One of the best young musicians in the country right now is pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason. This 2013 performance provides amazing insight into her growing abilities.
Meet a 10-year-old who performed a Chopin piece that belied her age, demonstrating her complete command of the instrument.With fast-paced, rolling broken chords in the left hand and flowing semi-quavers in the right, the Fantaisie-Impromptu is a composition for solo piano. The 1834 daydream demonstrates Chopin’s whole literary virtuosity, poetry, and creativity.
Even with its complexity and intricacy, a gifted pianist will be able to control the notes. But like the best musical performances, what really moves listeners is the expression, feeling, and poetry that go beyond the notes.
And that’s precisely what this gifted child gave us ten years ago. A five-minute glimpse into the musical prowess of a prodigy who has already accomplished great things is provided.
The young player is Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, who is the third youngest of the family’s seven siblings.Her father Stuart Mason filmed it for the family’s YouTube channel, which has shown off the two brothers’ and five sisters’ nearly extraordinary musical prowess as they have grown up surrounded by music.
One YouTube viewer said of Jeneba’s performance, “Jeneba plays Chopin with sensitivity and maturity beyond her tender age of only 10.”
Another said, “Such technical ability and such emotion.”This video was shot a few months after the young pianist obtained Grade 8 Distinction and won the Nellie Greenhill Memorial Prize from the Associated Board for the highest marks in the Nottingham area.
Now twenty years old, Jeneba is a student at the Royal College of Music, where she is taught piano by Vanessa Latarche and is the recipient of the Victoria Robey Scholarship.
Her abilities now encompass playing exquisite piano concertos, as evidenced by her recent performances of the concertos by Tchaikovsky, Ravel, and Saint-Saëns, as well as Florence Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement performed with the Chineke! Orchestra.
In 2022, Jeneba was one of the young artists featured at Classic FM’s Rising Stars with Julian Lloyd Webber. Below, you can watch her electrifying rendition of Liszt’s lively Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.
Only in the last ten years has this innate skill and poetic sense in music-making increased. She is a very talented musician to keep an eye on in the future.