Ten-year-old piano prodigy Ayaan Deshpande wowed Ahmedabad’s Western classical music aficionados at a Symphony Orchestra of India (SOI) concert at Natarani on Saturday. Clad in a silk red suit vest and bowtie, the curly-haired youngster played Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.21, a difficult, but very popular score. Composed in 1785, when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was 29 years old, this romantic piece has been used in numerous movies and ads.
Through the 30-minute performance, Ayaan’s fingers flew over the keyboards, as he played in harmony with the violins and cellos of the SOI Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Barbara Poplawska. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.21, nicknamed Elvira Madigan, after a 1967 Swedish film which used it as a theme, has three very distinct movements, and Ayaan has mastered all of them.
A student of the SOI Music Academy in Mumbai, Ayaan came into his own as a classical pianist during the Covid epidemic. He made his debut on stage in Mumbai at the age of seven in 2021 with Scarlatti’s Sonata in C Major. He has since played in Viena, the city where Mozart lived composed much of his music.
At the age of five, Ayaan’s initial grounding was in Indian classical music but it was soon evident that he was a natural at the keyboard. His mother Ashwini and father Tanmay, who is a mathematician at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, enrolled him for a piano course in the SOI Academy, where his teachers recognised him as a prodigy.
Ayaan’s performance in Ahmedabad was attended by many young students of Western classical music. In her introduction, Natarani director Mallika said the concert would be a “treat,” which it certainly was. SOI has been coming to Natarani for three years now and its concerts are now a high point in the city’s cultural calendar.
While Ayaan was the star of the hour-long concert, SOI Chamber Orchestra also performed several other short pieces on Saturday, ending with a lively saxophone piece. Today (Sunday), the orchestra will perform several light pieces, including Vivaldi’s Concerto for four Violins, Sibelius’ Romanze, Dag Wiren’s Serenade for Strings, Bach’s Menuet and Badinerie and Fiedman’s Let’s Be Happy.
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