Maki Sekiya

MAKI SEKIYA (piano)

L van Beethoven

Waldstein Sonata (Op 53)

Mussorgsky

Pictures at an Exhibition                          

Maki Sekiya

Virtuoso pianist Maki Sekiya is in her third year as Musician-in-Residence at Green-Templeton College, Oxford. She was born in Tokyo, studied at The Purcell School and Moscow Conservatoire, and has won many prizes in Italy, Japan, Spain, Ukraine, Bulgaria & Georgia. She gained honours (full marks) in her Performance Diploma at Guildhall School of Music & Drama.

Beethoven’s popular Waldstein Sonata is a finely crafted but technically exacting work from his middle years, written in the heroic manner. It is also known as L’Aurora for the dawn-like opening of its third movement. A good way to mark his anniversary.

Maki will then play the colourful and evocative Pictures at an Exhibition by the highly original composer, Mussorgsky, in the extremely demanding original version for piano. You will experience many images – from a gnome, chicks, cattle, through a castle, market, catacombs, children’s games in the gardens, portraits of two Jewish men, through to a witch’s hut and The (never built) Great Gate of Kiev. Maki’s pianism will bring these splendidly to life, perhaps even more than the Viktor Hartmann paintings that inspired the work.