If you love the piano, you’ve probably heard of George Harliono. If you haven’t and love beautiful music, you should check out his channel. George started playing the piano when he was only a few years old. He performed his first hour-long recital at nine and made his concerto debut at twelve!
He is also one of the youngest students ever to be accepted onto a BMUS degree at the Royal College of Music. He was awarded a full scholarship and completed the course last year. George has a YouTube channel which showcases his talent to a wider audience than even the biggest tour could hope to reach.
Although he only has a modest 71,000 subscribers his videos frequently go viral. For example, take a look at this beautiful video recorded when he was eleven. He plays the Moonlight Sonata at a street piano, to add to the atmosphere it’s also raining.
There’s an undeniable brilliance about George’s playing that even those who don’t play can pick up on. You only need to look at the crowd which forms around him, they’re mesmerised. He plays with passion and soul and you can’t help but feel the music as he plays. If he all that isn’t impressive enough for an eleven year old, did you notice he has no music? He learned the whole thing by heart.
Let’s take a took at the life of this musical prodigy. George was born in 2001, in Hackney, East London. He initially took up the violin as his older brother played and it looked like fun. However, there was also an old upright piano in the house. George explained, “I think it cost £100. It was really terrible, almost untuneable. My brother and I would play around on it, making a terrible noise until my mum got so fed up with it that she found a local piano teacher to help tame us!”
That was the start of George’s love affair with the piano. He made rapid progress and completed a new stage of the Royal School of Music exams every couple of months. From the age of twelve he began entering, and winning, competitions worldwide. Among others, he won first prize at the Jeunesses International Piano Competition in Bucharest for 14 & Under, Concours International de Piano, Paris, 15 & Under and Overall Festival Winner at the Cambridge Music Festival.
George’s competition and performance schedule has meant he’s needed to be home-schooled. His dad, George Evans, has said that his school was not particularly understanding of the importance of his career. It must be difficult to fit in his education considering he has performed recitals around the world, in addition to entering competitions.
Amazingly, he was invited to play Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No.2 in Kazan, Russia with Alexander Sladkovsky. Rachmaninov is part of Russian culture but that made it more exciting for George, not less.
Now that he has completed his degree George will confuse to perform recitals and enter completions. It seems that there must be an album in his future. Whatever he decides to do, history shows us he will succeed. If you want to see more from this fantastic Piano player you can subscribe to his YouTube channel or follow him on Facebook.