Lara Melda (Ömeroğlu) - BBC Young Musician, 2010

[Dave]

May 17, 2010 12:50:55 GMT Jeff said:

There was some fantastic musical talent on TV on Saturday night and after the BBC Young Musician of the Year Semi-Final had finished, I turned over to Britain's Got Talent. From the sublime to the ridiculous !

Yes indeed Jeff, so sublime that I thought it deserved its own thread!

I watched this programme (well both of them in fact ) and after the 14 year old violinist Callum Smart's performance of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, I thought he had a good chance of winning it, he was very good, especially as he's only just turned 14! I still thought that after the 2nd finalist had performed, but that soon changed when the 3rd third finalist Lara started playing.

As you know, Lara Ömeroğlu took on one of the most fiendishly difficult piano concertos in the repertoire, Saint-Saëns' 2nd. Within minutes, I KNEW she would win it unless she fell to pieces - well she didn't, and she won. I was fairly unfamiliar with this piece but it had me transfixed, it was a phenomenal performance for a 16 year old; it simply took my breath away; we are going to hear a lot more of her in the future.

UK viewers can watch the entire final here at the BBC www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00shlyb/BBC_Young_Musician_2010_Final/ - for a quick definition of "fiendishly difficult", jump to 1h:22m, 1h 29m, or 1h 33m. I think you can listen to the radio recording Worldwide here (she starts at 1h 09s in). www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00schm9

Dave

I have edited the thread title to update Lara's name. [Dave]

[Jeff]

Thanks for that, Dave. Lara is definitely worth watching again.

[Dave]

Hi Jeff, and everyone who loves "classical" classical music,

I was so impressed by this star musician of the future that I have made up a couple of videos of her performance, the preliminaries and the presentations. She is on Youtube but sadly, it's broken up into four sections; I've done it all in one and of course at a high audio quality. There are some interesting contributions by Vasily Petrenko and others in the longer version.

There are a couple of links to Hayley and the first, of course, is the conductor Vasily Petrenko, to whom Hayley presented his award at the Classical BRITs not long after the Young Musician of the Year final was shown on TV.

The other is of course her age - 16 - the same age as Hayley when she first became Internationally known. Lara will soon become Internationally known too, I wonder which record company will take her on? She was born in London and lives there so it could be Decca... oh that's three things in common with Hayley!

The file sizes are huge (180MB to 575 MB depending on quality) so I have made up a 5 minute "taster". This preview is a mere 30MB, so you can download and see if you think you might like the complete versions.

Preview - Lara Ömeroğlu at BBC Young Musician of the Year final[/b] 5 minutes, 800 kbps, 30MB divx.

Full version (good quality) including the build-up and presentation 39 minutes, 1 mbps, 300MB divX

Saint Saens Piano Concerto no. 2 - only. Highest quality, 24minutes, 2mbps, 370MB

If they won't play after downloading, you may need VLC Player from here.

Trust me, this girl has more musical talent in the tips of her little fingers than the entire cast of Britain's got Talent could muster between them (and some of them are good!). Look out for the intensity of her facial and bodily expression as she finishes.

For the "failed" pianists among us like me, this is truly amazing stuff.

Cheers, Dave

[martindn]

WOW -she is good.

Martin D

[andym]

I joined the board just to say thank you for these videos. Your sentence "...phenomenal performance for a 16 year old" could be punchier. I'd just put a full stop after performance and leave it at that

What a talent.

Long may she retain that freshness and youthful joy.

Andy

[Dave]

Jun 5, 2010 13:30:24 GMT andym said:

I joined the board just to say thank you for these videos. Your sentence "...phenomenal performance for a 16 year old" could be punchier. I'd just put a full stop after performance and leave it at that

What a talent.

Long may she retain that freshness and youthful joy.

Andy

Hi Andy and welcome to the forum!

On reflection, I could have worded my praise for Lara better: "phenomenal performance, especially for a 16 year old" would have been better, I think.

But how did you find my Lara videos? Are you a secret Hayley fan, or did wou come across it in some other way? If it's the latter, I hope you will find a few things about Hayley in here, or on the HWI website or Youtube Channel that will interest you and encourage you to stick around.

The obvious similarity of Lara and Hayley is of course that they both came to fame in the UK at the age of 16 and just as Hayley has continued to improve in certain ways through the years, I am sure that Lara will too. Which is quite a thought!

Cheers, Dave

[andym]

Hi Dave,

"...especially for a 16 year old" works for me.

I came across the videos when chasing down Lara through Google. Like you, I was transfixed when watching her live but I had no good means to record the performance. I-player isn't particularly good so I went digging and found your stuff (really good job btw).

I think the parallels between Benjamin Grosvenor (keyboard finalist the year Nicola B won) and Lara are probably even closer than with Hayley W. He's just stepped out onto a serious concert career and has already made a well-received recording ("bits and pieces" I think it's called). But he's an old man of 17 while Lara is still young

It would be great if Lara were allowed to finish her studies and then make a concert career and record for someone like Hyperion or BIS...

BTW, there are several American readers of usenet (in rec.music.classical.recordings) who cannot use I-player because of the Beeb's UK-only policy. I'm sure they would love to see those videos. Any objections to my pointing them this way...?

Regards,

Andy

[Dave]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the background info, by all means point them here if you wish, you never know, we might even gain an extra Hayley fan out of it (that's why I'm here!)

I hope Lara can successfully balance the demands of education and career, it will not be easy.

By the way, it was good of you to join up, some would have simply downloaded it as a guest and said nothing, so thanks, little things like that are appreciated.

Cheers, Dave

[kihoalu]

www.streamtransport.com is good for downloading BBCi player items and then AVS Video Converter 6 to change it to a suitable format. That should work anywhere and then the file/s can be kept.
Lara! what a lovely musician. Modestly, I will declare that is was glaring obvious from the first few bars that here was someone most special. Literally my jaw dropped. That thought was confirmed by the rest of the performance. Never has a jury had such an easy decision to make! She is a delight to watch, clearly she is enjoying herself! - love that grin at the end of the second movement - but close your eyes and I defy you not to imagine that you are listening to an established pianist at the height of his/her powers.

[Dave]

Hi everyone,

Here is a blast from the past. As I am now allowed to upload to Youtube videos of unlimited length, I can finally put the video of Lara's amazing performance as a 16 year old up on my personal channel. It is her winning performance of the Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 2 at the BBC Young Musician of The Year final, 2010. It is one of the most difficult piano concertos in the entire classical repertoire.

Lara is now known as Lara Melda, her first two birth names and a bit easier to pronounce than Ömeroğlu! She is a concert pianist now aged 22, who regularly performs in Turkey, has performed in the UK at for example The Barbican, and continues to study at the Royal College of Music according to Wikipedia. Here is the video, with presentations and an interview at the end. Not to be missed by classical music lovers, the previous YT uploads by others are all at the lowest 240p quality setting, but not this one - choose 720p or 1080p for the best audio quality.



Cheers, Dave