8-year-old Hannah Heaton Adhikari’s heart just melted.

Adhikari, from Columbus, didn’t know much about melody or minor or major progressions, but something about watching a clip of Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” on YouTube clicked with her. This video served as the piano intro for Adhikari and it was the day she officially became a “plague”.

“I kept bugging my mom and dad about starting classes after watching this video,” said Adhikari, who is now a senior at the University of Mississippi for Women.

Years later, Adhikari has gone from a pest to an experienced player, performer, teacher and composer. His latest composition, “Theme and Variations: Emotions”, recently won Third Prize for Piano Solo at the 2021 National Associations of Composers, USA Young Composer’s Competition. Hannah studied piano with Julia Mortyakova and composition with Joe L. Alexander and Valentin Bogdan at the W.

“Ever since I can remember, I’ve loved music,” Adhikari said. “It is my means of expression, worship and commitment. Music is my whole life.

Adhikari said it took him almost a year to complete “Theme and Variations: Emotions”, which focuses on his raw emotions, especially vanity. She said that she usually incorporates her life experiences and emotions into her work and faces the challenge of sticking to her main theme instead of coming up with new elements.

Adhikari said she focused on vanity because it’s desperation how you can feel like nothing matters. She said each variation – ignorance, affliction, suspense, adjustment, epiphany and redemption – in the play describes the range of emotions that arise from vanity.

“I had a lot of new material that I had to remove because it didn’t fit,” Adhikari said. “I was listening and playing my theme and thinking about its harmonic progression. I also used the emotion I was looking for to help me create a mood placement.

Adhikari has stated that she composes two to four works a year and enjoys performing her piano works almost as much as she enjoys composing them. She feels like the composition stage is what she uses to express inner restlessness or happiness, and the performance aspect is where she can share that experience with everyone.

Adhikari credits her teachers at The W for inspiring her growth as a musician. She said Mortyakova, Bogdan and Alexander were influential in pushing her to be better and see more potential in herself as a musician than she had ever seen in herself.

“I’m very grateful to them for helping me realize what I can achieve in music,” Adhikari said.

Mortyakova said the W’s music department is proud of the accomplishments Adhikari has made in a short time.

“Hannah is a wonderful representative of our entire department and a joy to teach,” said Mortyakova, who is a professor and head of the music department.

Alexander said Adhikari, a three-time winner of the Mississippi Music Teachers National Association’s Young Artist Composer Award, is the only freshman composition student he has taught in his more than 30 years of teaching. He said she is a very hard worker who quickly absorbs musical techniques.

“Hannah Heaton Adhikari is the best composition student I’ve taught at W,” Alexander said. “She excelled in the composition of chamber music, songs, piano music and orchestral music. She will go far.

Adhikari said she would like to continue teaching piano students, composing and performing her piano works, performing her pieces, and learning new piano repertoire. She said her goal is to keep challenging herself and be better than she was yesterday. That doesn’t seem like a problem for someone who wrote her first solo piano composition, “The Lone Hills,” when she was 11.

“I can’t remember a time when I didn’t like playing,” Adhikari said. “Practicing the piano was never a chore, but a way of escaping into my own world. Composing came soon after I started learning to play.