A PIANISTIC FIRECRACKER

A lunchtime recital by Tali Morgulis,
enjoyed by MALCOLM TROUP

After 48 cliff-hanging hours of getting the final proofs of the Piano Journal off to the printers, I felt I owed myself a spot of music therapy. What better than Tali Morgulis' lunchtime recital in St Martin-in-the-Fields [Friday 2 November 2007 in London] and, what is more, part of our own BPSE (Beethoven Piano Society of Europe) series? Very much the luck of the draw since I knew next to nothing of her whence-and-whither save that, born in the Ukraine, she had trained in Israel and was now a professor in Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas USA. Julian Jacobson of our BPSE Committee had heard her in the 2003 'Svetislav Stancic' International Piano Competition in Zagreb, Croatia, where he had served as a jury-member and where she had won First Prize with only one abstention -- a recommendation not to be ignored.

When I went in search of her to the artists' changing-room adjacent to the performing area, she was nowhere to be seen -- only three workmen crowded into that confined space. Upstairs likewise nary a trace until some kind soul volunteered that she had been seen huddled in a side-pew of the church proper. There I found her giving me the sunniest of smiles with no hint of reproach at having been received with such little ceremony.

Now it was time to begin and a good lady-churchwarden came forward to explain at length to the public something of the history of this great landmark, to exhort us to give generously in the closing collection, and to switch off our mobiles -- seemingly oblivious to the irony that the scaffolding around the church was humming with electric drills, buzz-saws and the like as part of a general refurbishment. Through the great window above the altar one could see shadows wafting to and fro, easily mistaken for angelic apparitions were it not for the paint-pots and ladders they were carrying.

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