There is a lot to be impressed with when Will Pickvance takes to the piano.
Here we have a colossal talent of the instrument – classically trained yet liberated through the familiarity of rule-breaking.
“Part recital, part dissection” as it's billed, it is also part storytelling; there is an undercurrent of childhood energy to his show as he recounts his passion to go into outer space before being presented with the instrument of his destiny.
The music henceforth goes stellar at points as he plonks out honkytonk mash-ups at light-speed or plinks through delicately twinkling passages.
There is little cohesion, though, and concertgoers should be prepared to embrace a somewhat scatty march through a variety of piano music, albeit executed excellently.
There are other less impressive bits; his narrative sits somewhere between fact and fiction as he talks of “radials” being the strings and “mesials” and “distals” as the keys (when they are dental terms).
He jumps between an elegant grand piano and a borrowed upright to teach the workings of each, though some of this is lost in the cavernous space of St Paul’s, a new aspect to The Warren this year.
This is an amusing, interesting show, well worth a look, but not perhaps the performance you would expect.
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