Author: jacobtw

I finally recorded the entire concerto last night. It was a bit stressful because I could only get in one take and a partial take. I had 80 mins to record and my concerto is 33 mins. Honestly playing through this concerto is exhausting and I’m still not happy with the 2nd and 3rd mvt (hence no link). Perhaps I will share the third movement next week. There’s just one very wrong note sticking out in that recording that irks me to no end. This is the last time I’ll be playing this concerto is a couple months so it felt good to a have a “final product”. This first mvt is a culmination of decades of romanticism and the orchestral reduction doesn’t quite give the same luscious beauty to the melody as a sea of strings would.

Happy Birthday Mozart! This is the cadenza that I wrote for his 21st piano concerto. The cadenza is where the soloist shows off their virtuosity and skill. Sometimes they are even improvised on the spot! My cadenza is not really in the classical style because it’s quite heavy and romanticize. I manipulate the themes from the concerto itself to delve into a quasi fantasy. I actually didn’t write a lot of it down, so when the conductor asked for it, I told him that I would just cue him in. This particular performance had a single rehearsal the morning of the concert in Perugia, Italy.

Every musician encounters this never ending nightmare sometime. This winter break, I encountered it head-on, Pachelbel’s Canon in D. I had this recording gig to play at my friend’s church. They actually specifically requested Pachelbel. Honestly I have nothing (only a some bit) against the Canon, but somehow this piece just haunts every musician. It’s goes on forever and in this case, I had to play most of the extra lines. ~sigh~ Honestly, this piece gave me such a headache because it never went anywhere; it was same chords over and over again. This is reality for a musician in the 21st century though. There’s gigs to do and every wedding wants to walk down the aisle with this in the background. Just gotta grit your teeth and give the people what they want. AND THE PEOPLE WANT CANON IN D!

So I’ve been at school for a week to rehearse. This excerpt is a from the ending of the second movement and it is a grandiose and beautiful conclusion. I had a bit of trouble memorizing this because the harmonies. I’ve been preparing this concerto for the concerto competition at SMTD. The finals have to be 25 minutes and under but this concerto is around 33 minutes. I really want to include this part into my cut because it is such a satisfying part to play. I’m thinking this weekend I will finalize my cuts and really time my performance.

This is from my first rehearsal back at school. I will be playing the concerto competition on Jan 26th and need to prepare all of the concerto. This is from the very beginning of the third movement. It is very grand and fast. Honestly playing the theme makes me very nervous. Its a flashy movement but I definitely need to rehearse it a lot more. I came back to Michigan 2 weeks early just to rehearse with my accompanist.

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.