Episode 1 Leeds International Piano Competition

For half a century the Leeds International Piano Competition has

been picking the superstars of the future and pro propelling them on

to the world stage. Tonight, we begin our coverage of the final

stage of the 2012 competition. We will be show casing six of today's

brightest young pianists and hearing a concerto. Here is a

taster of some of the fantastic things to look forward to.

Hundreds entered. This final will be one of the best in the history

of the Leeds competition. Now just six remain.

I'm looking for an experience, a journey, a dream. Testing

themselves to the limit. How high in this Olympic year are we

prepared to put the bar? For a life changing prize.

Leeds is the opener to a concert year.

You are born with it. But there can only be one winner.

You have got to be something. To shine.

APPLAUSE Over the coming weeks I'll be

meeting the competitors going behind the scenes at the

competition and finding out more about the history of the piano and

the concert pianist. We will be getting an insider's view from two

Leeds veterans and very fine pi fine pianists they are too.

What are your memories? Very friendly and really exciting, but

the only thing I would like to forget, this is silver jubilee year

for me since the Leeds. Please don't go old programmes because I

don't want you to find out! We will put that to one side. It can't be

that friendly, Tom, it is a competition? It is friendly. It

wasn't my finest hour in terms of results, but it was a wonderful

experience in terms of meeting other musicians and having a great

time. I was one of the naughty

competitors because I was swapping the name cards so I confused

everybody else and I used to be told off badly.

Noriko came here and behaved badly and Tom came and made friends. We

talk about the Leeds as being one of the prestigious competitions.

Does it have the global, international cashe today? What

makes it so amazing, it is very friendly and you can go out there

and start your career almost immediately after the competition.

We will meet later. Well, the Leeds International Piano

Competition next year celebrates its 50th birthday and it does so in

rude health. The artistic director and founder Dame Fanny Waterman

announced some exciting news. The Burmese politician and amateur

pianist, Aung San Suu Kyi becomes Honorary Ambassador and Lang Lang

becomes becomes global ambassador for the Leeds.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Lang Lang.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE At the age of just 30, Chinese

pianist, Lang Lang is a musical superstar.

He He brought piano music to a young, new audience and Time

Magazine ranked him among the influential people on the planet.

Today, he is going to meet someone very important.

Dame Fanny Waterman is the driving force behind the Leeds.

When you agreed to say you would be ambassador, I was thrilled because

millions of people from my cleaning lady onwards have all heard about

you and you bring the gospel of music to the world.

And to me, that's very important. When Fanny asked me about doing

global ambassador I was very honoured, I mean seriously, deeply

honoured. The Leeds competition is one of the greatest competitions

that exist in the world and I know many people actually who came out

from this amazing competition such as other well-known pi anists. It

really inspires young people from around the globe.

It isn't the competition that is an inspiration, its founder at the age

of 92. The true hero of the competition is

is Fanny Waterman. I mean she is a legendary piano teacher, mentor,

pianist, mother. She inspires so many young pianists and that's why

the Leeds competition is so successful and so unique, it is

because of her. I come across young pianists, they

don't need anymore lessons, they have won a competition. The real

life begins after you win a competition and at no age do you

stop learning. Lang Lang's role as global

ambassador for the Leeds will see him boosting the competition's

profile around the world. I stopped playing competitions when I was 13.

So for me, it is great to see, you know, part of the process and to

feel the heartbeat. At the same time, you know, talking to the kids

to let them be more relaxed, be more focused on making music.

do you fight nerves before going on stage? It is nice to have a little

bit of nerves to cheer it up, but if there is too much of it, it is

not helping. So it is best to just think about making music and then

everything somehow comes. We need to always remember the reason we

become a pianist is because we love music.

I like having photos with you. While the Leeds is all about the

talent of the future, for Lang Lang, there is one piano guru who has

nothing left to prove. Read it to me!

Dear Fanny, you are the best. Love as always, Lang Lang.

Ah, lovely. Lovely. Lang Lang is clearly thrilled to be

taking on this new role in the competition and that's no surprise

because for half a century the Leeds has been the place to spot

the stars of the future. Everyone of this year's finalists is hoping

to follow in the footsteps of previous winners, amazing pianists,

but what does it take to make a truly great concert pianist?

We look for breathing life into the great master work so it becomes

unpredictable, dangerous, full of rapture. That is to create it as if

it is being heard for the first time. The great artists are the

ones who can do that. The talent to be a great pianist comes from

inside. There is something individual. There is something that

everybody recognises as being your sound and your style.

They have this ability when they walk on the stage to make people

almost before they play a note realise something very, very

special is going to happen.. There are so many different sorts of

concert pianists, I mean there is Lang Lang who is a huge

international sensation. I would travel hundreds of miles just to

hear some play. I really like Louis Schwizgebel.

Whe we talk about speaking through the piano, he did it and not only

that, his personality was always glowing and he just made friends

with everybody in the audience. You need people to inspire the next

generation to keep going. When I was 12 I heard a pianist in Dublin

and I waited 45 minutes for him to come and my mother says I didn't

wash my hands for a week. They promote you and inspire you and you

say, "I want to do that." The piano legends of the past and

the present had a multitude of different musical personalities.

Each of them putting their unique stamp on a performance. So how do

this year's Leeds finalists measure up? Let's meet them now.

To begin the series from Switzerland, the refined playing of

Louis Schwizgebel with a performance of Beethoven's fourth

piano concerto. In next week's programme, Jiayan

Sun from China throws down the gauntlet with the violent concerto

number two. Beethoven's Emperor concerto is

always a competition favourite and in programme three, Jayson Gillham

brings classical elegance to these famous walls.

Andrejs Osokins follows hoping to impress with sheer brilliance in

another concerto. The Emperor makes a second

appearance in our penultimate programme under the fingers of

Federico Colli. And to end the series, American

American Andrew Tyson. Will his Six of the best young pianists from

around the world hoping to dazzle and beguile us. Well, throughout

the series we will be here to see each of them perform a concerto in

full with the the Halle orchestra. Beginning first tonight with the

first of our Leeds finalists. 24-year-old pianist, Louis

Schwizgebel is from Switzerland. This competition - I have always

wanted to compete at least once just to try because I think for

pianists it is one of the greatest. One thing I really like, you can

present what you like in terms of the programme. You can really show

your personality. You can really build your own programme for every

round. What kind of a pianist are you

presenting to the jury? What is it that you want to show them? I don't

think I am the kind of pianist that wants to impress with my technique.

I feel very close to them and for the semi-final I played a piece I

really like. It is funny, because I realised the other day, I have no

Russian music in my programme. It is not that I don't like this music,

I just feel more close to German and that's why I close Beethoven

number four for the final. All right. Louis has the chance to

go through the music with Sir Mark Elder.

Louis is extremely sensitive and he plays with a great deal of poetry

and he has chosen the right con One feels that he has to clear

identified with what this piece speaks undeterred the tenderness

and intimacy that suits his rather introverted -- introverted and new

Obst style. Do you think you can win the competition? I don't think

I have won it for the moment. I want to do the best, the best

concerto I can do. Do you really going to a competition not caring

about winning? It is better to concentrate only on the music, well,

The recipe for a concerto is pretty straightforward. So take one

soloist with plenty of swagger and mix together with an orchestra.

Serve it up in three movements, which goes something like this.

Fast, slow and fast again. So far, so simple. But when it is Beethoven

cocking it up, the concerto becomes a much more interesting dish --

cooking. A concerto should begin with a big and preferably loud tune

hammered out by the full orchestra but in the 4th concerto it is the

pianist who takes the lead, opening the piece so low. Not only that but

It is such a simple, beautiful idea, that. It is a startling beginning,

not the fireworks and audience might be expecting. Usually the

soloist gets a good few minutes to focus on what is ahead and gays in

artistic reverie into the middle distance while the orchestra gets

the crowd nicely warmed up for them. Here, the pianist has to take

charge from the start. It is completely exposed, this music.

There is simply nowhere to hide. It is a brave performer who chooses to

Rehearsals are in full swing for tonight's performance of

Beethoven's's 4th concerto. I have two expert guests, the pianists

Noriko Ogawa and Tom Poster. Tom, this is a heck of a concerto to

open the final with. It is no mean feat, is it? No, I think this

opening is a great gift in all of music, actually. It is like a

window opening on to the wonderfully intimate thoughts. It

is wonderfully difficult to war, and open in such a natural and

artless way that it requires, but it is such wonderful music. It is

the greatest concerto ever written, there is no greater. Noriko, you

have played on this stage, in 1987, you were a finalist. What will be

going through Louis Schwizgebel's mind that? I hope something happy,

not to be intimidated by the orchestra, not to be intimidated by

the grand atmosphere but to feel free and let everything out. What

do you think is the secret of coming on and taking the stage and

really feeling like you own it? would like to know really myself!

Well, I think we just have to feel this is really the opportunity for

us. Then he knows the concerto, so let it go, but is the way.

should be a fantastic performance. We are really looking forward to it.

For nearly three weeks, Leeds has been the centre of the piano world.

As the Town Hall opens its doors to this, the 17th concerto final,

there is a real sense of anticipation. For Louis Schwizgebel,

this could be the most important performers of his life. --

The task ahead, to seize the moment and convince a distinguished panel

of judges. Time to meet the people making the decisions, the Leeds

The overall standards of technical perfection are so dizzying, that

kind of prowess alone does not suffice to anoint a prizewinner.

You are looking for something unique, somebody with imagination,

somebody with flair, somebody with a stage personality. The great

ability to communicate that touch of magic. Something individual.

Among those people who all play so well, somebody who has a language,

somebody who says things differently. An ability as an actor,

as a dramatist, making the instrument not only sing but be

colourful and intense and have a wide emotional spectrum. Character,

personality, emotion and quality of sound. You can hear the most

regularly play piece of the repertoire and they make it sound a

new and you think, OK, this is somebody special. But they have to

get a majority of the jury to say I So here is 24-year-old Louis

Schwizgebel from Switzerland, the first to perform in the 2012 final

of the Leeds International Piano duo -- Planet competition. He has

followed on to stage by Sir Mark Elder, music director of the Halle

Orchestra, the orchestra led tonight by Lyn Fletcher. Louis

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 2049 seconds

Schwizgebel has chosen one of the He APPLAUSE. Louis Schwizgebel, the

first finalist to perform in this, the 17th Leeds International Piano

Competition. The Halle Orchestra, led by Lyn Fletcher, conducted by

Well, listening to that performance with me, the pianists Noriko Ogawa

and Tom Poster. Tom, earlier you said when we heard him playing in

rehearsals that Beethoven's forces pretty much the Supreme achievement.

Does it live up to expectations? thought his playing was musicianly,

and respectful to the score, which is crucial in Beethoven. It is not

music which needs a huge personality imposed on it. It is

music which speaks directly and he was respectful to Beethoven's Mark

King. I have to say are looking at him, he looked nervous, very sweaty,

a lot of sighing going on. I wondered if he ever really let go

during the performance? I felt it came alive in the last moment? --

movement? To start with I thought he was nervous and in the first

movement in particular I could have done with more dynamic range and a

bit of change of colour. But in the last movement, suddenly he really

cheered up and it was a very charming performance, as thought.

Is it enough to win the competition? There were moments

when I craved more freedom, more improvisation, which I think this

piece has and in the softer moments I wanted him to find that hounds

more fantasy. But there were so many admirable things, I thought.

There was a daring movement with a handkerchief, seconds before he was

about to play he mopped his brow. There was a magical moments in the

second movement, I thought. There was some new ideas as well, but to

win the competition you need a little bit more something, a bit

more on top, a thought. Thanks to both of you. We will catch up with

you in next week's episode. It is great to talk to. The finals of the

2012 Leeds International Piano Competition are well and truly

under way. The bar has been set and over the next five weeks we will

see how the rest of the finalists measure up. Join me at the same

time next week here on BBC Four, Friday night. Hit this is what you

have got to look forward to. 22- year-old Jiayan Sun from China

tackles the might of Prokofiev's Second Piano Concert of. It is an

enormous work and this young player, who studied at the Juli art, is

very up to the demands of it. moments of power. It was absolutely

amazing. He gave everything. take a look behind the scenes, as

an army of volunteers keep this competition afloat. We are trying

to give the appearance that we are like swans, swimming across the