About this Event
Join us for Morning Calm with Lan Hu, pianist from the Royal College of Music, who will be playing Takashi Yoshimatsu's Pleiades Dances
Dates: Daily Monday - Friday
Time: 8.40-8.55am
Location: St George's Hanover Square, St George Street, W1
Morning Calm is a short piano recital beginning at 8.40am, consisting of around 10-12 minutes of music followed by a few minutes' silence for reflection and meditation before ending with brief prayers for the day ahead. You are most welcome to stay for the whole recital or if you would prefer not to stay for the Christian conclusion to leave just before the end. Morning Calm aims to offer a reflective and calm start to the day for people of any faith or none in the hustle and bustle of the West End of London.
As always admission is free.
Lan Hu is a Chinese concert pianist whose international career spans solo recitals, concerto appearances and curated lecture-recitals across Europe and Asia. She pursued her higher musical training at the Royal Northern College of Music, the Royal College of Music and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, studying under Professors Dina Parakhina and Deniz Gelenbe.
A prize‑winner of the Shanghai International Piano Competition (First Prize) and recipient of the RNCM Gold Medal award, Lan has performed at notable venues including St James’s Piccadilly, Victoria Baths, Steinway Hall London, Torre de Canyamel in Mallorca, Shenzhen Concert Hall, Nanshan Culture Hall and the National Taiwan University of Arts Concert Hall. She was invited by the Taichung City Bureau of Culture to perform the Yellow River Piano Concerto at Huludun Cultural Centre, earning wide public and critical acclaim.
Supported by cultural institutions across China and Europe, she has presented more than ten lecture-recitals exploring musical interpretation alongside live performance. Since 2022, she has also appeared as a visiting artist for the Yuto Foundation, delivering solo recitals at charitable events.
Takashi Yoshimatsu (b. 18 March 1953, Tokyo) is one of Japan’s most significant neo‑romantic contemporary composers. Largely self‑taught, he briefly studied engineering at Keio University before abandoning serial and atonal aesthetics dominant in 1970s Japanese avant‑garde, developing his personal aesthetic of “New Lyricism” that prioritises melodic warmth, modal‑tonal harmony, and freely assimilated influences from progressive rock, jazz, and Japanese folk idioms. His output spans symphonies, concertos, chamber and solo repertoire, characterised by vivid pictorial imagination and open‑textured sonority.
Pleiades Dances (1986‑2001, Op.27‑85) is his monumental nine‑volume solo‑piano cycle, named for the Pleiades star cluster, known in Japanese as Subaru. Each suite contains seven independent miniatures, conceived by Yoshimatsu as a modern re‑imagining of Bach’s Inventions and a contemporary set of preludes: imaginary, stylised dances existing in a dream‑like, conceptual space rather than real‑world dance forms. The cycle employs fluid, frequently shifting metres, pandiatonic and modal harmonies, pentatonic inflections, and deliberately generous interpretive latitude for performers, making it one of the most performed bodies of late‑20th‑century Japanese piano literature.
Event venue & nearby stays
St George's Hanover Square, St George Street, W1, St George's Hanover Square, London, United Kingdom
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