Mid Concert Binge Report

I refer to these few days as a "concert binge" because I have more concerts this week than I had for the entirety of first semester! "Binge" having a positive connotation, of course. Concert No. 1 took place yesterday. Daniel Fung and I started off his collaborative recital with the Franck Sonata. Midway through the second movement, I recalled a phrase from class: "heroic flailing". I don't know about heroism in the Allegro movement, but there was definitely some flailing on my part! Overall it was a good performance, but I consider it to be the beginning of a journey, rather than the end. Nana and I have been (somewhat awkwardly) learning the piece with separate collaborative partners; hopefully the two of us will have a chance to record it together later this month!

Concert No. 2 took place earlier today. To close Renate Rohlfing's collaborative recital, Renate, Katharine Dain, Sofia Nowik, and I performed Shostakovich's Seven Romances on Poems by Aleksander Blok. This is a piece that one doesn't hear too often, über unfortunately. Go seek out a performance of this! Or you can keep checking this website and cross your fingers--perhaps the four of us will perform it again soon. I know that I want to! I had to put on several different hats for this piece: a street musician for the third movement, a raging storm for the fifth movement, and a dark, stark, yet supremely emotional chamber musician for movements six and seven. (There weren't enough hats to go around, so I sat out the first, second, and fourth movements.)

Closing up this concert binge as Concert No. 3 is my performance with the New Juilliard Ensemble, Friday 4/8 in Alice Tully Hall. The program consists entirely of contemporary Japanese composers. Interestingly, I have never played any Japanese compositions, so Somei Satoh and Karen Tanaka are my introduction to Japanese classical music! Thus I have been having a lot of fun listening to these pieces and trying to understand their language. Though both pieces are what one might call "slow", they feel very different. My one sentence summary of each: Satoh's From the Depths of Silence is what John Cage's 4'33 would sound like if he had actually composed something. Tanaka's Water and Stone is a harmonic interpretation of a murmuring brook. (I realize that most brooks babble--but not this one.) I can't speak about the other pieces on the program, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were quite contrasting to these two pieces.

Next week I have no concerts, but I will be trying out contemporary violins. After playing on the Strad a few weeks ago, I realized that I want more than what my instrument can offer. So if anyone has any favorite living luthiers (or a Guadagnini lying around the house) please let me know!