Category Archives: Piano

Lyrical Gangsta: Nature on Tom Lehrer

Tom Lehrer at 90: a life of scientific satire

Andrew Robinson celebrates the high notes in the mathematician’s inimitable musical oeuvre.
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Lehrer agrees with mathematician Stanislaw Ulam (one of the builders of the atomic bomb) that rhyming “forces novel associations … and becomes a sort of automatic mechanism of originality”. As he told me in 2008: “If ‘von Braun’ didn’t happen to rhyme with ‘down’ (and a few other words), the most quoted couplet in the song would not exist, and in all probability the song itself would not have been written.”
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Closer to home, Nancy Keystone‘s ‘Apollo’ trilogy cast sharp, cynical, brilliant eyes on whitewashing Nazi rocket scientists into America’s space program.

Vimeo Channel: Nancy Keystone

 

A Major good time: ‘The Trout’ at RHUMC

From l to r: Benjamin Lash (cello), So-Mang Jeagal (piano), Kaelan Decman (double bass), Justin Woo (violin), Kevin Hsu (viola)

Amateur musicians are justifiably in awe of their professional counterparts.  We struggle with rhythm, tempo, dynamics, intonation, and sight reading.  They’ve mastered all that and more at an  early age.   It is all maddening especially the sight reading part.  I’d do a deal with Mephisto in a heartbeat if I could do that without actually working for it.  But, on the positive side, we schmoes reap the benefits of the pro’s superior talent and diligence in concert.   The USC Thornton School sent five graduate students to Rolling Hills last Sunday for a rollicking ‘Trout Quintet’ to a packed and savvy house.  Fine ensemble playing by a group that assembled and converged for this event.   It was damned hard not to hum along, especially with the fourth movement.  Video/audio to be posted if made available.

Guilty pleasures: Ashish Xiangyi Kumar’s piano analyses

Youtube offers many channels with high quality classical music accompanied by synchronized scores.  Ashish Xiangyi Kumar has an especially good one for piano fans.    A large number of his videos feature two or more pianists interpreting the same work.   To these, he offers his own thoughts on the pieces and the interpretations.   A young Singaporean now studying law at Cambridge, Kumar  brings to task a razor sharp mind and keen persuasive skills honed through a championship debate career.  His notes read like chess matches analyzed by a grandmaster who can both understand and explain  features large and small.  He’s also a composer and if he can play what he writes, his  chops must be first-rate.

The guilt?  The recordings and scores come from somewhere…

For best results, start the videos, then click on the “Watch on Youtube” button and read the commentaries.

Channel: Ashish Xiangyi Kumar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kjX4YNy39M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVcfdwGlSXU&list=PLmdMr9Or9Em58wxArIIYr9X7u3YPYlF8T

Pianoses then and now

“At an evening party, Mozart bet a case of champagne that Haydn could not play at sight a piece he had composed that afternoon. Haydn accepted the bet and proceeded to play it on harpsichord only to stop short after first few bars. It was impossible to continue because the composition required him to simultaneously strike notes at two ends of the keyboard and a note in the very center. Haydn exclaimed, ‘Nobody can play this with only two hands.’

‘I can,’ Mozart said, and took his place at the keyboard. When he reached that problematic portion of his piece, Mozart bent forward and struck the central note with his nose.

Haydn conceded saying: ‘With a nose like yours, it becomes easier.'”

–E. Van de Velde, Anecdotes Musicales; N. Slonimsky, Slonimsky’s Book
(Source: http://kalvos.org/creshess2.html)

David Rakowski‘s ‘Schnozzage’ brings this bit of technique into the modern era. Amy Briggs performs.

Engulfed Keyboard: Freire and Richter play Debussy

I’m relearning ‘Canope,’ one of Debussy’s amateur friendly Preludes that stretches hands all over the 88s and reading skills across three staves. One day I hope to don the scuba gear and visit ‘La Cathédrale Engloutie’.  Here are Nelson Freire and Sviatoslav Richter wrapping their very differently-sized flippers around it.

Colla sinistra: Wittgenstein plays Ravel

Paul, older brother of philosopher Ludwig, lost an arm in WW1 and then commissioned composers to write left-hand only pieces for him. By all accounts a temperamental character, he torqued several now-great names while simultaneously enriching the repertoire through his sponsorships.

Melissa Lesnie‘s article “The Man with the Golden Arm” is fascinating reading.

Here is Wittgenstein at the keyboard with Bruno Walter and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand.