Alim Besembaiev: Pianist's hands shake at last-minute Proms debut

It was not the way Alim Besembaiev had expected to make his debut at the BBC Proms.

The 25-year-old, who won the 2021 Leeds Piano competition, got a call earlier this month asking if he could step in for Ben Grosvenor, who had taken ill.

One rehearsal later, he was playing Rachmaninov's famous Second Piano Concerto to a sold out Albert Hall.

Filmed by the BBC, footage shows his hands shaking as he lays them across the keyboard and prepares to begin.

"I wasn't expecting this two days ago," Besembaiev told BBC Radio 3's Petroc Trelawney immediately after the concert, but added it was "really thrilling and really great to be here".

Besembaiev's performance was part of a concert by John Wilson's Sinfonia that also included Lili Boulanger's tone-poem D'un matin de printemps, and Walton's First Symphony.

Despite his nerves, the Kazakhstan-born pianist's Proms debut received glowing reviews.

"Beisembayev reeled off the concerto as if he was to the manner born," wrote The Guardian's Martin Kettle, praising his "sparkling technique, rhythmic control and dynamic range".

He was "hugely impressive", agreed Rebecca Franks in The Times, praising a "high-stakes, electrifying performance" that marked the youngster out as "a name to follow".

Rachmaninov's concerto is one of the most recognisable pieces in the classical cannon, which has appeared in films such as Brief Encounter and Seven Year Itch.

It also inspired the melody of Eric Carmen's soft-rock ballad All By Myself, memorably covered by Celine Dion and featured in the first Bridget Jones movie.

"Wilson and Beisembayev ditched sugar for heroism and sentiment for noble eloquence - and the utter glory of that heady, vibrant string sound could melt anything that remains of the polar ice caps," she wrote.

Duchen also wrote appreciatively of Beisembayev's encore - "an ear-boggling transcription of the Infernal Dance from Stravinsky's ballet The Firebird".

Later, the pianist, who was recently accepted to Radio 3's New Generation talent development scheme, recalled how he had ended up at the Royal Albert Hall.

"It was just a snap decision I had to make," he said,

"I remember I got the phone call and I said, 'OK, fine, let's go for it'. And then I got another phone call to warn me that it's televised.

"So that was quite the Friday morning! I was in the rehearsal two hours later."

Asked if he'd had other plans for the weekend, he replied: "Yes, I was going to cook myself a nice dinner and listen to Ben Grosvenor on the radio."