Alex Prior is a fourteen-year-old composer, conductor, former boy soprano, horn player, organist, pianist, cellist, and mandolinist who is currently studying at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. His worklist includes three symphonies, five concertos, two ballets (Mowgli just had its premiere at the Moscow Classical State Ballet), and a music drama for orchestra and voices on Pushkin's "The Tale of the Fisherman and the Golden Fish." He is presently penning an opera based on Ibsen's A Doll's House. As if that weren't enough, he is listed as a great-great-grandson of Stanislavsky. To judge from musical samples on his website, Prior has considerable potential as a composer, although prodigies of this type must work hard to rise above imitative cleverness. Whether or not another Korngold is in the offing, Prior's rather overstuffed site provides moments of amusement. One highlight is his performance of "Nessun dorma" at the Kremlin before a waxworks audience that includes Vladimir Putin (wait for the last shot of the clip). Another is his rendition of "O sole mio" for a comically impressed Meryl Streep. Maybe someone needs to ease off the publicity a little?
Then there's Peng-Peng Gong....
