There is so much going on in the piano world locally that it seems a nice idea to find a way to draw it all together so that you can keep up-to-date with North West 'Piano Happenings' in one place! One of the big sources of excitement here in Manchester this week is Alfred Brendel's visit to the Royal Northern College of Music on 7th May. Mr Brendel will be giving a lecture at 7.30pm based around his latest book, 'A Pianist's A-Z'. The subtitle of the book is 'A Piano Lover's Reader', and I'm quite sure local piano lovers won't want to miss hearing this erudite and fascinating musician talk in person. As the weekend approaches on Friday evening it is time for the Keyboard Final of the BBC's 2014 Young Musician of the Year competition, broadcast on BBC4 at 7.30pm. So far this year, the finals have made for scintillating viewing with a particularly high standard in last week's woodwind category. I'm hoping the Keyboard Final will bring some really communicative piano playing and a diverse range of repertoire which really explores what the instrument can do!On Saturday, our friends at the Halle are performing are splendid programme of Slavic music at St. George's Hall in Bradford. The orchestra will play Enescu's Romanian Rhapsody No.1 and Rachmaninov's intense and searing Symphony No.2, and will be joined by pianist Sofya Gulyak in Prokofiev's 3rd Piano Concerto. The piano will be our very own Schimmel Konzert K280T 9 foot 2 grand which most recently appeared at the Hebden Bridge Piano Festival.Looking further ahead, many of the concert seasons for the next year have been announced recently. Over the next few weeks I'll share some of the highlights starting this week with events to watch out for in Blackburn and Manchester.The Bridgewater Hall's International Concert Season usually includes a couple of good piano recitals and the 2014-15 season is no different. In particular, October sees a recital by Daniil Trifonov - a wonderfully expressive player who is definitely one of the younger pianists to watch. Before that, however, the end of the 2013-2014 season still has appearances by John Lill in store, bringing to an end his traversal of the complete Beethoven sonatas. More details at http://www.bridgewater-hall.co.uk.Last Thursday night Martin Roscoe gave a launch recital for this year's Ribble Valley International Piano Week, also announcing the programme of events for this year's festival which takes place on 16th - 19th July. Highlights include Mr Roscoe's opening recital, including works by Beethoven, Schubert, Faure and Chopin, as well as his closing recital accompanying violinist Tasmin Little. In-between these concerts, there is what promises to be a thought provoking evening of Wilfred Owen's poetry read by Andrew Motion and interwoven with piano music by Ravel, Elgar, Bridge and Ireland played by Ian Buckle. Chethams School of Music jazz piano specialist Les Chisnall will also be appearing with his Les Chisnall Trio. For the full programme of events, including recitals by Erdim Mirsiliogu, Alexander Panfilov, and Alessandro Taverna visit http://www.rvipw.co.uk.