Black and white

After the crazy fun that was the Finnish musicians sharing their joy with us, I really thought that there wouldn't be such amazing projects ever again this year. But one has to have all sorts of little highlights, big highlights, some not as exciting times and also (I believe) experience the bad to know what all these levels of enjoyment are.

And I doubt that there are going to be any truly bad projects this year. I'm sure you would agree that not all musics resonate with you at all times. For example (and I know, this borders on the unmentionable, as a pianist), I do not really understand Prokofiev or Liszt at all. I havne't played any Prokofiev and can't imagine doing so in the near future. And I know, Liszt was one of the greatest pianists and he wrote so much piano music of distinction, but with the exception of a few pieces (such as transcriptions of Schubert songs, and some of his arrangmenets and workings of opera overtures, to name a few), I would rather pick something else over Liszt. There, I said it. Sorry.....

Anyway. Back to the idea of having all sorts of experiences.

Following Pekka Kuusisto and Iiro Rantala is a really tough gig. Seriously tough. There was so much energy in the air during their residency week that felt like a serious hangover of excitement and adrenaline. Next on the programme was an Australian Voices concert featuring the music of Peggy Glanville-Hicks, curated by the Australian harpist, Marshall Maguire. PGH was unique in that there were no female composers around her time in Australia so I suppose you could call her a pioneer. She went to New York and hung out with all these composers, artists and influential people in the scene there and was in with that crowd that considered themselves to be the intellectuals and witty. Her piece 'Thomsoniana' is a collection of songs for soprano, flute, horn, two violins, viola, cello and piano. The text is taken from reviews of various artists by Virgil Thomson. The language is so colourful and descriptive - we are so boring in our use of language these days! PGH's music reflects the styles in which these composers/performers presented themselves; for example, the music for Stravinsky is 'Neoclassical' while Schoenberg is atonal and awkward. Clifford Curzon incisively dictates while Satie's and Ansermet's is floaty and full of subtle harmonies. The entire work is quite light-hearted and at times, tongue-in-cheek. Again, the Salon at the Melbourne Recital Centre was a beautiful venue to play in and the audience seemed to enjoy the concert.

That concert over, it was time to gear up for one of the biggest weeks (for pianists, at least!) of the year: the 2011 Piano! Festival. This was a week of intense learning, much sharing, music-making galore and merriment. The four pianists at ANAM (three students, one teacher) were joined by another seven students from around the country and artists from around Australia and the world.


[Disclaimer: maybe skip to the last few paragraphs if you don't have much time. I have a feeling the next chunk will be a VERY significant bit of reading...and I think perhaps I shan't detail every hour that was filled with every rehearsal, lesson, concert or seminar.]

The week started on Sunday with an introduction to the week from Tim and introducing each other. Some people had only flown in that morning so were a little hazy on it. Good thing we didn't start rehearsals...! We had an introductory session to Alexander Technique from ANAM's regular, Penny McDonald. I have to say that before I came to ANAM I was a little skeptical of Alexander Technique; probably because other people couldn't articulate to me how it could be useful nor could they tell me how they had benfitted. And I think it's one of those things that you just have to give it a shot. Even if it's completely outside of our comfort zone and you mightn't actually end up doing it, it's worth it to at least try it. If there's one idea or belief that I'm forming quite strongly, it is that one has to be open to stuff. To at least try it and then if it doesn't work, to discard it and do something else. But at least to have active choices; this is what makes us human, right? We have been given choices and brains to make decisions for ourselves. So it was interesting, because most of us in the room had really never done anything of the sort, and I think that this session, along with the one the next day really was helpful for those who rescinded previously-held ideas and control just to try it out and see whether it could make playing more productive and easier.

The next day was the start of all the seriously serious stuff. I will admit that over the previous weekend in anticipation for the crazy busy-ness that was about to hit, I woke up early on both days to do my chores and errands....nothing quite beats going grocery shopping at 7.45am on a Saturday morning or doing one's laundry at 7am.....how cool am I?!? So, ANAM was going to be open from 8am every day so that we could fit in some practice time. Admittedly, we were allocated three dedicated hours a day to practice (if you choose to use them...) which may sound like a lot, but honestly isn't heaps given how much ideally we'd each choose to do! Pianists are notorious for being the first to pipe up, "I need to practice..." (particularly at social functions haha). So off I went to be there for 8am with the notion of a serious sugar and caffeine addiction already planted. We had a session on stagecraft from Hugh Halliday mid-morning where we talked about presentation and even did some walk-ons and bowing (even with two pianists. The coordination required is obviously quite pertinent!) The girls were even taught to curtsy, which few managed to do gracefully. The rest of us (me included) did this awkward bob thing trying to balance on one foot and looking more like baby giraffes rather than graceful ladies.

Then came the first of the lunchtime concerts for the week (there was one every day!) in which the ANAM pianists and another student from Queensland played our solos. I had the (un?)fortunate pleasure of being the very first up. I suppose this is what happens when one elects to play Bach....(I think I'm going to be known as the girl that plays Bach and Beethoven...! I suppose there are worse things to be known for, right?) It went fairly well, with the exception of a memory slip at the very beginning, about six bars in. Third time lucky, after a humble apology to the audience (and no expletives, which may have otherwise been expected..!) with music safely opened out, I got through all four of the Four Duets relatively unscathed. Quite satisfactorily, in fact, I think. These pieces are rarely played; in fact, I had never heard of them until Tim mentioned them to me. I'm pretty sure most people haven't heard of them, let alone even heard them. They don't enjoy the same sort of fame as the Well-Tempered Clavier, the French Suites or Partitas, or even the concerti (including those for multiple keyboards). But being the genius that Bach is, these pieces are clever and exciting gems that only utilise two voices to create surprising harmonic inflections, modulations and clever (and deceiving) rhythmic games. Such is the joy of playing Bach - always something new to discover.

During the week I had three different lessons with three differents artists: Michael Kieran Harvey, Ami Roge and Stephen Emmerson. For each, I brought three different works: the first movement of Beethoven's 2nd Piano Concerto (B Flat Major), Faure's La Bonne Chanson and the first movement of Beethoven's 5th sonata for piano and cello (D Major). All these classes were helpful and insightful with the teachers encouraging me (and my associate artist, in each case!) in shaping the music. One particularly exciting thing was that Ami Roge had only ever played the first three (of nine) songs of the Faure and so playing the songs for her was like a revelation. We had a particularly enjoyable hour together delving into the subtle harmonies and colours and didn't even get through the whole work! We were so excited that we arranged to have another session the next day where my soprano could come along and also for Pascal Roge (!!!!) to hear it too. This session was particularly exciting maybe just for sheer virtue of playing for Pascal Roge (!!!!) but probably most exciting was that here we were, sharing this amazing music for the first time for Pascal and Ami who had never heard the entire song cycle performed.

Each day at 5pm there was also a seminar given by one of the visiting artists (I suppose I should mention at this point that the other visiting artists, apart from Pascal and Ami Roge, Michael Kieran Harvey, Stephen Emmerson and Timothy Young, obviously, were Ian Munro and Steven Osborne). These presentations were interesting and definitely got juices and thoughts flowing. There was some lively debate and many seeds planted in the young (and not so young!) minds.

More of the visiting students played solos in the lunchtime concerts on the Tuesday and Wednesday. It was lovely to sit back and to enjoy hearing other pianists. One thing that was weird through the week was to hear so much piano being practiced! With only three of us this year at ANAM, we are far more likely to hear a violin or cello (or even an oboe! Yes, there are four oboe players this year! That's one more than piano. So unlikely!!) in the practice rooms. And for once, you couldn't tell who was practicing based on the repertoire - you actually had to peek in to see who it was!

The Tuesday lunchtime concert also featured Malcolm Williamson's Concerto for Wind Quintet and Two Pianos (Eight Hands). This was such a feat to get this together. Prior to the concert, we had had rehearsals where we fiddled with the position and orientation of the two pianos, where the wind quintet was going to be, whether it would work without a conductor, putting up baffles to reduce the bathroom-like quality of the hall. Complex. And although it went fairly well (you know, we started together and finished together. Each movement, that is. Quite an achievement. Give or take some weird stuff happening in the middle.) I will admit that this is one of those things that I didn't particularly enjoy. The piece conceptually is good - you know, wind quintet, lots of piano-ing; but the execution of this concept unfortunately didn't resonate with me (nor perhaps, several other members of the ensemble) as the music didn't go many places in the first movement, the second so complex texturally that it was hard to do much with it, the third was nice though a little stagnent and at least the fourth was entertaining with all its running semiquavers. Oh well, we did get through it quite sufficiently and as I preluded above, one has to have not so exciting projects to know what exciting projects are.

Thursday's lunchtime concert was an all-Poulenc programme featuring Pascal and Ami Roge, Tim and eight of the students in works for two pianos, as well as the Poulenc sextet. This was a really fun and enjoyable concert and also rewarding to not have to work hard and just to be able to sit back and enjoy the concert. Also because I don't understand, but enjoy, Poulenc's music. Friday's lunchtime concert was a great ball of fun; Stephen Emmerson and all the students performed an all-Grainger programme of works for multiple pianos and multiple hands. There were some short cute tunes and a beautiful Scottish folksong arrangement with the highlight (not as I played in it, but rather as the most substantial thing that Grainger wrote) being his arrangment of his own orchestral work, The Warrior (Music for an Imaginery Ballet), for three pianists at two pianos. This twenty or so minute work is full of exciting harmonies that shift rapidly, melodic themes, percussive effects, polytime (between all three pianists at one point!), canons - among many other exciting things. This was a fantastic piece to work on and play. In the couple of weeks leading up to it, practicing it always made me happy because it is such joyous and fun music. And there are sections of extreme dynamics - really fun to create 'barely a wisp of sound' to thumping it out ('bring to the fore' and ffff). I seriously think that in the performance we abused the pianos so much that we put them out of tune! It was great fun. We started together and ended together; again, with a few funny things in the middle, but that is the beauty of live performance: the risk factor! It was still effective, and I think the audience really enjoyed it. I know I got a real kick out of playing this massive work. What fun.

Each evening, we also watched a concert given by one of the visiting artists. These ranged widely from Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, French 'Impressionists', Rachmaninoff, Messiaen to a recent composition/homage to Liszt. Being immersed in this much piano and performance was very busy (each hour accounted for, including when we had time to practice and when we ate lunch and dinner!) but also really satisfying because we could engage in so much so intensely. Going to a concert each evening made us critical listeners and inspired much comment and debate afterwards and into the rest of the week. All the concerts were good in their own way; each provoked (positive and negative) responses from the students, which I think is a good thing. To play and not have any response is probably the worst reaction because it means that the music and playing didn't move anybody to care. Probably one of the highlights for me was to hear Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time). Much has been said about this piece but I had never heard it in its entirety, either on recording or live. If you get the chance to see it live, I highly recommend that you do. Played well (as it was on the Friday night), it is incredibly moving; I doubt I can even adequately describe it in words, but in a poor attempt to do so, I felt like I needed to sit in silence for half an hour after the performance to process what had just happened. It felt like plucking molten silver out of thin air. Time stood still for many moments.

There was an Improv segment to Piano Week as well, held the weekend after the classical stuff finished. I also managed to squeeze in a vocal recital on the Saturday night at the end of the craziness that was the week. Perhaps thoughts and reflections on those two days are better left for another post of far less intensity and information. A ridiculous amount of caffeine and sugar taking the guise of an addiction (there are far worse things to be addicted to!) helped me through the one hundred hour or so week of incredible music-making, madness and merriment. I met a bunch of amazing artists - both professional and colleagues - who made the week so enjoyable. When Monday morning rolled around, I had lost a little bit of that motivation and gung-ho attitude that came with having every hour of every day accounted for in some schedule. It is back to the note-learning phase. The week was incredible. So many ideas were bounced around; I felt like I had to constantly have my critical hat on (critical not in a negative way, but in an analytical way) to really question why we make the decisions we do, why we enjoy certain things or not, and what we consider to be important in our music-making. So many ideas were sowed into young, impressionable minds and friends were made over music. That's important.