Menlo: Nicolas van Pouke

I’m taking Jayson’s point when he responded to Monday’s blog and, while I assure him that every effort is made to keep the Boredom Quotient as low as possible, I’m going to yield the floor to someone whose B.Q. is in deep negative numbers.

He’s Nicolas van Pouke, all of 13 years old, who came from the Netherlands to study piano at Music@Menlo. Ten, twenty years from now the people at this year’s Festival are going to say “We heard him in ’06…” This kid is an animal, and after a concert last night he came up to me and asked if I’d like to listen to his performance at the finals of the Princess Christina Competition in his native Holland this spring. Very shyly he handed me this CD.

Here he is playing the first movement of a Haydn Sonata (Hob. XVI: 50) live in front of judges and audience in The Hague. I’d bet this month’s rent that Nicolas, who hasn’t started to shave yet, is going places. Let me know what you think, Jayson.

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Listen to Nicolas van Pouke perform the first movement of a Haydn Sonata

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