Piano (C4) and GoggleBox

[Gordon Freeman]

Anyone watching The Piano on C4?

I don't like talent contests so what I like about this one is that
the participants don't even know it's effectivaly a contest, they
just come along to train stations to play the piane supposedly for a
C4 documentary and only find out afterwards that the world's
greatest pianist (Lang Lang, allegedly) and the world's greatest
has-been (Mika) have been judging them.

In fact everyone wins a prize (VIP ticket to the Royal Festival
Hall), even the duo (ironically music students) who are now awaiting
extradition to Sweden for murdering Abba's Dancing Queen (who let us
not forgot was only 17).

Anyhow I loved the first edition at St Pancreas, as the judges
noted, the 92 year old pianist playing the Lady is a Tramp was more
youthful than the 11 year old mouth-breather playing Prokofiev (sp?)
(Funny how all TV programmes now seem to have Ukrainians in them! Is
there something we should know about that bread basket of the world
and wholesale supplier of the Europe's most beautiful models? I'm
scratching my head as you never hear about this country, do you?)

Episode two was in Leeds and we saw a huge jump in both better and
worse with the aforementioned Abba murderers pitted against the by-
now famous 13 year old blind autistic butterfly-wearing Lucy who had
Lang Lang as open-mouthed as the Ukrainian boy in the first episode.

I'm not a fan of GoggleBox but TBH it was even more fascinating
watching Lucy's performance through their eyes than my own. I've
long since ceased to be impressed by people suffering from that
fashionable ailment, autism, shaking their heads from side to side,
but watching GoggleBox I realised that although I had been impressed
by the absolute ability of Lucy, who Lang Lang implied played better
than many concert pianists, seeing the reactions of the (always
Northern?) Goggleboxers even before she started playing made me
realise that given her disabilities it was amazing that she could
play the piano at all, let alone play the notes with such contrast
and feeling.

Anyhow at leat there's something worth watching on TV at last, at
least for now.

[Chris J Dixon]

Gordon Freeman wrote:

>Anyone watching The Piano on C4?
>
>I don't like talent contests so what I like about this one is that
>the participants don't even know it's effectivaly a contest, they
>just come along to train stations to play the piane supposedly for a
>C4 documentary and only find out afterwards that the world's
>greatest pianist (Lang Lang, allegedly) and the world's greatest
>has-been (Mika) have been judging them.
>
>In fact everyone wins a prize (VIP ticket to the Royal Festival
>Hall), even the duo (ironically music students) who are now awaiting
>extradition to Sweden for murdering Abba's Dancing Queen (who let us
>not forgot was only 17).

I was distracted during the Glasgow episode because they used two
different pianos, the 3-pedal one whose brand I can't make out,
and a 2-pedal Steinway.

Looking at the group afterwards, there are clearly some
performances left on the cutting room floor.

Chris
--
Chris J Dixon Nottingham UK
ch...@cdixon.me.uk @ChrisJDixon1

Plant amazing Acers.

[Gordon Freeman]

Chris J Dixon <ch...@cdixon.me.uk> wrote:
>
> I was distracted during the Glasgow episode because they used two
> different pianos, the 3-pedal one whose brand I can't make out,
> and a 2-pedal Steinway.
>
> Looking at the group afterwards, there are clearly some
> performances left on the cutting room floor.

That's probably a good thing! Each episode seems to have about 20
people in it and I think it makes sense to focus on the best ones,
some of the worse ones would probably cringe to see themselves on TV
afterwards. I wonder how long it takes to film each episode - it
must be more than one day if they had more than one piano? With the
need to have several camera crews you'd think they would want to get
the whole thing shot in a single session.

The idea that Mika and Lang Lang spend hours trying to agree who to
pick seems rather trumped up, all three winners so far have ended up
being the obvious ones that they had been going doo-lally about.

I agreed with their choice of winner in Glasgow (Sean), but Mika was
rather patronising I thought, a guy who hasn't had an album out in
10 years giving a pep talk on performing to a guy who is obviously
quite a showman, I mean none of the other participants have stood on
the piano stool at the end to take a bow and tell everyone their
name!

It was a bit odd having a girl who couldn't perform if people were
watching, a piano in Glasgow train station was not exactly the best
place for a shy performner! Maybe she didn't know she was going to
get stage fright until it happened though. Claudia was on a hiding
to nothing trying to get all the passers-by to look the other way!

[Gordon Freeman]

Gordon Freeman <Gor...@freeman.invalid> wrote:

> I agreed with their choice of winner in Glasgow (Sean), but Mika
was
> rather patronising I thought,

Just to follow myself up, it also bugs me that Mika keeps
"explaining" things to Lang Lang which he surely already knows, he
acts as if Lang Lang knows nothing beyond classical music, yet it
was Lang Lang who noted that Sean's playing style mimicked a
computer programmed keyboard!

I know this kind of thing is done as a device to explain things to
clueless viewers but it is being done so clumsily, Mika should shut
up and let the keyboard expert explain everything to him for a
change.