Well, I'm proving to be really dismal at keeping up with this blog. So I had better stop promising to do better. (No one would believe me at this point anyhow.)
Still, I'm here now, right? So, I'd better get you all caught up.
My Mozart Concerto K. 491 went pretty well in Piano Ensemble class — well enough that my piano teacher convinced me to enter it in this year's soloist competition, which I did. The competition was just over a week ago, on December 5th. I didn't win, but it was a good experience. Maybe I'll enter next year with something that is a closer match to my real repertoire (Rachmaninoff's First? The Grieg?).
I did finally get to play with the Hausmann quartet. We performed two movements (II. Dumka, and IV. Finale) from the Dvořák A major Piano Quintet on a chamber recital back on November 17th. It was quite a bit of fun doing that. We could have used a bit more rehearsal time, but that's always true no matter how much time one has had. I also got to play a wonderful and wistful trio by British composer Rebecca Clarke with a very talented violinist and violist from the mixed ensemble class on December 1st. I had played the same piece two years ago at Alpen Kammer Musik 2009 and loved it. It was great to play it again.
This past week was full of end-of-semester performances. On Tuesday, I tried out one of my jury pieces (the Allegro from my Haydn Sonata) at a chamber recital whose program needed some filling up. Wednesday evening I provided some light background music for a reception for donors to the School of Music and Dance. Thursday evening, my partner in the Rachmaninoff Second Suite for Two Pianos and I performed the whole thing for her final Artist Diploma Recital. That was really exciting! (We had also performed three movements from the Suite previously at a noon-time Piano Ensembles concert on November 24th.) And yesterday was ... insert an ominous riff here ... my first jury.
Actually, jury went ok. I didn't do everything as well as I might have liked, but I did well enough (at least that's what I feel) for a first go. I had a brief glitch in the Prélude of the Bach English Suite — something between a memory lapse and a hand stumble — and my recovery from that was a bit labored. I've been so worried about memorization of my jury pieces that I'm actually relieved it was no worse than that. The Haydn Sonata went much better. I came in with around 25 minutes of music to play and only 15 minutes to do that in, so there had to be places where they stopped me, and all of that took place in the Haydn. It was a bit distracting to have to segue abruptly from the Allegro to the Adagio, and I think the Adagio was the worse for that at first. I spent fully half the jury on the Medtner Sonata. I had obtained special dispensation to play it from the score, so there were no memory issues there at all. I think I did the best overall with the Medtner, and it is the one piece I picked because I love it, rather than because I felt I should learn it.
I had comments back on the spot, but will have to wait some time for my grade. The comments were perceptive, both jurors finding all of the vulnerabilities in both my interpretations and my actual performance. Next semester, I plan to get started right away memorizing the pieces I work on for the next jury, rather than learning them first, and only then memorizing them later. We'll see if this changes things for the better. I'm really looking for whatever will help with the memorization hurdle, and I'm willing to try just about anything.
By far the most trying aspect of this semester was not the performing — which I love to do — but writing my prospectus, which was the final project for the Research Methods class. I kept to the same topic, Rachmaninoff's Op. 39, but narrowed the focus down to an examination of the Dies Irae quotations in the piece. I really liked (and still like) the topic — it's the actual writing itself, at least that type of disciplined discursive writing that I find really difficult. Many occasions would find me stuck (stricken, almost) in front of my laptop at 3 a.m. facing a deadline for some component leading up to the prospectus. After all that (and it is all over now!) nothing could possibly confirm any more forcefully that I made the right decision to purse a Master of Music degree (for which I don't have to write a thesis). Now that I have a prospectus in the can, I can always finish the research project if I want to — but it sure feels good that I don't have to!
At this point, I just have one more hurdle left this semester: the final exam next Wednesday for my Chamber Music Literature class. I'll have to do some real studying for that, but I did well enough of the rest of the class that I'm not so worried.
But today is Saturday, and after last week, I'm going to just relax a bit!
11 December 2010
28 September 2010
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
OK, so, yes, I know, it's been a long time since I've posted anything here. But never fear, I will catch you up. And I'll try to better about posting, I promise.
But first, you may note that this blog is no longer titled "Steve's Shanghai Journal". If you came here looking for the account of my time in Shanghai — September through December last year — well, you're not exactly out of luck, but you will have to go back into the archives. Hint: All of the 2009 posts belong to that old Shanghai incarnation of this blog; the 2010 posts all fit the new title.
So this blog is now going to be an extended account of my adventures while pursuing my long-deferred dream of taking a Master's degree in Piano Performance at SDSU. By long-deferred, I basically mean this is something I could have (perhaps, should have) done 33 years ago. A couple of other convenient reference points: Assuming that I finish my degree in the expected 2 years, I will receive my master's degree precisely 30 years after I got my PhD. And, if I wish, I can, the same day, apply for full membership in AARP.
School started for me a little over a month ago, with a battery of placement exams (music theory, aural skills, music history) during the orientation week just before the start of classes. These exams were the cause of months of trepidation. Doing well (or well enough) on them would mean getting to take classes that count toward the degree right from the start. Doing otherwise would mean some amount of remedial classes taken for credits that cost but don't count. Since I never took a Bachelor's degree in music, I decided to get some books and study up during the summer. I even dragged those books with me to my chamber music festival in Austria — which took place during the two weeks immediately preceding the exams — and managed to peruse them a bit while there, but more urgently during the long plane rides home. Some of it definitely paid off. I aced the aural skills exam, did well enough on the music theory exam to avoid having to take the remedial theory course, and even did ok on the music history, though I did end up with a set of short essay questions to answer on the periods I was weakest on.
With the first day of classes, my first semester program had already taken shape as follows:
Music 554 has a mix of graduates and undergraduates taking it and operates as a seminar, with each student taking responsibility for presenting one or more of the works on the syllabus. I've signed up to do a combined presentation on the Brahms and Fauré Piano Quartets in C minor. I've always loved them, and they fit together nicely as they were written (or rewritten) only a few years apart, and both arose in part because the composer had a really bad bout with unrequited love.
Piano Ensemble is an interesting class. Half of it is devoted to developing orchestral score reading skills. This happens in weekly "lab sessions" on Mondays. Each student takes a turn playing the solo part to a movement of a Mozart or Bach concerto with the rest of the class forming an "orchestra", each person playing one or more orchestra parts. Everybody plays on electronic keyboards with registrations that can sound like the instrument they are playing, oboe, clarinet, whatever. It's good training. Some instruments (clarinet, horn) require transposition on sight, others require reading clefs unfamilar to pianists (viola, cello). Yours truly got the honor of being the first to go solo, so had to learn the first movement of the Mozart Concerto in C minor, K. 491 in just a couple of weeks. I'm still writing my cadenza. More on this later after my last session on K. 491 happens next Monday. The other half of this class pairs up the students to rehearse, be coached on, and perform piano duets. I'm working with an Artist Diploma candidate on the Rachmaninoff Second Suite for Two Pianos. This is her diploma recital semester and she intends to program this duet on her program, so we'll be performing it both as part of the Piano Ensemble's noon-time concert and at her evening recital.
I can't really give a full account of the Mixed Ensemble class yet. I do know this much: I'll be playing some piano quintet with the Hausmann Quartet, one of the two string quartets currently in residence at SDSU. I have heard them, and met them, and they are really good, but due to their schedule and mine we haven't found time to get together yet. When we do, we will probably evaluate several options, including the Dvořák A major and the Schumann E-flat major. I'm game for either, but would definitely like to have another go at the Schumann after just having tackled it at Alpen Kammer Musik this past August. Whichever piece we choose to work on will be performed at one or two evening concerts late in the term.
Last but not least, Private Lessons. I really like my new teacher. We are still getting used to each other, but I can already tell this is going to be very good for me — just the kind of discipline I've been missing all these past years without a regular teacher. I think most people have a good idea of what private lessons are like, but there is one novel element for lessons at this level. Each semester you have to play for a jury at the end of the term, about 25 or 30 minutes of music played from memory. I'll definitely need a couple of semesters to build up my confidence in my memorization abilities. Until then, I'm going to choose pieces for jury that won't be too hard to memorize. So far this semester I'm working a pretty balanced diet of pieces: the Bach English Suite in G minor, a late Haydn Sonata (the last in C major), a one-movement sonata by Medtner (Sonata-Elegie) and a selection of préludes by Kabalevsky. At the end of this term there is a chance to enter a concerto contest at SDSU, with the winner playing their concerto with the SDSU symphony next semester. I haven't decided whether to enter, or what concerto to play, but that has to get settled pretty soon.
So far everything to do with school seems to be going fairly well. For about the same time as I've been in school, I've also had an off-campus project that I thought was going to be a very good experience. That was until last Friday. The project was the premiere of a new chamber opera for 6 voices and piano trio. I got involved because I happen to know the violinist who was already engaged to play in the trio. Somewhat at cross purposes, in order to get the gig, I had to sign on to be the Music Director for the production, which was a lot more work than I expected. Then after several weeks of intense rehearsals, the composer decided that he would play the performances himself, so as of last Friday I was no longer connected with the production. That was a huge disappointment but, I suppose I'll get over it.
I'm also continuing to work in my consulting business while in school. I'm keeping it to about half time. So far that's going smoothly, but only time will tell whether this will remain feasible when things really get going.
So that should get you up to the latest. I'll sign off now and get back to my cadenza to K. 491!
But first, you may note that this blog is no longer titled "Steve's Shanghai Journal". If you came here looking for the account of my time in Shanghai — September through December last year — well, you're not exactly out of luck, but you will have to go back into the archives. Hint: All of the 2009 posts belong to that old Shanghai incarnation of this blog; the 2010 posts all fit the new title.
So this blog is now going to be an extended account of my adventures while pursuing my long-deferred dream of taking a Master's degree in Piano Performance at SDSU. By long-deferred, I basically mean this is something I could have (perhaps, should have) done 33 years ago. A couple of other convenient reference points: Assuming that I finish my degree in the expected 2 years, I will receive my master's degree precisely 30 years after I got my PhD. And, if I wish, I can, the same day, apply for full membership in AARP.
School started for me a little over a month ago, with a battery of placement exams (music theory, aural skills, music history) during the orientation week just before the start of classes. These exams were the cause of months of trepidation. Doing well (or well enough) on them would mean getting to take classes that count toward the degree right from the start. Doing otherwise would mean some amount of remedial classes taken for credits that cost but don't count. Since I never took a Bachelor's degree in music, I decided to get some books and study up during the summer. I even dragged those books with me to my chamber music festival in Austria — which took place during the two weeks immediately preceding the exams — and managed to peruse them a bit while there, but more urgently during the long plane rides home. Some of it definitely paid off. I aced the aural skills exam, did well enough on the music theory exam to avoid having to take the remedial theory course, and even did ok on the music history, though I did end up with a set of short essay questions to answer on the periods I was weakest on.
With the first day of classes, my first semester program had already taken shape as follows:
- Music 690 — Seminar on Research Methods in Music
- Music 651 — Private Lessons
- Music 570 — Section: Piano Ensemble
- Music 570 — Section: Mixed Ensemble
- Music 554 — Music Literature Survey: Chamber Music
Music 554 has a mix of graduates and undergraduates taking it and operates as a seminar, with each student taking responsibility for presenting one or more of the works on the syllabus. I've signed up to do a combined presentation on the Brahms and Fauré Piano Quartets in C minor. I've always loved them, and they fit together nicely as they were written (or rewritten) only a few years apart, and both arose in part because the composer had a really bad bout with unrequited love.
Piano Ensemble is an interesting class. Half of it is devoted to developing orchestral score reading skills. This happens in weekly "lab sessions" on Mondays. Each student takes a turn playing the solo part to a movement of a Mozart or Bach concerto with the rest of the class forming an "orchestra", each person playing one or more orchestra parts. Everybody plays on electronic keyboards with registrations that can sound like the instrument they are playing, oboe, clarinet, whatever. It's good training. Some instruments (clarinet, horn) require transposition on sight, others require reading clefs unfamilar to pianists (viola, cello). Yours truly got the honor of being the first to go solo, so had to learn the first movement of the Mozart Concerto in C minor, K. 491 in just a couple of weeks. I'm still writing my cadenza. More on this later after my last session on K. 491 happens next Monday. The other half of this class pairs up the students to rehearse, be coached on, and perform piano duets. I'm working with an Artist Diploma candidate on the Rachmaninoff Second Suite for Two Pianos. This is her diploma recital semester and she intends to program this duet on her program, so we'll be performing it both as part of the Piano Ensemble's noon-time concert and at her evening recital.
I can't really give a full account of the Mixed Ensemble class yet. I do know this much: I'll be playing some piano quintet with the Hausmann Quartet, one of the two string quartets currently in residence at SDSU. I have heard them, and met them, and they are really good, but due to their schedule and mine we haven't found time to get together yet. When we do, we will probably evaluate several options, including the Dvořák A major and the Schumann E-flat major. I'm game for either, but would definitely like to have another go at the Schumann after just having tackled it at Alpen Kammer Musik this past August. Whichever piece we choose to work on will be performed at one or two evening concerts late in the term.
Last but not least, Private Lessons. I really like my new teacher. We are still getting used to each other, but I can already tell this is going to be very good for me — just the kind of discipline I've been missing all these past years without a regular teacher. I think most people have a good idea of what private lessons are like, but there is one novel element for lessons at this level. Each semester you have to play for a jury at the end of the term, about 25 or 30 minutes of music played from memory. I'll definitely need a couple of semesters to build up my confidence in my memorization abilities. Until then, I'm going to choose pieces for jury that won't be too hard to memorize. So far this semester I'm working a pretty balanced diet of pieces: the Bach English Suite in G minor, a late Haydn Sonata (the last in C major), a one-movement sonata by Medtner (Sonata-Elegie) and a selection of préludes by Kabalevsky. At the end of this term there is a chance to enter a concerto contest at SDSU, with the winner playing their concerto with the SDSU symphony next semester. I haven't decided whether to enter, or what concerto to play, but that has to get settled pretty soon.
So far everything to do with school seems to be going fairly well. For about the same time as I've been in school, I've also had an off-campus project that I thought was going to be a very good experience. That was until last Friday. The project was the premiere of a new chamber opera for 6 voices and piano trio. I got involved because I happen to know the violinist who was already engaged to play in the trio. Somewhat at cross purposes, in order to get the gig, I had to sign on to be the Music Director for the production, which was a lot more work than I expected. Then after several weeks of intense rehearsals, the composer decided that he would play the performances himself, so as of last Friday I was no longer connected with the production. That was a huge disappointment but, I suppose I'll get over it.
I'm also continuing to work in my consulting business while in school. I'm keeping it to about half time. So far that's going smoothly, but only time will tell whether this will remain feasible when things really get going.
So that should get you up to the latest. I'll sign off now and get back to my cadenza to K. 491!
14 April 2010
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
Just a briefish post today — mostly, to say that this blog, which has been rather moribund for nearly four months will, one day, and perhaps sooner than you think, spring back to life in earnest. (That day is not quite yet, so don't get your hopes up for this post.)
The story of "an American (or two) in Shanghai" is, of course, basically over. We aren't there any more. We've been back in the States since before last year ended, in fact. Not too many loose ends to catch you all up on, except to say that, as so many things do, the little idea of shipping our luggage back to the states, unaccompanied, via Fed Ex, proved to be of the ilk best described as "it will only end in tears." When it seemed "too easy" on the day I said hello to the Fed Ex man, and temporary goodbye to the suitcases, I really should have known. The suitcases made it from Shanghai to Alaska in record time. Getting them any closer to our San Diego home took about two weeks, lots of trouble, and even some more money. There was a little matter of United States Customs to deal with. Unaccompanied luggage does not easily clear customs. An absolutely complete and finely detailed inventory of the contents must be provided. Everything must be assigned a value. Anything that was taken out of the country is allowed to return duty free. Anything acquired abroad and not used for at least a year is dutiable upon return. That would all have been fine if I had only known about it in advance. The China Fed Ex people who should have told me didn't. But once one's luggage is in Alaska, it's a little inconvenient to be attempting to compile an inventory. It turns out that with just a little persuasion one can get the customs people to make the inventory for you. Then you just have to assign monetary values to everything. Like to pairs of underwear that are old enough to embarrass one that one still owns them let alone wears them. We also had some trouble placing values on some of the "souvenir" types of gifts people gave us as we were departing. One of them was some tea, which caused its own headaches. Tea is food. Food in luggage at customs is very, very bad indeed. Anyhow, we did finally see our suitcases again. And, at least for the one that contained nearly 50 pounds of music, that was a very, very good thing indeed.
So with that loose end tied off, we pretty much close the whole China chapter.
So why is this blog going to go through a renaissance?
Well ... ahem ... yours truly is preparing to go on another adventure — it's not travel this time, I'm staying home, it's something else. I'm doing something that is, if anything, far loonier than packing up and heading to Shanghai for four months.
I'm going back to grad school.
That's right. This autumn, at age 53 (!), I'm going to start work on the degree I probably have should have pursued 33 years ago — a Master of Music in Piano Performance. I'm actually all set. I've been officially admitted to the MM in PP program at San Diego State University's School of Music and Dance. I even found out today that I did well enough on my audition to get a little scholarship. With luck and determination, in two years' time, at age 55 (!) I'll have my degree, and the cornerstone of a new career.
So that's what I'm going to be writing about.
Look for this blog to get a little bit of a redesign in the coming months. I will archive off the China chapters somewhere, to make room for the new story. In the meantime, I did a bit of maintenance today, repairing some hyperlinks in the old posts that had "deteriorated". Hopefully all is well with them once more, in the unlikely event that anybody will ever again try to follow them.
So that's it for today. See you in these pages around August!
The story of "an American (or two) in Shanghai" is, of course, basically over. We aren't there any more. We've been back in the States since before last year ended, in fact. Not too many loose ends to catch you all up on, except to say that, as so many things do, the little idea of shipping our luggage back to the states, unaccompanied, via Fed Ex, proved to be of the ilk best described as "it will only end in tears." When it seemed "too easy" on the day I said hello to the Fed Ex man, and temporary goodbye to the suitcases, I really should have known. The suitcases made it from Shanghai to Alaska in record time. Getting them any closer to our San Diego home took about two weeks, lots of trouble, and even some more money. There was a little matter of United States Customs to deal with. Unaccompanied luggage does not easily clear customs. An absolutely complete and finely detailed inventory of the contents must be provided. Everything must be assigned a value. Anything that was taken out of the country is allowed to return duty free. Anything acquired abroad and not used for at least a year is dutiable upon return. That would all have been fine if I had only known about it in advance. The China Fed Ex people who should have told me didn't. But once one's luggage is in Alaska, it's a little inconvenient to be attempting to compile an inventory. It turns out that with just a little persuasion one can get the customs people to make the inventory for you. Then you just have to assign monetary values to everything. Like to pairs of underwear that are old enough to embarrass one that one still owns them let alone wears them. We also had some trouble placing values on some of the "souvenir" types of gifts people gave us as we were departing. One of them was some tea, which caused its own headaches. Tea is food. Food in luggage at customs is very, very bad indeed. Anyhow, we did finally see our suitcases again. And, at least for the one that contained nearly 50 pounds of music, that was a very, very good thing indeed.
So with that loose end tied off, we pretty much close the whole China chapter.
So why is this blog going to go through a renaissance?
Well ... ahem ... yours truly is preparing to go on another adventure — it's not travel this time, I'm staying home, it's something else. I'm doing something that is, if anything, far loonier than packing up and heading to Shanghai for four months.
I'm going back to grad school.
That's right. This autumn, at age 53 (!), I'm going to start work on the degree I probably have should have pursued 33 years ago — a Master of Music in Piano Performance. I'm actually all set. I've been officially admitted to the MM in PP program at San Diego State University's School of Music and Dance. I even found out today that I did well enough on my audition to get a little scholarship. With luck and determination, in two years' time, at age 55 (!) I'll have my degree, and the cornerstone of a new career.
So that's what I'm going to be writing about.
Look for this blog to get a little bit of a redesign in the coming months. I will archive off the China chapters somewhere, to make room for the new story. In the meantime, I did a bit of maintenance today, repairing some hyperlinks in the old posts that had "deteriorated". Hopefully all is well with them once more, in the unlikely event that anybody will ever again try to follow them.
So that's it for today. See you in these pages around August!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
