Join us today for a pro­gramme of piano music — main­ly clas­si­cal but not entirely.

In addi­tion to some amaz­ing piano con­cer­tos and oth­er clas­si­cal works, we’ll also be play­ing pieces like the “Den­ham Con­cer­tos” — pieces writ­ten to cap­i­talise on the suc­cess of Richard Addin­sel­l’s War­saw Con­cer­to from the film Dan­ger­ous Moon­light (the film-mak­ers asked Rach­mani­nov to write a piece but he declined). These include Clive Richard­son’s Lon­don Fan­ta­sia, orig­i­nal­ly to be titled Coven­try Fan­ta­sia after the Mid­land city severe­ly dam­aged in the Blitz of Novem­ber 1940, but his pub­lish­ers told him that Lon­don would sell bet­ter. This tremen­dous work musi­cal­ly traces a day in the life of a city at war.

There are oth­er piano pieces from the movies too, but in addi­tion there’s light music, solo and orches­tral works, music-hall pieces arranged for piano, and much more. Do tune in!

Image: “piano keys” by mararie licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0