Fou Ts’ong Remembered
Students of Patsy Toh: Firoze Madon, piano and Magdalene Ho, piano
Sunday 3rd October 2021 7.30 pm (doors open from 7pm)
£20 (£10 under 25s)
For bookings please email [email protected]
Programme
Scarlatti – Sonatas K.213 and K.184
Ravel – “Ondine” from Gaspard de la nuit
Kapustin – Concert Etude, Op.40 No.3, “Toccatina”
Chopin – Ballade No.4, Op.52
Bach – Prelude and Fugue in C sharp minor Bk.2
Ligeti – Etude no.6 Automne a Varsovie
Chopin – Bacarolle op.60
Liszt – Apres une lecture du Dante (Fantasia quasi sonata)
Chinese-born pianist Patsy Toh has taught at the Royal Academy of Music since 1975, and became a Fellow in 1995. Patsy was born in Shanghai in 1940 and, at the age of 8, she won first prize in the Hong Kong Music Competition and in 1952 at the age of 12 she came went to study at Westonbrirt School in England and entered the Royal Academy of Music at 16. Having won the Royal Overseas League Competition in Patsy was awarded a scholarship to study withYvonne Lefébure at the Paris Conservatoire, where she won a Premier Prix. She also studied with Alfred Cortot, Dame Myra Hess, and Aube Tzerko (a pupil of Artur Schnabel). She has often performed as a pianist in Europe, China, and the Americas and taught as a professor of piano at the Royal Academy of Music the Purcell School for Young Musicians. Patsy Toh is a regular visiting professor to music conservatories in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, and has taught at Yehudi Menuhin Schools. Patsy was married to the legendary Chineese pianist Fou Ts’ong.
Born to Malaysian parents, Magdalene Ho’s prodigious talent for music was evident from a very early age. At the age of nine, she was accepted by the Purcell School and together with sponsorship and a scholarship was able to come and study in the UK. In 2017, she performed Mendelssohn’s G minor piano concerto with the Oxford Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Robert Max. The review described her “mastery of the keyboard as spellbinding”.Magdalene has been awarded prizes at various festivals. In August 2018 she won the Classical Prize plus a CD recording for KNS Classical at a summer course in Fulda Germany and was given a recital in Fulda later in that Autumn. Her recording of Bach and Messiaen was distributed by Amazon and Spotify in 2019. At Purcell School she is also in great demand as a chamber musician and has performed in many venues outside of the school.
Firoze started piano lessons at the age of six and was successful in gaining an MDS scholarship to join the Purcell School for Young Musicians in 2014. At the school he studies piano with Patsy Toh, as well as violin, composition and chamber music.
Firoze has performed many times across the UK and internationally. In 2019, he was invited to play at the Elgar Room, Royal Albert Hall and the Cité de la Musique, Paris. The following year engagements included the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. This year he has performed at the Royal Over-Seas League, London and South Hill Park Arts Centre, Bracknell.
In 2020 Firoze was awarded a Gold Medal at the St Petersburg International Online Piano Competition and was a laureate of the WPTA (Singapore) International Piano Competition and Milano ‘Piano Talents’ International Competition. Recently he was a prize winner at the 2021 Windsor International Piano Competition in the UK.