New Piano Pieces, One Month In

The first month of learning new pieces is like cutting through a jungle with a dull machete.  In this case, the jungle is the formidable array of unfamiliar notes staring at me from the page.  The dull machete is, of course, my brain.  Going from a pianist that can actually play a full program reasonably well to a stumbling and bumbling beginner is always a humbling experience.  Since I limit myself to two hours a day of practice, time is always in critical shortage at the beginning.  Take my first hour: 7 short pieces that have only 50 minutes total time (5 minutes of each hour is used for technical warmup).  Divided evenly that is 7 minutes per piece. Not bad, you say.  Try it some time.  With 14 pages to learn, that's now down to 31/2 minutes per page.

 

Surprisingly, after one month, things begin to slowly fall together.  It will be another 6-8 weeks before I can really play any of them well and then begin to memorize them (another entire basket of troubles).  My program will open with two Scarlatti sonatas, one of which I have learned a very long time ago.  Neither piece is difficult, but they are oh so fine!  I love Scarlatti and have been ignoring his music of late.  Next come five pieces by Couperin, all new to me.

 

My second half is still not fully settled.  Currently I am working on three preludes Op 11 by Scriabin, all new to me.  Then I am reviving a favourite set by Bartok, his 6 Roumanian Folk Dances.  The last two are difficult and must be played at a furious tempo, but having learned them many years ago will help with the muscle memory motions.  Currently those 9 pieces take up my entire second hour of practice.  I'm hoping there will soon be room to add in another Philip Glass Etude, as well as a previously learned Debussy Prelude (to be determined).  We will see where I am in another month.

 

In further piano news, Deb has been painstakingly attempting to rescue all my previous recordings.  From 1994 to about 1999 I routinely recorded all my programs, and had them copied to cassettes at Aldon Studio in Windsor.  Those tapes are seriously degrading, and Deb is using software to try and save at least some of the pieces.  If she is able to do that I will try and post them somewhere on line, perhaps here on a separate music blog.

 

In film watching news we managed to last through ten episodes of a 2019 Japanese TV show called The Real Thing.  Due to the weakness and uncertainty of the two main characters the show can be very frustrating to watch most of the time.  A young man saves a young woman's life at a train crossing, and from then on their lives keep crossing and causing interference.  Though things more or less work out okay in the end, so many bad decisions by the characters are being made throughout the series that one wonders just how the writers figured that a happy ending could actually work.  It's difficult for Westerners to deal with Japanese ways of thinking, and this series highlights this fact.  If you enjoy watching a series that frustrates you, I can recommend this one.

 

The series leaves Mubi May 31st. 

 

 

Mifune is a Danish/Swedish film from 1999.  Here is the capsule from Criterion:

 

Directed by Søren Kragh-Jacobsen • 1999 • Denmark, Sweden

Starring Iben Hjejle, Anders W. Berthelsen, Jesper Asholt

The third film made in accordance with the Dogme 95 movement’s so-called “vows of chastity” is an offbeat, darkly comic romance in which Kresten (Anders W. Berthelsen), a successful, newly married businessman in Copenhagen, finds his life turned upside down after his father dies and he must return to his rural hometown to help care for his childlike, UFO-obsessed brother (Jesper Asholt). As he struggles to adjust to the not-so-simple-life in the country, a budding relationship with his new housekeeper (Iben Hjejle), who is actually a call girl on the run, forces Kresten to reexamine everything. 

The film is a brilliant look at a city boy returning home to the farm where he grew up.  When he was young he found his mother hanging from a tree.  Since then, and as his father aged and cared for his simple-minded brother, the farm and house gradually fell apart.  He wants to keep his family a secret from his wife.  The scene of their wedding night together is one of the funniest sex episodes I have ever seen on film.  From there on the marriage quickly runs downhill.  When the wife pays a surprise visit to the farm, she stays about 30 seconds before deciding to get a divorce.  The highlight of the film is the simple-minded brother, brilliantly acted by Jesper Asholt.  He steals virtually every scene he is in.  A lot of screwball material is inserted at times, but the picture is best in its quieter moments.  It won a Silver Bear in Berlin.

 

Leaving Criterion May 31st. 

 

Lastly comes Witches, a 2024 documentary by Elizabeth Sankey.  Using interviews with women who had suffered from post-partum mental health issues, as well as relating her own harrowing experiences after giving birth to her son, the film offers a new take on the burning and hanging of witches over the past 5 centuries.  With its generous use of clips from Hollywood and other films showing women with mental health issues, a strong case is made for exploring an issue which most women never talk about, to their detriment.  Broken into five chapters, the film has hair raising moments when the women reveal their actual feelings at the time.  They tell their stories through tears, some of them expressing feelings on camera that they have never shared before with anyone.  This is a film that should be required viewing for all family and ER doctors, not to mention pregnant women.  Harrowing and fascinating, and at times almost unbelievable, the film should create a lot of discussion and hopefully some healing.  Required viewing.

 

Now showing on Criterion. 

 

May reading summary coming this weekend!  

 

Mapman Mike 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Olga Kern Recital, VW, Cold and Influenza Season

I'll work backwards from that title.  Deb and I have been taking turns fighting off colds.  My turn was last Wednesday and Thursday, with fatigue, scratchy throat, and a mind that was off center more than usual.  Deb's turn began Friday, and she is better now.  She has had her flu shot this year; I go this Thursday.  But this was strictly a cold.  Deb had a tougher fight, as she had her infusion last Thursday, which wipes out her immune system for two weeks.  Still, she managed to fight it off!  She did sleep a lot.

VW has had our Golf since last Thursday, when we brought it in for a leaky roof.  Leaves and maple keys get into the sun roof slots and can cause havoc.  We have a lot of trees.  But no Golf for 5 days now, though they did give us a Jetta loaner.  We've been staying home and waiting for a call that never seems to come.  Between our illnesses and waiting for VW, we have yet to visit with Randy G.

Last Saturday we attended the fourth of five autumn concerts.  We heard Russian-American pianist Olga Kern perform a massively programmed recital in Detroit.  It was a packed house, and about half of the audience was speaking Russian.  She opened with three Scarlatti sonatas, with the first one being one of the most difficult of his 500-odd such pieces.  To open a program with such a difficult piece is daring, if not risky.  Let's just say that my opening pieces are usually chosen with cautious care.  Anyway, she played them flawlessly, including one in C Major I have learned, and one in D Minor that I now feel I must learn.  As for the first one she played in A Major, I think I'll just leave that one alone for now.

She followed up with the Waldstein Sonata by Beethoven, one of his very biggest pieces.  Again the performance was riveting and flawless, quite possibly the finest performance of this popular program piece I have ever heard.  And I have heard Schiff!  The hoots and applause following the Beethoven were a sign that she should have ended the first half at that point.  Instead, she made a huge programming blunder!  She was scheduled to perform 5 short pieces by a Michigan composer.  Instead, she replaced them with four pieces by Gershwin.  Note to self, and to other piano performers.  NEVER program Gershwin one minute after playing Beethoven, especially such a piece as the Waldstein.  It just didn't work.  When the half finally ended, the applause was minimal.  I hope she noticed.

After intermission she played three big pieces by Rachmaninoff, two by Scriabin, and a monstrously difficult but essentially empty virtuoso piece called Islamey, also by a Russian composer.  Her encore was more of the same, with a very fast and loud etude by Prokofiev.  Needless to say, despite a journey home afterwards that lasted over an hour, when I finally got into bed that night my brain would not settle itself--too much virtuoso stimulation.  Anyway, she is an excellent pianist and musician, but she needs to think a bit harder about her programming. 

Mapman Mike