Breakthrough Award shortlist: Part one

Breakthrough Award shortlist: Part two

Breakthrough Award shortlist: Part three

Breakthrough Award shortlist: Part four

CLASSICAL: JENNIFER PIKE

The burnout rate among child prodigies in the classical music world is alarmingly high. But Jennifer Pike seems to have reached the safe haven of adulthood (she’s 18) with no traumas and her reputation not only intact but soaring by the year. She first had a fiddle thrust into her hands at five, and in 2002 she became the youngest winner of the BBC’s Young Musician of the Year competition. But she and her parents were wise enough to let her public exposure grow slowly; she waited until after her 16th birthday, for instance, to play her first solo recital at the Wigmore Hall. Now she’s a wonderfully assured musician, capable of tackling the most challenging concertos. Time will tell if she has the stamina, the soul and the intellectual curiosity to develop into a world-class performer who can sustain a long career. But this composed young woman is already mesmerisingly good.

RICHARD MORRISON

FILM: SAM RILEY

Anton Corbijn’s film, Control, about the miserable life of Ian Curtis, features the most startling film debut I’ve seen. Sam Riley is magnificent as the lead singer of Joy Division who died at the age of 23 by hanging himself from a clothes airer attached to his kitchen ceiling. Sam Riley plays the punk-rock poet with the passion of a council-house Hamlet.

Corbijn’s concert footage of Riley fronting the original Joy Division anthems is absolutely electric. The actor leans into the microphone as if his life depended on it. His shirts are soaked with sweat. His spastic robotic dances are mesmerising.

Part of Curtis’s tragedy was his epilepsy. Riley’s fits on stage are shocking. The intensity of his performance is alarming. So too the bouts of depression. “Cheer up” says his rude and hairy road manager, a sublime comic turn by Toby Kebble. “You’re not the lead singer of the Fall.” I’m not sure Curtis saw the joke.

JAMES CHRISTOPHER

How to vote for your favourite nominee

To vote for the winner of the Times/South Bank Show Breakthrough Award, and to see profiles of all ten nominees, go to timesonline.co.uk/breakthrough. Voters are registered and can vote only once. Voting closes at midnight on Wednesday, January 16. The South Bank Show Awards will be televised on ITV1 on Sunday, February 3.