ONE of Scotland's greatest pianists will be playing in Melrose next week to bring the curtain down on a memorable season of concerts.

Celebrated musician Alasdair Beatson is the guest of Melrose Music Society next Saturday

He will give a varied programme of music from Beethoven to Bartok in the Society’s final concert of the season.

Alasdair grew up in a musical family in Perth and has been described as the finest pianist to come out of Scotland since Steven Osborne.

Trained in Aberdeen and London, where he later taught at the Royal College of Music, he received the Dewar Arts Award in 2007.

He has toured with the Scottish Chamber Ensemble as well as performing solo at the Wigmore Hall and with chamber groups across the country. Festival appearances have taken him to Aldeburgh, Bath, Belgium, Delft and Switzerland. He is artistic director of the chamber music festival, Musique à Marsac.

The Scotsman, 2011, described a performance by Alasdair as ‘mesmerising’,

The programme opens with Beethoven’s early 7 Bagatelles, Opus 33, followed by a selection of pieces from Bartok’s Mikrokosmos.

After Bartok, Alasdair will play Debussy’s Images, Book 2, in which the composer ‘sought to create pictures with tones’. With a reputation for his masterly interpretation of Schumann, he continues the concert with the composer’s Kinderszenen, Opus 15, inspired by Clara Schumann’s comment that sometimes Robert seemed ‘like a child’. Schumann will be followed by Eric Satie’s bizarrely entitled ‘Embryos Desséchés’.

Rather than ‘dried embryos’, the three jokey short pieces are inspired by invertebrates such as crustaceans.

The concert concludes with Dohnányi’s lively Rhapsody in C Major, Opus 11.

Alasdair Beatson will play in Melrose Parish Church Hall on Saturday, March 11 from 7.30 pm.

Tickets at the door £12. Free for accompanied children.