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Mirrors & Echoes – Aïda Lahlou, piano

Moroccan pianist Aïda Lahlou makes an exciting and noteworthy recording début with Mirrors and Echoes, released by Resonus Classics on 19 September 2025.

Supported by Les Amis de Maurice Ravel, the album offers a vivid reimagining of Miroirs, placing it in dialogue with lesser-known piano miniatures from across the world to reveal surprising resonances and intertextual connections.

“Whether through spiritual texts, folkloric archetypes, or meditations on nature, each work in the album offers a moment of contemplation and self exploration.” Lahlou says. Drawing on Ravel’s own writing on Miroirs, she adds: “Ravel believed that music should act as a mirror, reflecting back the listener’s own interiority. This album seeks to transport the listener into that reflective space.”

Lahlou’s sensitive interpretation guides us through shifting sonic landscapes and themes of nature, spirituality, memory and transformation. The listening experience is not unlike a musical treasure hunt: Lahlou interweaves Ravel’s visionary five-movement cycle with rare piano miniatures from five continents—some rescued from obscurity, others newly arranged for this recording, like a Brahms motet or a 14th-century Andalucian song, each handpicked for its unexpected kinship with Ravel’s sonic world and its ability to evoke a sense of wonder.

“My hope is that the album’s themes – nature, spirituality, and cross-cultural resonance – can inspire renewed awe for life and the richness of our world, especially at a time when it faces such urgent threats from war, pollution, and climate change.” (Aïda Lahlou)

Born in Casablanca and trained across Europe, Aïda Lahlou brings a multicultural lens to classical repertoire that feels both scholarly and deeply intuitive. The brilliant storytelling, weaving together works by Spendiaryan, Stevenson, Tansman, Garayev, Lecuona, and others, alongside arrangements of Brahms, Siloti and traditional melodies, culminates in a programme that is both exploratory and deeply personal. The result is a compelling artistic statement from a distinctive new voice in classical piano.

Mirrors & Echoes is released on CD and streaming on the Resonus Classics label.

Aïda Lahlou
(photo by Ben Reason)
Maurice Ravel

Source: press release

About Aïda Lahlou

Born in Casablanca, pianist Aïda Lahlou began studying piano at the age of five with Yana Kaminska, and won her first international competition at eight. She later studied with Nicole Salmon-Boyer (École Normale Alfred Cortot) before receiving a scholarship to attend the prestigious Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey. After reading Music at St John’s College, Cambridge, she continued her musical studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, studying with Ronan O’Hora and Peter Bithell, and earning a Distinction in Piano Performance (MPerf).

Aïda has performed internationally from a young age, with appearances in venues including Wigmore Hall (London), BOZAR (Brussels), Théâtre National Mohamed V (Rabat), and the Hall of Organ and Chamber Music (Baku). She has performed as soloist with the Orchestre Symphonique Royal, becoming the youngest pianist to do so at the age of twenty, and has performed alongside artists such as Vadim Repin, Roby Lakatos, and Alina Ibragimova.

She has received over 20 national and international awards, most recently the Philip Crawshaw Prize at the Royal Overseas League Music Competition. A passionate educator and communicator, she also directs opera, volunteers with environmental groups, and created an award-winning one-woman show blending classical piano with stand-up comedy.

Praise for Aïda Lahlou

“Aïda Lahlou is a pianist of imagination and poetry, not shy of exploring sonority, colour, or inner voicings.” — The Classical Source

“Vivacious playing.” — Gramophone

“Aida…played with a poetic sensibility of refined beauty and a sense of style and musical intelligence of aristocratic authority.” — Christopher Axworthy

Website: aidalahlou.com

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Social media, for all its faults, is also a force for good and can throw up unexpected encounters and delights. One such gem is Andy Lewis’s Proms blog, which I discovered via the music critic of The Spectator, Richard Bratby.

Andy Lewis is blogging about every single Prom of this year’s season, mostly via the broadcasts on BBC Radio 3. He hasn’t missed a single one and is now in the home straight, as it were – the final week, and the close of this year’s at the Last Night of the Proms.

What is so wonderful about Andy’s blog is that it’s not trying to be a serious critique or dry academic appraisal of each concert, but rather a personal reaction to and reflection on the music. He publishes his posts soon after each concert has taken place and as a consequence, his writing is fresh and spontaneous, entertaining, engaging and intelligent (and it reminds me of how and why I started blogging, back in 2010).

I caught up with Andy to find about more about his motivation for writing about the Proms and what he’s enjoyed in this season’s programme….

What made you decide to blog about every single Prom of the 2025 season?

It came about for a few different reasons. I was taken with the premise of the Proms; the fact that it is still possible to buy a ticket on the day for just a few pounds. I used to think to myself, ‘I’d be at the box office every morning if I lived around here.’ This triggered an ambition of one day attending every Prom at the Albert Hall, and this idea has laid dormant in my mind for years. I like to keep myself occupied, and this year my diary was nearly empty for the eight or so weeks when the Proms were happening. To fill my free time, I decided I would ‘attend’ every Prom, whether it be watching it on TV, listening on the radio, or actually getting down to the Royal Albert Hall in person. To make it more meaningful, I decided to create a record of it – hence the idea of the blog. As the weeks have progressed, the blog has also evolved into including little diary snippets from my daily life. If I’m still alive and well in thirty years, it will hopefully be interesting (for me) to read it back. Maybe my opinions on things will have changed by that time. Maybe I’ll be living a completely different life.

Have you attended/followed the Proms before this year?

I had only ever attended one Prom before, and I can tell you exactly which one it was!

It was Prom 48, Sunday 21st August 2016. The programme was Reflections on Narcissus by Matthias Pintscher to start, and then the second half was Mendelssohn’s theme to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As I remember it, the music was blended with pop-up dramatic performances in different areas of the hall. Going to this Prom was what initiated my desire to see all the acts in one given year, but I had not gotten round to it until now.

What have been the challenges and pleasures of this project? 

The pleasure has been discovering new composers, and getting a deeper understanding of composers I only half-knew before. Additionally, looking up the history and origins of the Promenade concerts themselves has been fascinating. In terms of challenges, it has often been exhausting to keep up with the schedule on a daily basis. Early in the run, I was having doubts as to whether I would be able to keep up with it all. If I miss a Prom one day, the momentum will very quickly snowball against me, so I need to make sure I am on top of blogging every day; trying to keep my writing fresh, avoiding repetition where possible, and keeping my grammar in reasonable check against a tight schedule.

And what have been the stand-out moments/performances for you?

It has honestly all been great and varied, but if you really tortured me I think I would say that the best Proms, for me, have been the ones that took me by surprise – those Proms that I thought were going to be boring and difficult to document, but turned out to be the exact opposite. Who would have thought that ‘100 Years of the Shipping Forecast’ would turn out to be so contemporary and engaging? There were packets of surprises hidden in the ‘Bruce Liu plays Tchaikovsky’ Prom – I was gleeful at the inclusion of Maple Leaf Rag amongst others. And Joe Hisaishi’s Proms debut introduced me to music I already knew. Music in the Studio Ghibli productions such as My Neighbour Totoro offer something gorgeously meditative.

Why do you think the Proms is “the world’s greatest classical music festival”?

I think it’s a combination of accessibility, variety, diversity, and longevity. The fundamental idea of the festival is that it opens up classical music to your ‘average Joe’ like me. I can grab a ticket for £8 (in 2025) and enjoy an evening of world-class entertainment. The variety of the performances across the summer weeks makes sure there is something for everyone. The diversity on the stage has ensured the Proms have kept up-to-date with the world around us, and this in turn has kept the Proms running for as long, and successfully, as they have been.

What would you say to people who are unsure about classical music or who have never attended a Prom before?

I would say, ‘don’t be afraid of getting classical music wrong’. If you enjoy what you hear, go and see it played live, just like you would a pop or rock act. Even pass comment on it if you dare to do so. There may well be a bunch of Oxbridge academics looking back at you like that Leonardo DiCaprio meme, but the truth is that music is subjective and – when offering an opinion on it – they are as clueless as the rest of us.

Would you do it all again in the same way for next year’s Proms? 

Right at this moment I would say absolutely not! However, I do think I have opened a new relationship with the Proms, and in future years I will be more liable to be looking through the catalogue, choosing which Proms I would like to watch, listen to, or attend.

With regard to my writing, this is likely to be a one-off. But I would never say never. It would be nice to do something with a similar twist. For example, another one of my cultural challenges has been to watch every Shakespeare play, performed live. At time of writing I am on thirty-one plays, seen at different venues around the country. Given the number of operas based on Shakespeare and his characters, it could be an idea to review them with an amusing twist, comparing a production at the Royal Opera House to, say, the time I saw the same play at Gordale Garden Centre.

My name is Andy Lewis, I am thirty six years old. From the Wirral but living and working in Runcorn. I work in Medical Information for a multinational healthcare company, and in my spare time I like to attend rock concerts and theatre. I also play guitar, piano and harmonica. I am a music lover with my main genre being blues-rock, but I do also love classical and orchestral music.

Follow Andy on X

Read Andy’s BBC Proms Marathon 2025 blog

Andy Lewis

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by Michael Johnson

Latvian-American pianist Eleonor Bindman has often surprised pianophiles with her unique transcriptions, dating from Bach onward. The great cello suites, reworked for the modern piano, found new audiences in Europe, Asia and the United States. And her four-hand arrangements of all six Brandenburg concertos broke CD sales records.

She is achieving her ambitious aims – to widen the appeal of past keyboard and orchestral works, mainly the music of Bach, through her fresh and adventurous transcriptions.

And she is still doing it. Her new CD, which she cleverly titled AbsOlute, brings a flowing sense of joy to the Bach lute suites. They have never been heard like this.

“I don’t want to bore the listener,” she tells me in an extended interview. “I try to make my intentions clear about what I am doing.“

Traditionally, transcribers and arrangers have felt constrained by Bach’s already “perfect” compositions. But she is not about improving Bach, she says. “Not being a composer myself, I find that transcribing still gives me a feeling of creating something new.“

©Leslie Farinacci

An imported New Yorker, Ms. Bindman speaks in an accent she brought with her from her native Riga, Latvia’s capital. Her American career has flourished as a performer, a transcriber and teacher. For several years she taught private students in her New York home, playing her beloved “mellow” Bosendorfer, perfectly chosen to enrich her lute scores. In recent years she has taught less frequently, being overwhelmed with massive transcription projects such as the four-hand piano version of the Brandenburgs and the larger Bach orchestral suites.

Is she Russian-trained? Not quite. She never studied in Moscow but her first teacher came from the great Heinrich Neuhaus line. Her professor Theodore Gutman was a Neuhaus student and her second teacher was Lev Natocherny, a product of the Moscow Conservatory, so the Russian tradition found its way into her sensibilities.

She cites the Russian pianist and conductor Vladimir Feltsman as a major influence. We have “similar temperaments” she says, so his teaching was easy to assimilate.

It is now time to focus on getting a fresh perspective, she says, a new look at Bach’s music. “In the past year or so, I’ve become a little less hesitant, a little less inhibited, even adding ornamentation that does not agree with any particular convention.”

Ms. Bindman has relied on lute recordings to help her find the piano voice she wanted. She cites the CDs of Italian Evangelina Maccardi as an influence and probably the best of the lutenists playing today.

Critical acclaim seems to have come easily to her. Some reviewers praise her transcriptions and Bach originals without holding back. One fell in love with her Partitas, calling her a “marvellous Bach performer”. “The prelude from Partita 1, he wrote “is deliciously slow and expressive, with unexpected marking of inner voices, beautiful ornamentation, shimmering tone.… There’s not a bad movement in the bunch.”

In this YouTube clip, Lute Suite in C minor, BWV997, her easy mastery of the transcription can he seen, heard and felt:

Ms. Bindman balances her note-perfect clarity with rubato touches that bring out the emotion that some Bach interpreters eschew. Her strong feelings emerged when I raised the subject of respecting the score to a fault. Bach should be very emotional, she insisted. “It’s not about playing the right notes at the right time. He wanted to leave room turn it into your Bach”.

Among her collection of videos posted on YouTube and on her own internet site are glimpses of her impish wit. In one version of the suites BVW 996-998 she dressed in 17th-century attire, including a voluminous wig and custom-made shoes. In this clip, note the swaying body language and confident, if silent, foot-tapping (both feet simultaneously). Her joy is uninhibited.

Edited excerpts from our Q&A interview:

You were obviously enjoying this. Smiling and rocking on the bench, you are conveying the joy Bach intended. Is there an actor in you trying to get out?

No, I don’t think so, but I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who had fun.

You cannot sit still while playing Bach. You almost dance to his music, don’t you? How do you reconcile your changes with the “perfect” scores you started with?

Well, not being a composer, I find that transcribing still gives me a feeling of creating something new. Some musicians feel constrained from doing very much with it. Not I!

Aren’t you also a jazz fan?

Yes, I also love jazz and the freedom it gives you, and I always try to bring a fresh, improvisatory element to my playing.

Bach predated the modern piano by more than 200 years so how does one try to recreate what his compositions would have sounded like in his day?

His lute suites were originally composed for the lautenwerk or lautenwerck (lute-harpsichord), one of Bach’s favourite instruments, similar to the harpsichord.

The 17th-century lute came to his attention through his son CPE Bach who was personally acquainted with a prominent lutenist of the day. Inevitably the lute became part of the Bach family.

You have remained independent-minded in your development as a musician but perhaps you could name principal teachers who have guided you?

Of course there were various teachers along the way, with pianist and conductor Vladimir Feltsman being the most important one.

You mix the Bach clarity with your own emotions, to make us love the music you are playing. How do you dare?

I am concerned about the listening experience. I don’t want to bore the public. I try to make my intentions clear about what I am doing. Bach can and should be very emotional. Playing him is not about hitting the right notes at the right time. He leaves room turn it into your Bach. Now that I have done my cello suites and the lute suites I feel I have a lot more data. I studied the scores so I could decide what I could do with them.

Haven’t you helped bring some international attention to these delicate lute suites?

Yes, many pianists do not know this music until they try the transcriptions.

Your reputation rests on your personal treatments of Bach. What other composers attract you?

Bach’s music is an endless source of wonder. But I also love Liszt, especially his poetic and mystical side, and have had some transformative experiences while playing his music. I feel a special affinity for the musical personalities of Schumann and Brahms, and the Russians, of course – Mussorgsky, Rachmaninov – since they permeated my upbringing. I absolutely revel in Spanish music, particularly Albeniz.

In an interview with The Cross-Eyed Pianist, you were asked what your definition of success is.

Being able to hold people’s attention and transport them into a different time and place.

AbsOlute is available on CD and streaming on the Orchid Classics label

eleonorbindman.com

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Guest post by Frances Jones

One of the bonuses of teaching is that from time to time you are introduced to new repertoire. Sometimes, you get the opportunity to change your view of a composer that was really only based on a passing experience. 

A pupil of mine has recently been learning a piece by Cecile Chaminade, a composer whose music I had until now associated with a flautist house-mate practising diligently in the run up to a recital. A beautiful work, the Concertino, but the flute can be surprising loud in close quarters. 

Cecile Chaminade (1857-1944) composed throughout her life, and left a large number of piano works, in addition to orchestral music and songs. The piece that my pupil learnt, and that inspired me to explore Chaminade’s music, was the Idylle, Op. 126, No. 1, from her Album for Children of 1907. It has a melody that becomes a real ear worm; marked bien chanté, it does indeed feel very singable. It’s such a satisfying piece to play; the melody in the right hand is accompanied by a simple enough bass line helped along with discreet pedalling. The middle section requires a little more diligent practice for the aspiring Grade 4 pianist (the piece has recently been on the ABRSM Grade 4 syllabus) and the writing is never dull; the melody wings its way onwards, and for a glorious minute or so you can be flying over the rooftops, your spirits lifted. The opening melody returns to round off the piece and you sense in the pupil the confidence that familiarity brings. Immediately the pupil’s playing is more assured, expressive, even playing around with tempo and the placing of the notes. 

I think it was the singable melody that piqued my curiosity, and made me want to know more about Chaminade’s music. The piece I found first was her Serenade Op. 29, written in 1884. After listening to this you can see why Chaminade’s music has been described as charming. The opening melody is gentle, almost like a lullaby, and is supported by pleasing harmonies in the accompaniment. The second melody has a similar rhythmic pattern and is more searching but still holds a tender quality. They are both such beautiful melodies that the whole piece really works. Both tunes use similar rhythmic patterns and accompaniments, but it’s the subtle melodic development as well as changes in articulation that keeps this piece interesting. The music finally fades away to ppp and a tonic chord, dusk having fallen and the musicians taking their leave. 

The next work of Chaminade’s I listened to, which really threatened to take the attached description of ‘charming’ and hurl it out of the window, was her Arabesque No 1, Op. 6, from 1892. It’s a tempestuous piece, technically much more difficult than the Serenade. Chaminade was a pianist, studying with teachers from the Paris Conservatoire, and later performing her works in Europe and the United States. I can imagine her sitting at the keyboard, absorbed in her music, taking the audience with her on a journey through delicate flourishes and big chords, carried along by a melody that is seeped in the Romanticism of her Russian and German contemporaries. 

Her Caprice-Impromptu, despite being one of her later works, written in 1914, is also decidedly Romantic. Chaminade, like her near contemporary Rachmaninov, remained broadly consistent in her style whilst many composers around her responded to new influences. Indeed, the Caprice-Impromptu has hints of Rachmaninov in its melodic writing. Like the Arabesque, there’s a sense of urgency and although the first section is playful as the title of the piece suggests, the melody that follows in the second section is at once both yearning and lyrical. Chromatic scales in octaves add to the sense of drama and the composer makes full use of the expressive range of the piano; the music ranges from fortissimo to piano and dolce. 

Chaminade’s music is characterized by its melodic writing and chromaticism; it’s Romantic, yes, accessible, maybe, but no less interesting for that. Chaminade was a prolific composer and her piano works are both imaginative and musically satisfying. I can’t wait to discover more.