A prodigy cometh

It’s easy to laugh at clickbait.

But what is more attention-grabbing: “The Kanneh-Masons are musical PRODIGIES!” or “demonstrating musical insight, technical acuity and an engaging performing persona” and “maturity in performance and interpretation … an uncanny phenomenon”?

The latter are descriptions of 23-year-old British pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason by the European classical music press, which has an uncanny knack for sounding like stuffy Victorians.

The first quote is the title of a 2015 Britain’s Got Talent YouTube video for a performance that helped bring Kanneh-Mason and her siblings to international fame.

The family makes other groups of classical sibling performers, such as the Mozarts, Bachs and the Mendelssohns, look puny by comparison. There are seven Kanneh-Mason siblings, ranging in age from 16 to 29, who play either violin, piano or cello.

“I actually haven’t watched (Britain’s Got Talent) for years,” Kanneh-Mason says from a tour stop in Minneapolis. “We did discuss whether or not we wanted to go on it, like, ‘Oh, is it a place really for classical music?’”

The experience was ultimately a formative one.

“I really felt it opened the world of classical music for me in a broader sense. It also meant that we worked out how to play together — all seven of us siblings — and arrange pop songs and popular classical pieces,” the U.K.-based pianist says.

Many of her siblings have gone on to successful international solo careers.

Kanneh-Mason, for her part, is in the middle of North American tour, with a stop Wednesday in Winnipeg with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra. Dances of Dreams is her second concert with the MCO in the past couple years.

“I really felt (appearing on Britain’s Got Talent) opened the world of classical music for me in a broader sense.”

While she’s happy to have entered a more rarefied world than TV talent shows, Kanneh-Mason is a musician comfortable in both the popular and classical worlds.

She says she’s currently listening to a lot of Doechii and Marvin Gaye. As for her favourite classical hits, she singles out composers known not just for keyboard works but earworming melodies: Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev and Chopin.

“I imagine I would have had a different answer a year ago, really,” she says with a laugh.

It can be easy to fall for the composers whose scores are on your music stand every day, though eventually interests can start to wander.

Chopin is her current fixation. In Minneapolis, last week she performed recitals of Chopin’s intimate Ballades No. 3 and 4, while she performs his grand Piano Concerto No. 2 with the MCO. Chopin, famous for his elegant, cascading melodies that sing like a human voice, was better known for his solo piano works and wrote only a handful of pieces involving orchestra.

This is the first time in recent memory that the MCO, Winnipeg’s premier chamber orchestra, will perform Chopin. It does so under the baton of American guest conductor Jeri Lynne Johnson, who leads the orchestra in three pieces. The first is William Grant Still’s Danzas de Panama, rich with Panamanian folk melodies, and an MCO-commissioned work entitled make me new by Kati Agócs.

Kanneh-Mason will then join the MCO to present one of Chopin’s most singular pieces.

“I think that what attracted me to it is that it I feel like with Chopin’s concertos, it consists of so many different elements of his style of composition,” she says.

“Miniatures like his nocturnes and mazurkas — it kind of combines all of these different elements into this one beautiful concerto. It’s really pianistic and satisfying to play.”

Kanneh-Mason says she’s glad to be back in Winnipeg and enjoys the intimacy of the MCO’s concerts, which typically unfold in the elegant but cosy Crescent Arts Centre, as this one does.

While she’s gone on to have a remarkable solo career, this has meant performing less with her siblings and a lot of travelling alone, which can be lonely she adds.

For that reason, she prefers to play close to home. (She grew up in Nottingham, where the family is based, but spends a lot of time in London for music.)

Prestigious venues, such as Nottingham Concert Hall, Wigmore Hall and Royal Albert Hall, are among her favourite places to perform.

“I remember feeling Winnipeg is a very, very friendly place, with a really, really friendly orchestra. I felt very comfortable there, which is not always the case.”

“When I’m performing near home, a lot of my family and friends will come. It’s nice to speak to them after the performance — there’s just more weight to the performance, though I don’t play differently,” she says

Touring soloists are also often plunged into unfamiliar group dynamics with minimal rehearsal, but when it clicks, Kanneh-Mason says a performance can spark instant connections.

“I remember feeling Winnipeg is a very, very friendly place, with a really, really friendly orchestra. I felt very comfortable there, which is not always the case,” she says.

“I really felt that there was this energy in the room, which was really special. So, I really hope that there can be that feeling again in the audience this time.”

winnipegfreepress.com/conradsweatman