Recital: Amber Emson – violin Leah Nicholson – piano

The Programme

Amber Emson – violin
Leah Nicholson – piano

Sonata for violin and piano, Op 12 No 1 in D major
i. Allegro con brio
ii. Tema con variazioni: Andante con moto
iii. Rondo: Allegro

Sonata No 2, Op 100 in A major
i. Allegro amabile
ii. Andante tranquillo – Vivace
iii. Allegretto grazioso (quasi andante)

The Artists

Amber Emson and Leah Nicholson met at Chetham’s School for Music and are currently both scholarship students at the Royal Academy of Music. Leah Nicholson was born in 2001 and began studying with Galina Sandovskaya in St Petersburg, Russia, before continuing her musical education at Chetham’s School of Music in the UK with John Gough and Dr Murray McLachlan. In 2018 Leah was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Schools of Music in Solo Piano Performance Diploma (FRSM with Distinction) and has since won a scholarship to further her studies at the Royal Academy of Music, where she studies with Professor Tessa Nicholson.

She has won top prizes at numerous competitions internationally and throughout the UK, including the 2014 International Chopin Festival in Mazovia, Poland, Polyphonica International Competition in St Petersburg, Russia, the Scottish International Youth Piano Competition, the Loretto James Waterhouse Piano Competition, EPTA Piano Competition UK and Chetham’s Bösendorfer Piano Competition. Leah is also the youngest ever winner of the Keldwyth Young Musicians Award.

Amber Emson started playing violin at the age of five as a pupil of Natasha Boyarsky. As a student at Chetham’s School of Music 2014-16, she won the school’s Concerto Competition performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with Chetham’s Sinfonia at Manchester Cathedral, and the Catherine Perkins Chamber Music Prize. Between 2016-19 Amber continued her violin lessons with Maciej Rakowski at the Royal College of Music’s Junior Department. Since 2020 she studies at the Royal Academy of Music under the tutelage of So-Ock Kim. She has participated in mastercourses with Pavel Vernikov, Maurizio Fuks and Kolja Blacher. In 2018, she was awarded 2nd prize at the 10th International Competition for Violin and Viola ‘Szymon Goldberg’ in Meissen. In June 2019 she won 1st prize in the National Round of Germany’s ‘Jugend Musiziert’ competition and 1st prize at the International Music Competition Hohenpriessnitz.

Since August 2019, she is a member of LGT Young Soloists, performing in major concert halls worldwide as a soloist as well as part of the group. Recent tours have taken her to Rheingau Musikfestival, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Berliner Philharmonie and Musikverein Wien, as well as to Asia.