poco piano: sounds in the reflection

I’ve been home for winter break and something I’ve observed a few things: 1. the fridge is awfully close to the piano (10 steps). 2. my piano’s upper register is so very out of tune 3. the couch is always more appealing than the piano bench 4. my piano has a very shiny varnish (compared to all of the university’s pianos). When I practice, I’ve been looking at the reflection of my hands rather than my actual hands. Since I’m preparing to play this concerto (Rach 2) in January, I’ve been thinking a lot about how the melody fits and memorizing the piece so working on this video really helped with that.

Contrary to what the video might suggest, I think that the Solo piano part (B&W) is actually really lush and colorful. It has beautiful harmonies that blending parsimoniously and actually enhances the simple melody through metric displacement. The solo part is calm but almost acts like a motor, pushing the melody along. It’s rather like a swan’s paddling feet, aiding and propelling it along; the melody gliding gracefully above.