, a Chinese pianist might be more emotionally aware — that is to say, feel the sound of the music — instead of processing the notes as a cognitive exercise, if that makes any sense.
[Just like the written Chinese language is symbolic in expression, while our written language is phonetically expressed.]