Milda Daunoraite – youthful charm and ease
It was the same innocence of simple music making that I had heard from Milda in Perivale recently that was the hallmark of her recital for the Keyboard Trust .Such a refreshing ‘joie de vivre’ of a young pianist who actually looks carefully at the score and with crystalline technical ease can imbue the music with youthful charm and energy. The same innocent charm that she shared with Prof Leslie Howard in their brief post concert slightly one sided conversation. Charmed he was too! Especially having enjoyed her performances of Beethoven, Debussy and Bartòk where she had delved deeply into the score and translated what she had found into sounds of such buoyancy and well oiled fluency. It was good to be reminded by Prof. Howard that Bartòk had written his Sonata with the Imperial Bosendorfer in mind – a piano that can be bewildering with its 97 keys- the extra keys painted black or even covered by a wooden box! It can be very disconcerting to a pianist that is used to navigating the standard keyboard. The nine extra keys are coloured black so the pianist can distinguish them from the standard 88. The keys are rarely used, but the extra bass strings add harmonic resonance that contributes to the rich, overall sound of the instrument.
