“Were you nervous?” I don’t get nervous for a performance in the sense of being frantic or having the shakes or anything like that. But I do notice that I sometimes start behaving a little differently right before a concert. I’ll find something to do until the concert begins, like fiddling with my cuff links… [continue reading]
Rachmaninoff Third, Part Eight
May 30th, 2011Rachmaninoff Third, Part Seven
May 29th, 2011“It looked like you were really enjoying yourself up there. Were you?” There is an unusual line down which interpreting musicians walk. On one side is feeling, on the other side is control. A performer has to hold a teetering balance between these two. The composer’s score is like a playwright’s script, and the interpreting… [continue reading]
Rachmaninoff Third, Part Six
May 28th, 2011“Who runs the show in a concerto performance—the soloist or the conductor?” Ideally, it is the soloist. The concerto was written to feature the soloist, and the conductor’s job is to shape the accompaniment to the soloist’s playing. That is the ideal, but it doesn’t always happen that way. Some conductors see themselves as the… [continue reading]
Rachmaninoff Third, Part Five
May 27th, 2011“What’s it like onstage?” Well, for most people, it is not an everyday experience. It feels out of the ordinary. There you are in this huge room, sitting at the one end of a concert grand piano, staring down the shiny golden 9-foot length of its interior workings and often with a direct line of… [continue reading]
Rachmaninoff Third, Part Four
May 26th, 2011“Did you listen to recordings to study this piece?” The first time I performed the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto in 2007, I listened to a recording by Vladimir Horowitz as a model for the shape and the message of the piece as well as to study the interweaving of the piano and orchestral parts. This time,… [continue reading]