Premiere of Eleanor Alberga's piano concerto, commissioned by Royal Liverpool Philharmonic for Leeds Piano Competition winner Alim Beisembayev

Alim Beisembayev (Photo: Nabin Maharjan)

Kazakhstan-born pianist Alim Beisembayev won First Prize at The Leeds International Piano Competition in September 2021, along with the medici.tv Audience Prize and a new prize, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society Prize for contemporary performance. This led the orchestra to commission a new work especially for Beisembayev, from the eminent Jamaican-born British composer, Eleanor Alberga, who will also be a Jury member of the 2024 Competition later this year.

Alberga's Piano Concerto will be premiered by Alim Beisembayev with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Domingo Hindoyan on 25 April 2024 at the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool as part of a concert that includes a suite from Roussel's Bacchus and Ariadne and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5.

Alberga's concerto, her first piano concerto, has grown from solo works for piano and thematically draws on her life story. I chatted to Eleanor Alberga back in 2022 about her music and her Jamaican heritage, see my interview.

Full details from the Liverpool Philharmonic website.