A nine-year-old girl goes on stage to make her concerto debut in Mozart's Rondo for piano and orchestra in D Major, K. 382 but as she steps onto the stage she trips and sends things flying. Rather than crying and giving up, she smiled and carried on.
That little girl was pianist Alexandra Dariescu and now, 30 years, later, her latest disc (her tenth album), A Child's Dream on Signum Classics, celebrates this by opening with Mozart's Rondo, written when he was just 17, performed with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. The disc mixes pieces that Dariescu has played all her performing life alongside new works and discoveries.
Last night (3/2/2026) A Child's Dream was launched at the Romanian Cultural Institute in London with a short recital from Dariescu preceded by a discussion between her and Simon Webb, Head of Orchestras and Choirs at the BBC, and finishing with celebratory drinks and cake!
Dariescu talked about being blessed not only with a supportive family but also by being adopted by the UK. She explained that at the age of 17 she won a competition which took her to study at a school in the middle of Yorkshire. There the careers master encouraged her to take an audition at the Royal Northern College of Music. There result was a scholarship at the RNCM, and she followed this by studying at the Guildhall School, where she returned more recently for their creative entrepreneurship course.
She wanted the disc to not only reflect the pieces that she performed during her childhood and throughout her performing life, but also to reflect the diversity of the society we live in, so the mix includes female composers, contemporary composers and composers of colour. There is a new piece by the American composer James Lee III whom Dariescu met and bonded with whilst performing in Detroit and the result was a new concerto, Shades of Unbroken Dreams, commissioned by the Detroit Symphony and the BBC Philharmonic. After this, Lee wrote her a short piano solo, Humble Birth which is on the disc.
More unusual repertoire on the disc came about partly because during Lockdown, with no concerts, Dariescu set herself the task of finding new and rare repertoire with the emphasis on neglected women composers. Emmy Schäfer Klein is a composer about whom so little is known. She published her Christmas Album in 1882 and Dariescu plays A Child's Dream from this on the album
The Mozart Rondo was recorded with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, performing without a conductor which Dariescu described as requiring a different type of listening. After the performance and subsequent recording she became good friends with the orchestra, had cake and all was well. Two other works on the disc involve members of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Cellist Richard Harwood joins Dariescu for Nadia Boulanger's Three Pieces for Cello and Piano, whilst violinist Tomo Keller joins her for Clara Schumann's late masterpiece, her Three Romances for Violin and Piano which were written for Clara's friend violinist Joseph Joachim.
After saying that she hopes everything she does will inspire the next generation, and commenting that she hoped the album put a smile on our faces, she sat down and played three pieces from the disc. Emmy Schäfer Klein's charming A Child's Dream, James Lee III's highly atmospheric Humble Birth (which almost had Michael Tippett-like hints at times) and a Romanian folk dance by Tudor Ciortea (1903–1982), a composer who studied with Nadia Boulanger and Paul Dukas. Vigorous and highly rhythmic, the work was evidently Dariescu's party piece as a child.
A Child's Dream is released on 6 February 2026. Full details from Signum Records website.
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