This is amazing. Young Japanese man Jan Lisiecki, blind from birth, plays Rachmaninov Symphony No 2… it’s that incredibly moving music that was used in the film ‘Brief Encounter’.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03751km/BBC_Proms_2013_Proms_on_Four_Friday_Night_at_the_Proms_BBC_Philharmonic_Orchestra/
Really worth watching. Very inspiring.
Pat x (hope link works… if it doesn’t you can find it on BBC iplayer).
I turned on the radio in the car yesterday, and it was the end of a Proms concert recording of a Rachmaninov piano concerto, and when it was finished, the announcer casually mentioned the way that this Japanese pianist commits the music to memory: he finds Braille scores rather slow going, apparently, and the repertoire in this format is limited anyway, so her prefers just to listen to a recorded version of each hand’s part and learn it by ear… I nearly drove off the road! Never heard of the guy before. What an absolutely amazing thing. Mind you, even sighted concert pianists are pretty astonishing.
Alison