REINCARNATED?

I’ve just read a feature in today’s DAILY MAIL that set me wondering whether Mozart (or some other musical maestro) has been reincarnated as a little girl in Devon.

Lavinia, who is three years old today, has apparently ‘astounded experts with her first public performance on piano’.

The feature continues: ‘Lavinia had been learning to play for only six weeks before she stepped out to perform before a 200-strong audience at a local church hall on the outskirts of Plymouth.

By that stage she had been to only eight lessons. Her teacher, Matej Lehocky, who studied at the prestigious Prague Conservatory of Music and learned to play when he was four, agreed to tutor her after realising she was exceptionally bright and clearly keen to learn. She loves listening to classical music and occasionally asks him to play for her. Bizet’s Carmen is her current favourite.

“She is so mature for her age that you forget you’ve got a two-year-old sitting there with you,” he said. “It’s as if she is five or six. What she has is something exceptional. Her hand-eye co-ordination is remarkable. She can play Old MacDonald Had A Farm using both hands at once. I think in about eight months’ time she will be able to sit a Grade One exam. I can’t recall anyone doing that at the age of three.”

Lavinia was nicknamed Little Miss Mozart after performing at the concert (although Mozart is thought to have been nearly four when he first started to play a clavichord keyboard). Neither of her parents plays an instrument but she became interested in music after getting a toy piano for Christmas.

Playing at the age of three is not unique but is extremely rare – as is Lavinia’s progress and confidence. Shown video footage of her playing John Holmes, chief examiner of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, said she showed ‘exciting potential with her piano playing skills and has clearly made excellent progress in her first two months.’’

Well, do you think – as I do – that this is possibly a case of a musical maestro reincarnated?