my performance program

as you can see, I'm going to be studying music at McGill starting in September. i will still be studying piano with Julia Gavrilova, as i have been doing since last August when i started taking lessons again - which is awesome. she is a great teacher, and i love her approach. she pushes me and makes me work hard, and she encourages me too, she has a perfect balance.

so she asked me what kind of program i'd like to have for my performance requirements next year. she started with the idea of playing a Beethoven or Mozart sonata, a Bach prelude and fugue or partita, and some Chopin. then she said i could also consider a program in which i might play a Shostakovich prelude and fugue, a Schubert sonata and some Liszt or Debussy or something else from the French Impressionists.

:)

i did not choose the standard classical program, i'm happy to say! i'm going with Shostakovich, Schubert, and it looks like Granados is for my third piece.

i'm preparing the Shostakovich prelude and fugue in A major. i have a copy of Keith Jarret playing all the 24 preludes and fugues - they're amazing, each one - and this one seems to be so different from the rest. it's got a cute melody, and seems light. it is a very difficult fugue, but so amazing. every intricate detail is so important and so tasty - i'm only working on the first half for now, and am going at it quite slowly, i do have a lot of time to prepare it, so that's ok, but going so slowly gives me the chance to savour the awesome craft of composing that Shostakovich displays in this. wow, imagine this stuff as it's being written... that's really cool...

i'm also preparing a Schubert Sonata, in A minor (the earlier of his A minor sonatas). here too, there are some fine details and emotions expressed, so simply yet so enticingly. what i love about Julia is that she breaks down a piece when we play it in the lessons, and she explains what instruments she imagines playing the line, or what emotion is typically expressed with the pattern of notes used, and it all gives the music so much more meaning and intrigue. i'm often speechless when she does that, and sometimes close to tears as i get a sense of what it really means to compose...

when i came back from New York, i told Julia about the Yamaha concert i'd been to and that the artist had played El Amor Y La Muerte from Granados' Goyescas. she said then that it was a piece i would be able to play at this stage, which was definitely interesting to me. so when, a few weeks ago, we were discussing our choice for my third piece, Julia mentioned Granados and i asked if she meant this one, and she said yes! how amazing. now, i couldn't remember the piece - it's been several months since that Yamaha concert - so I've found a recording of it that is wonderfully rendered. i've done some research - the piece is the 5th of 6 pieces written for an opera called Goyescas, which was inspired by the painter Goya. it's an OPERA PIECE! imagine, i'll be playing something that is not only an amazingly beautiful piece, but it is from an opera... and it is about 16 minutes long... i wonder if it will be too long for my 15-20 minute program...

anyway, this is all just amazing stuff. sadly, i won't be able to practise for the next four weeks or so since i'm going to be traipsing about in Europe, but as they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder. i'll really be looking forward to playing again when i return :)