Piano Magnificence With Nicholas Angelich

The American-born pianist Nicholas Angelich will be in Singapore on March 31 to perform Schumann's magnificent Piano Concerto with the SSO. The up-and-coming pianist, who will turn 37 this year, began studying the piano with his mother at five and gave his first concert at seven. At 13 Angelich entered the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris where he studied with Aldo Ciccolini, Yvonne Loriod, Michel Beroff, and won the First Prize for piano and chamber music.

Angelich won the Second Prize of the 1989 International Piano Competition R. Casadesus in Cleveland. Success and fame followed quickly when he was awarded First Prize at the prestigious 1994 International Piano Competition Gina Bachauer. In 1996 he was invited as a resident of the International Piano Foundation of Cadennabia in Italy, and in 2002 he received the International Klavierfestival Ruhr - Young Talent Award in Germany from master pianist Leon Fleischer.

To commemorate Elgar's 150th birth anniversary, the orchestra will also perform his Second Symphony. Described by Elgar as "the passionate pilgrimage of a soul", the work was partly inspired by a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, and dedicated to the memory of the recently deceased King Edward VII. -- www.sso.org.sg