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Social media, specifically Facebook, has been getting a lot of bad press recently, but the medium should not be regarded as wholly bad or evil.

I’ve had an “online presence” for nearly 10 years now. I found Twitter rather confusing when I first started using it and tended to only share links to my blog articles rather than actively engage with others. But I quickly got the hang of it and now largely prefer it to Facebook.

Many people think social media platforms such as Twitter are basically an advertising tool, which completely misses the point – the clue is in the word “social”. I like to view Twitter as an online version of the parish pump, or a busy cafe, where one meets others to converse, exchange news, share ideas and resources, or have a laugh.

In the midst of all the negativity surrounding social media at present, I’d like to put in a personal plea for the benefits of the medium. My online experiences have largely been very positive and have led to some very fruitful/interesting connections, freelance work and friendships, in cyberspace and In Real Life. Many of the connections I’ve forged via Twitter are, unsurprisingly, fellow bloggers; others are piano teachers or music educators; many more are the musicians and composers who have taken part in my Meet the Artist interview series. I greatly value the connections I’ve made, both personal and professional, and enjoy daily interactions with people whose tweets and discussions stimulate, enlighten, amuse, move, delight and more….. I’ve even made friends in Real Life with some of my ‘Twitterati’.

Call me naive, but I find my Twitter experience is greatly enhanced by the “tweet unto others as you would have them tweet unto you” rule. Be nice, be friendly, thank people for retweeting or sharing your stuff, don’t be an “ego-tweeter” (i.e. only sharing your own stuff or tweets in which you get a mention). In short, observe good “Twitterquette” and you get a lot back in terms of positive interactions with others using the platform.

So a big “thank you” to my friends and connections, online and in Real Life

Further reading

Classical Musicians and Social Media

The Curse – and Benefits – of Social Media

 

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Who or what inspired you to take up piano, and pursue a career in music?

I was born during Ceaușescu’s regime to a Romanian mother and a Nigerian father. Church was an important element in our family. When I was five, my mother decided to buy a piano for me and my sister so we could learn an instrument to play it in church. Romania has a strong tradition in classical music and the country’s ties with the Soviet Union gave us access to all the great Russian musicians – Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter were a common presence on Romania’s concert stages. Our pianists were studying in Moscow with Neuhaus and all the music shops sold Russian editions scores, for what would be today 5 pence a piece. Being an over-active child was one of the challenges my parents had to face on a daily basis so when time came to enroll in school, I told them I had decided to go to the specialist music school in our town as I wanted to become a pianist. It came as a big surprise for my parents as they had completely different plans for me, but they came around it eventually. The Romanian specialist music school system was designed after the same system as the Russian Gnessin Academy so we were trained from a very early age to take part in competitions and perform on stage. Being a little pianist at seven years old seemed to keep me away from trouble so my parents supported that. It soon grew into a passion and it became obvious that I was going to be a pianist.

Who or what have been the most important influences on your musical life and career?

There are quite a few people I can call influences. It was my first piano teacher, who not only taught me how to play the piano but taught me to love music. Even when she had retired and I was no longer working with her, she continued to guide me through my school years with her love for knowledge. She gave me her entire classical music collection, comprising of 400 LPs of legendary recordings, which we would discuss every time we met. Another great influence was Julian Lloyd Webber. He adjudicated the Delius Prize which I won in 2009 at Birmingham Conservatoire. After the prize ceremony he told me that he would call me if he needed a pianist… And he did. We started working as duo partners in 2012 and it was an incredible experience. He became my mentor and changed all my perspective on life and the world.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

The greatest challenge has been adapting to changes. In Romania, I was trained to be a soloist and I hadn’t played much chamber music before coming to the UK. Working with Julian Lloyd Webber was a great challenge at first. Our very first performance was a BBC Radio 3 ‘s ‘In Tune’ broadcast. We met to play for the very first time the day before the broadcast. I had only played chamber music as a student. I was a bit terrified but the broadcast went well. Learning new repertoire in a record time and performing it for the first time on an important stage was also a challenge but eventually I learned that this was what every chamber pianist needs to do.

Which particular works do you think you play best?

There are a few works that are quite special to me, Beethoven opus 109, Saint-Saens Piano Concerto no. 2 and Rachmaninov’s Cello Sonata.

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?

It depends on the projects I am working on. Last season I played a lot of British music, especially John Ireland; the Romanian cellist, Răzvan Suma, and I toured UK and Romania with a British chamber music programme. This season I am including works by Nigerian composers in my solo recitals.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?

I play regularly at ‘Oltenia’ Philharmonic Hall in my hometown Craiova. The reason it is so special is because of the audience. I believe that an artist’s main purpose on stage is to connect with the audience, to become friends with them at a spiritual level, so that his/her message can go across. It’s not always easy. In Craiova, most people in the audience are friends I grew up with and my family, who are already waiting open-hearted to receive whatever I have to deliver. This is heart-warming – it’s home.

Who are your favourite musicians?

There are many musicians I like, not all classical musicians. My tastes change all the time and I am happy to discover new favourites every year. I grew up with Sviatoslav Richter as my idol, then I discovered pianist Arcadi Volodos and the rock band Aerosmith. Last summer I was mesmerized with Gautier Capuçon’s performance of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto no. 2 with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra. Gautier is now a favourite.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

It was the very last concert I played with Julian, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time. We were playing a piece by his father and it seemed that suddenly there was so much sensitivity in the music, there was a heavenly sound coming from his cello. When we finished and I looked at him, he had cried.

As a musician, what is your definition of success?

I always loved playing the piano and I believe that if you can make a living from performing, you’ve already won.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

Perseverance, believing in yourself (even when others don’t), but most importantly is the love for music which can help you overcome all obstacles.

London based award winning pianist Rebeca Omordia was born in Romania to a Romanian mother and a Nigerian father. She graduated from the National Music University in Bucharest in 2006 when she was awarded full scholarships to study at Birmingham Conservatoire and later at Trinity College of Music in London.

Prize winner in international piano competitions including Beethoven Prize, Romania 2007 and Bela Bartók International Piano Competition, Hungary 2010, Rebeca Omordia was awarded the Delius Prize in 2009, which led to an extensive collaboration with the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber. They toured the UK, performing in renowned venues including the Wigmore Hall and Kings Place in London, at Highgrove for the Prince’s Trust and they made several live broadcasts for BBC Radio 3.

Described by the Birmingham Post as “a pianist willing to take risks”, Rebeca has performed as a soloist with all the major Romanian orchestras, including the Romanian National Radio Orchestra; and a UK tour of the music of John Ireland described as “completely compelling, authoritative and committed”, and “outstanding in every regard”.

She is a great advocate of Nigerian classical music and has performed piano works by Nigerian composers at the 2015 Bradfield Festival, at the 2013 African and African-American Music Festival in St Louis (USA) and for the African Union’s 50th Anniversary Concert in London.

Rebeca Omordia has made a name for herself as a vibrant and exciting virtuoso who is in demand throughout the UK and abroad. She has performed with world-renowned artists including Amy Dickson, Raphael Wallfisch, Răzvan Suma and Jiaxin Lloyd Webber. Rebeca’s recording with Mark Bebbington, “The Piano Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams” reached No. 3 in the UK Classical Music Chart.

Rebeca is also a talented arranger, her arrangement of “The Seal Lullaby” by Grammy-winning composer Eric Whitacre, for cello and harp, was released on Deutsche Gramophon.

On 24th June 2016, Rebeca received the Honorary Membership Award (HonBC) from Birmingham Conservatoire.

She is currently a PhD candidate at the National Music University in Bucharest.

www.rebecaomordia.com

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Songs by Schubert, Schumann and Mendelssohn – Temple Song at Middle Temple Hall, 21 March 2018

Guest review by Adrian Ainsworth 

Middle Temple Hall is an exciting, unconventional space for a song recital. Somehow austere and ornate all at once, it generates a self-contained, imposing atmosphere before a note is even played.

Its layout also gives many of the audience members a slightly different relationship to the performers. I think of most venues – especially other prominent chamber venues in London like Wigmore Hall or Milton Court – as having a ‘portrait’ shape: rows of seats roughly matching the width of the stage, stretching back a certain distance. Middle Temple Hall, when set up for concerts, is ‘landscape’. The artists take their positions at the centre of one of the long walls, and the listeners spread out to the sides. As a result, more of the audience than you might expect are close to the action – and closer to the sound.

This intimacy really does change everything. My companion and I managed to sit only a couple of rows back on the left side – as piano obsessives, we were delighted at the perfect keyboard sightline and the privileged view it gave us of Julius Drake’s performance. And for these emotional, highly-charged song choices, it was at times overwhelming to be only a few feet away from the singers, to feel their voices at a near-physical level.

And what voices. During the opening selection of Schubert songs, Julia Kleiter’s rich, versatile soprano ranged from a searching tenderness in ‘An den Mond’, to an arresting desperation at the climax of ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade’. Christoph Prégardien must be one of the finest lieder singers of our age, able to convey warmth and clarity even when hitting the ground running in the very first song of the evening, ‘Wilkommen und Abschied’.


Julius Drake curates recitals regularly for the ‘Temple Song’ series, and this programme was expertly put together to bring out the best in all three musicians. I was surprised at first that the evening began with a Schubert ‘hits’ set of sorts, but it soon made perfect sense. Allowing the singers to take turns at appropriate points and pace themselves, the selection in fact highlighted JD’s virtuosity. I’ve described him in the past as one of the most purely exciting accompanists to catch live – and so it proved again, as we heard ‘Wilkommen…’, ‘Gretchen…’, ‘Versunken’ and ‘Der Musensohn’ carried off with such facility and flair, while never upsetting the balance between piano and voices.

The evening then built in intensity. The Schubert half of the programme was all Goethe settings, the final seven lieder a dramatic sequence combining the ‘Mignon’ and ‘Harper’ songs drawn from the novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjarhe. After the stand-alone choices, these mournful, moving laments had a devastating, cumulative effect until finally we heard, for the first time in the evening, the two voices together in one of only two song duets Schubert composed. A masterful change of mood, allowing us some welcome time to reflect during the interval.

Part 2 brought another change of approach. First, CP took centre stage to perform four settings of Heine by Schumann which were essentially rejected ‘out-takes’ from ‘Dichterliebe’. Then both signers sang Schumann duets. This pattern was repeated for Mendelssohn – however, JK took the solo section (again, based on Heine texts) before we heard more duets. While these songs had their fair share of heartbreak, this part of the concert was less concerned with lingering, brooding angst – instead giving us the joy of contrast between Schumann’s near-hyperactivity and Mendelssohn’s more stately reserve. CP and JK – who happen to be uncle and niece – looked and sounded especially comfortable when performing the duets, treating us to suitably special interpretations of lieder that one doesn’t get to hear as often as one would like. Their encore, a glorious version of Schubert’s other duet, the sublime ‘Licht und Liebe’, brought the evening full circle in the loveliest way imaginable.

Temple Song
Adrian Ainsworth writes for a living, but mostly about things like finance, tax and benefits. For light relief, then, he covers his obsessions – overwhelmingly music, but with sprinklings of photography and art – on the ‘Specs’ blog, which you can find at http://www.adrianspecs.blogspot.co.uk

Adrian is a regular guest writer for The Cross-Eyed Pianist

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Southbank Centre’s Brutalist arts venues, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room, will reopen on Monday 9 April, following over two years of refurbishment and redesign.

While many of us missed the QEH and Purcell Room during their closure, St John’s Square, not far away on the north side of the river, near Westminster, has benefited from increased exposure as it has been the home of most of the SBC International Piano Series concerts and some chamber recitals too, and it is good to see this fine building now firmly on the map of London concert venues. Meanwhile, the newly refurbished QEH and Purcell Room look fabulous, judging by these pictures, and details such as French polished wood, hand-upholstered leather and aluminium seats and energy efficient climate control promise stylish comfort for the contemporary concert goer. The original brutalist concrete structures have been fully restored and the foyer area (previously rather grim despite attempts at funky lighting) has been revitalised with plenty of natural light  and better views of the Thames

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The Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room open with a programme of events paying tribute to the historic legacy of the venues, and the legendary artists who have performed there over the past fifty years. A dynamic blend of contemporary and classical work sees vibrant performances, events, installations and a free programme of activities for all ages. The reopening programme runs from Monday 9 April until the end of May 2018. Further details here