David Kadouch performed as a finalist in the Leeds International Piano competition 2009, a competition which previous piano virtuoso’s (such as Murray Perahia) have used to catapult their career. I was fortunate enough to watch the BBC coverage yesterday evening.

David Kadouch’s performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto (The “Emperor” Concerto) was mesmerising from start to finish, and I believe he encapsulated a truly touching interpretation of this magnificient work. The brilliance of this pianist’s potential was clearly evident.

Though he didn’t win this particular competition (due to a wonderful performance of Brahms’ piano concerto by Sofya Gulyak), I think (and hope) we will be seeing alot more of this pianist in years to come.

This episode brings back a ghost from Tracy’s past, in the form of Carmen’s (Amy-Leigh Hickman) mother (A remix of Tracy’s own mother), who comes knocking at the very beginning of the episode.

Carmen of course, isn’t happy to see her mother, much like Tracy in the Tracy Beaker Movie, though somewhat less dramatic. This “meeting” casts an ominous and sombre cloud over the dumping ground, leading to Liam (Richard Whisker) getting involved in one of those ever so infuriating Tracy Beaker fights, which are as transparent as new double glazed windows. In fact, this “meeting” (between Carmen and her mother) leads to this episode having safely secured a spot as one of the bleakest episodes of Tracy Beaker (with all of the kids looking about as happy as a sober McDonals employee) if nothing else by the time Tracy comes up with the rather humorous “powercut” plot.

The episode ends with Tracy delivering a few home truths to Carmen’s mother after she breaks Carmen’s trust yet again (after Carmen has miracolously given her mother a second chance). This is (atleast to those who are familiar with the Beaker) a truly touching and moving moment, as Tracy faces the difficulties which haunted her childhood.

On the whole the episode was both touching and insightful, with character expositions into Liam, Tee (Mia McKenna-Bruce) and Johnny (Joe Maw) through the intelligant sideplots along with Tracy and Carmen’s character expositions in the primary plot.

I just wish the “fight” could be cut out, or have had more effort put into doing it properly. If you can’t get the fight to be convincing there’s other ways of having characters express their anger; have them throw a chair or something, whatever, just not another poor “fight” scene which completely destroys any realism which the program had previously secured.

Was browsing a forum earlier and found a thread asking for a definition of cute, to which I replied (without giving the matter much thought);

Cuteness (a trait often associated with small children and innocence) is a type of attractives in which the object(s) concerned is(are) perceived to be attractive in terms of prettiness and/or petiteness and/or due to abnormalities in their behaviour.

I didn’t think it was a particularly good definition. Other people did. I’ve received so many approval messages/replies that I’ve decided to post.

This is what we call a blog for the sake of a blog.

I found it to be quite cute.