Eastern European promise in West London (From Richmond and Twickenham Times)

Eastern European promise in West London

4:55pm Friday 25th January 2008 in News & Previews By Nancy Groves

Travel magazines are full of ideas for cheap trips to Eastern Europe. But why suffer two hours in cattle class on a budget airline when £6 will buy you a night of Lithuanian magic here at home?

This Sunday, Blenheim Concerts welcomes the talented young pianist Evelina Puzaite for its first recital of 2008.

Born in Lithuania, Puzaite trained in her home town of Vilnius, which straddles the confluence of the Vilnia and Neris rivers in the south-eastern corner of the country.

Perhaps those turbulent currents made their way into her music, because soon Puzaite was winning competions in Europe and beyond, including first prizes in the Rubinstein Piano Competition in Paris and the Tel-Hai International Piano Competition in Israel.

In 2000, she was admitted to the Lithuanian Academy of Music and a year later she won a Baltic State Scholarship to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

Puzaite got a BA and MA in Music and we got her! Now based in London, her recent dates have included recitals at the Barbican Hall, Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room and Royal Festival Hall.

She also gave the opening performance of the Brighton festival in front of a crowd of hundreds. Chiswick Catholic Centre may not hold as many but Sunday's concert promises to be just as special, with a programme of Schubert, Schumann, Prokofiev, Debussy and Falla.

And you don't get that on EasyJet inflight entertainment.

Bleinheim Concerts, Chiswick Catholic Centre, 2 Duke's Avenue, Chiswick, Sunday, January 27, 3.30pm, £6/£3. Subscription for six concerts: £27/£13.50), email rosalindleney@tiscali.co.uk for details.