NEWS FOR STUDENTS
Happy Fall, Y'All! Have you been listening to the 18th International Chopin Competition?! Please do! I have been hearing some truly awesome performances. You may easily find on youtube, and I encourage you to seek out as I know you will enjoy! Please also find the video/interview with Garrick Ohlsson called "What if Chopin sat on the jury of the Chopin Competition" (youtu.be/PTYz9c24Wqo) Mr. Ohlsson is, first of all, a marvelous pianist who was the only American to ever win gold in Warsaw as he won this competition in 1970. Garrick is also very informative - and entertaining - in this interview. Garrick feels that Chopin would have hated the Chopin competition; Chopin only played 30 concerts in his lifetime, and preferred small salons and halls for performance. Mr. Ohlsson also opines that Chopin was a royalist, he was incredibly well educated, very smart, and rather snobbish, and didn't suffer fools gladly! Chopin didn't even suffer Franz Liszt gladly! When Liszt played some of Chopin's pieces, he often added some extra ornamentation. Chopin's comment to a Polish woman he knew was, "Keep that pig out of my garden"!! On the other hand, when Chopin heard Liszt play some of Chopin's etudes, he went gaga, because he himself couldn't play them like that. For more of this, check out the video! And I will share this video with you, of Garrick Ohlsson playing Chopin, Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1 in an encore performance - so beautiful.
Some of you will remember that as we studied compositions for the piano dating from the early 20th c. we discussed the great pedagogue, Nadia Boulanger. She became the most renowned composition teacher of the 20th century — if not of all musical history. Her pupils, the so-called “Boulangerie,” included such luminaries-to-be as Aaron Copland, Philip Glass and Quincy Jones. The composer Virgil Thomson once described Boulanger as a “a one‐woman graduate school so powerful and so permeating that legend credits every U.S. town with two things: a five‐and‐dime and a Boulanger pupil.”
And that is largely how Boulanger, who died in 1979 at 92, is still remembered today, as a great teacher who taught great composers. This subordinate role is one that women have often played in music history: mothers, muses and schoolmarms to the men of the canon. A two-week festival, Nadia Boulanger and Her World, which begins Aug. 6 at Bard College, invites a reconsideration of her life and legacy. I enjoyed reading more about Boulanger in this article in the New York Times which I have linked here. There is a fantastic playlist in the article that I listened to and liked, along with some great photographs. I also ordered the book produced with the BARD Festival entitled Nadia Boulanger and her World. I will read and let you know what I learn!
And that is largely how Boulanger, who died in 1979 at 92, is still remembered today, as a great teacher who taught great composers. This subordinate role is one that women have often played in music history: mothers, muses and schoolmarms to the men of the canon. A two-week festival, Nadia Boulanger and Her World, which begins Aug. 6 at Bard College, invites a reconsideration of her life and legacy. I enjoyed reading more about Boulanger in this article in the New York Times which I have linked here. There is a fantastic playlist in the article that I listened to and liked, along with some great photographs. I also ordered the book produced with the BARD Festival entitled Nadia Boulanger and her World. I will read and let you know what I learn!
"IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO PLAY THE CELLO" (or the PIANO !!) For my adult students (and kids - you should also read), please read this article and feel GOOD about what you are doing for yourself through piano lesson, piano practice. As Dr. Jiji says in this article, "getting older isn't getting worse." Enjoy your artistic moments!
WHAT is an "Etude"?? Harvard Dictionary of Music describes as "A composition designed to improve the technique of an instrumental performer by isolating specific difficulties and concentrating his or her efforts on their mastery. A single etude usually focuses on one technical problem; etudes are usually published in groups more or less systematically covering a range of such problems in a range of keys." This month we will focus on etudes. If asked to name one famous collection of etudes, many pianists would come up quite easily with those written by Czerny and Hanon, but immediately thereafter, one would probably say those by Chopin (I linked Pollini playing all twenty-four). There are, however, thousands of etude for piano, and every pianist should have a good number under their fingers! Those etudes by Claude Debussy are among the most glorious, in my opinion; listen here to a young Mitsuko Uchida practicing during an interview regarding her performance of the Debussy Etudes and see if you agree! To listen to the set in entirety, I link one of my fav pianists, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, performing the Debussy. Now, another set of etudes that I just adore are those incredibly difficult ones by Gyorgy Ligeti. Listen to No.13 dubbed "the Devil's Staircase", performed here by another favorite pianist of mine, Pierre-Laurent Aimard. There is also a good video by Aimard where he discusses this work in detail. Alright, enough! Now, let's get those fingers moving! What etude are YOU working on today?
One of my favorite quotes by Sergei Rachmaninov:
“Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.”
Hey, gardener/pianists, check out student Gwen's wonderful garden blogs! Visit Gwen's
website: GwenWisniewski.com.