I'm delighted that my company, UCan Play has been invited again to undertake all the live streaming for the Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition. Next week, for ten days, the beautiful White Rock theatre will be full of the most wonderful classical music played by 40 of the world's best young concert pianists.


Every moment will be streamed on the HIPCC website: https://www.hastingsinternationalpiano.org/. I hope you'll be able to join us throughout the event.


It commences at 10am on Thursday 22nd February and continues until the evenings of Friday 1st and Saturday 2nd March when the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra will be accompanying six pianists in their final full concerto performance.


Our work at the competition has been supported by two of our principal partners. Firstly, Roland Europe Group have provided a collection of digital pianos for use in the practice facility at the theatre. We will be selling these pianos after the event so if you are in the market for a digital piano, please let me know as these pianos will be very competitively priced.


Secondly, Sontronics have kindly loaned us a collection of their wonderful microphones for use throughout the live stream. These include a pair of the amazing Apollo 2 stereo ribbon microphones which really well capture the phenomenal sounds created by the two Steinway & Sons Model D concert grand pianos. We tested these in our studio yesterday and were really impressed with the quality of the results, even on our more modest Yamaha upright piano.


The event itself is a wonderful celebration of piano music. It is inspiring to hear the talent from around the world and we wish all of the competitors the very best. The nature of a competition means that there has to be a winner, but the talent, hard work and dedication that has got them all to this point in their careers is the real point to celebrate. It will be a real privilege to listen to them all playing over the coming two weeks.