Two-pianist Recital at Music Club

Cowal Music Club is looking forward to a beautiful programme of piano music featuring both solo pieces and piano duets at its concert on Sunday next, March 23rd, at 2.30pm in Dunoon’s Burgh Hall.

Both pianists, Naho Hayashi (from Japan), and Mianoora Kosonen (from Finland), have recently completed their studies with Honours/Masters degrees in Performance at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS), where they met.

Naho performed for Cowal Music Club with her Trio just 2 years ago, at a concert which was a resounding success. She started to learn the piano early at the age of just 3, and has also already had a successful career as a Management Consultant  at Deloitte in Tokyo, but her interest in piano playing was rekindled by a trip to the town in Majorca where the famous Polish composer Chopin spent the winter of 1838/39. At the RCS she studied with Graeme McNaught, and apart from teaching the piano in Glasgow she was organist at Kelvinbridge Parish church and accompanies the Glasgow Philharmonic Male Voice Choir.

Mianoora first studied piano at the Helsinki Conservatoire where she graduated in 2016, and more recently at RCS in Glasgow, where her she gained her BMus (Hons) Performance degree in 2021. She is a founding member of the Oscen Ensemble and the Women in Chamber Music Collective, and recent concert appearances and projects have included recitals at Linlithgow, Irvine, Oban, Cathedral of the Isles (Millport), St Conan’s Kirk, and  St Bride’s, Jordanhill, and Wellington churches in Glasgow. She has been described as “an experienced, qualified and compassionate musician, performer, and educator, whose enthusiasm is infectious”.  And she states,   “As a pianist I most enjoy a good collaboration with another musician” – exactly what is planned for Sunday’s recital.

The programme for Sunday’s concert is highly attractive and varied, including Bach’s English Suite no 3, Faure’s famous ‘Dolly Suite’  for piano-duet (with the famous ‘Berceuse’), and after an interval,  Nordic Music including wonderful descriptive pieces by the outstanding Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, and 3 very effective movements (as piano duets) from Edward Grieg’s ever-popular ‘Peer Gynt Suite no 1’. 

It promises to be a fascinating and highly enjoyable afternoon!