Saturday, 11 December 2010

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!