In my previous post, Leoš Janáček: On an overgrown path, we spoke about the work’s background and its genesis. Today, it’s time to dive into the music itself and talk about one of the biggest issue when it comes to Janáček : the overgrown path to the original text.

In the vein of my last post What is a musician supposed to look like?, I’ll tell you here an other story, but this time the story didn’t take place in a neutral environment but in a dressing room after a recital of mine, a long time ago (actually, at the very beginning of my career). I remember until today this old man who came to tell me how much he loved my playing, but he pursued with a very very strange question : “Are you going to move more when playing? You should show your passion by moving much more than you do, you know, like these pianists I see on TV.” This question might seem insignificant but it’s definitely not. The old man’s observation has often been sounding in my ears while thinking about my playing, and made me think a lot about my “style” as a pianist and what was really important while performing. It was a kind of butterfly effect: an insignificant question led to a complete theory about the kind of pianist I want to be.

Two years ago, I published a post entitled The 5 most difficult piano pieces trying to determine the top 5 most difficult solo works for piano. I got lots of comments mentioning piano concertos, and today I wanted to take a look at these pieces for piano and orchestra. Remember this ranking does not thus escape my subjectivity – these are the most difficult piano concertos according to me.

Let’s continue our series on interpretation and scores. In our previous post we have been discussing the issue of editions, today let’s focus on notation and its interpretation.

A promise is a promise. In my first post about the score I told you that I will talk about the issue of editorial quality and the differences between editions. Text is our best source, and often all you can find about the music we want to interpret. In the case of a composer still alive you can always contact him to know his opinion about a detail, but in the case of Beethoven for example, it is a little late to ask him if a particular phrasing is in accordance with his thoughts.

I realize how time flies and I have not managed to write for almost two weeks already. the past couple of days have been tough for me : a lot of decisions to make, a lot of work to do, so excuse me for not being very punctual at our weekly meeting on this blog. I must say that I spent much time in front of my piano; learning new repertoire, maintaining the old, I found back my student’s pace work! It’s time to make a quick review of the first six months of sabbatical.

This week, a post a little more personal. I would like to comment Greg Sandow’s post entitled Needing Rebirth, which sparked a controversy in the american blogosphere. At first I paid no attention to it, then after rereading it, I started to think deeply about it.

To sum up, Sandow talks about two concerts he heard in Washington: Janine Jansen playing the Sibelius concerto with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam and one of the ECCO (East Coast Chamber Orchestra). Both took place at the Kennedy Center.

The score is often the first medium you have to deal with when studying a piece. It enables the composer to encode four key dimensions of music: pitch, duration, intensity and timbre. This document can then transmit the composer’s thought, or rather transcribe his music in a format understood by any interpreter.

Interpreter: word which can, by extension, replace the word musician. Yet the two words have a totally different connotation: if the latter clearly evokes music and the inspired craftsman created in and by popular imagination, first emphasizes another facet of the same man: here is suggested the intellectual work, in other words the analysis and long road towards understanding a work.

At the start of this year, I tried to think about the directions my writings could take for 2010. It is thus self-evident that this blog will still be about piano and music, but I would like to give a new impetus and provide more didactic content. Let’s see what will 2010 be like.