Okay. Hands up. It was not a good week on the practice front this week and although I haven’t looked, I’m assuming I dropped out of my Sapphire league this week. I missed yesterday so my continuous streak broke as well.
CPE Bach got most practice. It’s almost ready to go and as an additional bonus, I bought a tripod and for my next trick will be working out how best to record the exam film.
Apart from that, I did touch on the Tchaik a bit and that was about it.
During the week I found out that there was an ABRSM group of some description on FaceBook so I took a look in. It was a weird experience, but I wanted to touch briefly on some of the discussions I saw in there. Somewhat surprisingly, there are people who do not like the performance grades.
They think they are too easy and exams are a waste of time.
The discussion I read during the week was sad. One primary push from certain of the contributors was that in the old days it was harder, and the exams were more of an achievement. And that ABRSM only does things for the money. And the exams are meaningless. And if you don’t have to do sight reading or aural or rhythm tests they were just too easy and no one was doing exams any more.
I’m going to be honest. ABRSM should roll back the decision to only issue digital certificates by default. The exams are not exactly cheap but I doubt the diplomas are the biggest problem. That aside, what do I think of it?
Well, these graded systems are really a feature of the British world, and mostly pervade countries that were under British rule when these things were getting off the ground. This explains, for example, why the US is clueless about this sort of stuff but Canada, Ireland and Australia all have parallel systems and because no other countries really do it, if people want them, they tend to ABRSM and TCL. ABRSM is, I understand, especially popular in South East Asia.
What I found infuriating about the discussion is that one of the loudest voices against the performance grades and doing exams in general now Argued From Authority and the authority they argued from was having done all the ABRSM and TCL diplomas. I mean, have they no idea how utterly privileged they are? Most people haven’t time to do all the grades, never mind the grades and the diplomas of two examining bodies? Why would you do ABRSM’s top diplomas if you already had the TCL ones? And vice versa?
In practical terms, I’ve already written about how annoying it was to be forced to do pieces I hated (side eye to RIAM in the 1980s). Once you get to grade 6 onwards, I’m not sure you can actually progress without being reasonably competent in side reading, aural understanding, rhythm tests and some basic theory. That extra piece is a good chunk of work. Being told it’s worthless by someone who implies the whole thing was harder in the past (but easy.cheap and accessible enough for them to do both strands) is utterly insulting. It also doesn’t really deal with the key points here. What are people’s motivations?
What was this person’s motivation to do both FRSM and FTCL? What on earth does their business card look like?
Why does it matter more than mine? I got up in April and said “I regret not completing to Grade 8 when I was a teenager. The only other thing still possible is book writing, the dream of an Olympic figure skating gold was always out the window).
What was their motivation when it all comes down to it, if all they do is belittle the motivations of other people, run down their achievements and then boast they did it all and more anyway?
I dragged myself up to Sapphire in my Tonic League journey and the week has been such that I will be lucky to stay there. I’ve not been listening much and nor have I had much time at the piano.
That being side, there seems to be a point at which progress seems to fly. I don’t see the progress at the individual practice sessions now but more in recognising that today, I am playing things much better than I did one week ago or three days ago. I’m definitely playing them better than I was 2 months ago but then I started one of the pieces three months ago/
I open each practice session with a full run through all four pieces in sequence; I play them in order of age, oldest to newest. I call the self selection piece “list D” so in practical terms, this means I play Lists A, B, D and C as C is the only piece by a living composer. It takes 7 to 8 minutes. Mostly, I will play three of them cleanly except last night when I played none of them cleanly. After that I will work on whatever needs to be worked on, which is usually CPE Bach which is not far off target pace and one of the other pieces where the errors have been rather unfortunate. Occasionally I give Mendelssohn a little more detail.
What I’m finding is that I am occasionally bored of all of them now; I guess this is human and it’s one of the reasons you get advised not to work on something beyond your current skills +a little stretch – you will get bored. Because the Bach invention took so much time and then I whisked away from it, I’m behind with the CPE Bach and it’s really the last thing to cover before I do the recording for the exam. But I have to maintain the other 3.
I love playing the CPE Bach. To be honest, I’ve found it far easier than any of the other 4 pieces I’ve worked on for this exam. It’s not even the sound of it but the way in some places, particularly the F Minor section that my fingers fit so perfectly to the run of keys. It’s amazing.
One of the things which surprised me in the shakedown was that all 4 pieces I’ve lined up for Grade 6 are in minor keys. This wasn’t deliberate, and initially, the List A piece was in E Major.
I’m looking forward to having the Grade 6 submitted and recorded. It won’t be so long now I think and I really need to get a tripod so that I can do the recording.
In the meantime I have started working on the first of the Grade 8 pieces. I think I’ve look at all of them briefly at the piano and during the week, the one that made it to the piano stand was June by Tchaikovsky. It didn’t occur to me to vet it for small finger problems (let’s say the Rachmaninoff was the highest risk there) and that was somewhat of an error.
I scheduled Grade 8 for the end of 2025. I won’t object if that comes in slightly ahead of schedule; in any case I will need to track down a teacher at some point. Grade 8 is a gatekeeping certificate; the diplomas do not open up until I have it.
This afternoon I have piano time on a grand acoustic, hopefully a Steinway. I’m looking forward to it; I don’t think I’ve had the opportunity for the last 3 or 4 months.
I really wish that Daniil Trifonov and Henle or someone would do a deal and release his transcriptions. He has done some lovely work on Bach.
However, quite by chance, I found out about this yesterday. I asked myself, how good can it possibly be? Oh god, it’s amazing. I’m not really familiar with Sergei Babayan’s playing but I’m going to be frank, this album is approaching the recordings Trifonov did of the Rach concertos a few years ago and I wish he would record the cello sonata without a pesky cellist grabbing all the limelight.
In particular, I’d kill to have the sheets for the Symphonic Dances from this. It’s amazing.
This is one of those albums that has to be on your listen-list. I really would love to see them if they toured. This lad does things with a piano that very, very few other people can manage. I love listening to him play.
There are not enough superlatives in the world for this. The dynamic range is extraordinary; the pianos sound like god built instruments and the mics are disturbingly clear (this means one of them was singing along while playing). It’s the end of March. Debargue’s Fauré album is exquisite, and Tharaud’s duet album is also due in May and I expect wonderful things from that (the tasters are already gorgeous).
But I have a feeling this will be my piano album of the year.
Last night, to get to a wonderful rendition of Bruch’s first violin concerto, I had to sit through a work called Feast During a Plague by Sofia Gubaldulina. I’ve never heard of her but with Bruch and Prokofiev on the menu, I had filed the piece under “how bad can it possibly be” and bought the ticket anyway. The other two pieces were worth the ticket price. This was not. In answer to “how bad can it possibly be”, the answer is truly, unequivocably awful.
Apparently some people – I don’t know who, whether they really exist or how high they were – have called her the world’s greatest living female composer. I have no idea why. I really have no idea why. I don’t know how the orchestra suffered through it and I believe they have to again tonight in Charleroi. For the first time in my life in a concert hall, with a high quality orchestra on the bill, I heard an audience boo a performance. This is highly rare. If they got applause, it was for suffering through this piece.
I loathed it. I’ll admit I’m not a fan of much atonal output anyway – I think it’s self indulgent trash for the most part, and this was utterly devoid of a melody. It had some structure yes, but who cares when ten minutes in you’re wondering when the torture is going to be over. When you see her name being mentioned in sentences with Shostakovich, it’s the sort of stuff that makes me vomit. Shostakovich – whether you like him or not – wrote singable melodies. The second movement of his second piano concerto is a truly beautiful thing (if not the rest of it) and in one of his Jazz Waltzes he has given us a truly amazing short work whether you hear it played by an orchestra or a piano or two (there are a fair few transcriptions around), it is wonderful to listen to.
There is a recording of this Gubaldulina work somewhere on YouTube where at least one of the ten commenters described it as “lovely”. It is anything but. It is unmelodic, harsh discordant mulch with too much running around by the percussion crew. We use the world “lovely” to describe Rachmaninoff’s 18th Variation from Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. We use the world “lovely” to describe Puccini’s arias. We do not use the world lovely to describe self indulgent atonal compositions that should not ever have the indulgence of being performed and imposed on a paying audience who would not pay money for it if it were the only work on the bill. I cannot imagine that this is the Gewandhaus’s best selling album by any stretch.
From what I can see, the audience hated it. They were fidgety from about 10 minutes in, and shortly afterwards, they started chatting. There was a large group of bored teenagers in who loathed it. We have one of the top violinists playing Bruch like an angel afterwards but this nonsense lost a bunch of young people. Orchestras need young people. It’s why the hell we have concerts of computer game music all of which is better than this. It’s why we have concerts of Hans Zimmer’s music.
I understand the need to schedule new music. But for the love of god, if that new music is atonal please don’t schedule it with Bruch, or Prokofiev. She might have been a contemporary of him and Shostakovich but it’s no wonder they are known and she is not so much.
I love the BNO. I love the Henri Leboeuf hall in Brussels. I’ve been to some stunning concerts there. But whoever programmed that needs to explain why they programmed that with the Bruch and Prokofiev. It was an awful, awful choice, completely counter to the beauty of the other two. It didn’t complement them. People left that concert hall at the interval (as they do for Bartok symphonies).
Contemporary music doesn’t have to be like this. At the end of the day, if you want to play atonal crap, you have to accept that not a lot of people want to listen to it and without an audience, what is music anyway? Meanwhile, people like Ludovico Einaudi are selling out major arenas as did Ennio Morricone.
You might judge people for liking that simplistic crapola and not being sophisticated to recognise the true genius of Feast During a Plague. But there is a reason that when people are asked who their favourite composer is, it isn’t this that they are answering. Nothing from the atonal world comes close to matching a Bach or Mozart.
This was not music. I never again want to hear it.
Alice Sara Ott is a wonderful concert pianist and you should definitely go and see her while you have the chance. Her Chopin preludes interspersed with (good) contemporary compositions in Brussels a few weeks’ back was a wonderful.
Maxim Vengerov probably is the best violinist in the world at the moment although Hilary Hahn is probably close. Last week he played Sibelius in the National Concert Hall in Dublin and despite some issues in the opening movement, it was truly glorious. In addition to the Sibelius, David Brophy and the NSO in Dublin gave us a Haydn symphony, and also Beethoven’s 7th. It was a night to savour. The brass section was a little overly loud but David Brophy is an excellent conductor with a very broad range of capabilities. He conducted the Beethoven from memory (together with the repeats) and I know he also did the Davey concert the week before as well. He is possibly Ireland’s best classical music asset at the moment and yet somehow, I think over rated.
Benjamin Grosvenor played Liszt 2 with the OPRL from Liege in Brussels on Holy Thursday. The OPRL are an excellent orchestra, treating us to wonderful Liszt Preludes and something by Strauss cannot remember what – beautiful. Sucks how talented he was when he wasn’t such a nice person. The Liszt piano concerto was accurate, finger secure and a bit underwhelming. I expected more but the piano was somewhat lost in the orchestra and I didn’t find it to be a particularly engaging performance for its accuracy and security. It’s a pity because that Liszt piano concerto is a stand out concerto, full of fire and drama. But it wasn’t really like that on Thursday night and I’m not in a hurry back. Given the coverage he gets on line, and especially in UK classical music coverage, I was expecting something more.
Sergei Khachryan came back to Bozar to play Bruch’s iconic first violin concerto on Good Friday. The concert was sold out and absolutely worth it for the experience of hearing him play; I wasn’t aware of him but have to note him as an excellent soloist, with all the passion that the concerto demands and then some. Two encores by Isaye (third and fourth sonata movements from what I remember) and an audience who truly loved him. But well they might. He rescued them from what was an seminally awful opening work, by Sofia Gubaldalina called Feast during a Plague. You will find a recording of it on YouTube where some elitist misguided idiots call it “lovely”.
The Romeo and Juliet ballet extracts from Prokofiev which followed the break was lovely. The Feast during a Plague was not but I’ll write on that separately.
I missed the weekend because I was in Dublin, to see Maxim Vengarov. I know he plays the violin but still….
Anyway, the practice was daily except Sat and Sunday so I broke my streak. I’m struggling. Really struggling to get further than about 15 days in a row. But all that days I have missed in March so far were travelling days.
So where are we: quick look back at last week. Okay. The fingering accuracy problems which were a major feature of last week are not such a problem this week. I’m inclined to think they are hormonal and I probably should track them as such in my practice journal. This leaves us with a review of what I got up to since I last posted.
CPE Bach Solfeggio. This is going pretty much okay. It is still below concert speed but it’s increasingly accurate at higher speed. I love my metronome. I’m still surprised at how much better I got on with this rather than his dad’s Inventio in E major. I may go back to that at some point in the future.
Mendelssohn Gondollied 19b no 6: this is great actually. I play this and think, yu know, six months ago I couldn’t play this at all, and I wondered if this whole Grade 6 idea was batshit crazy for someone who is otherwise very decent at non-classical stuff.
Rebikov Fallen Leaves No 3 Con Affizione: I think of all the would be and were broken relationships since I was 13 and this is rightly afflicted. It’s mostly stable, I’m happy to record it
Milne Indigo Moon: After moaning a while back that I couldn’t really memorise this, the finger work is mostly sound, it sounds great when I get it right. I get it right 80% of the time and for those people who drop into my Tonic stream from time to time, it seems to be very popular.
I played other stuff this week at various times, sometimes when I am tired or lost and also because I passed through Brussels and Dublin Airports and touched pianos in both airports. This week that included the Waltz Opus 30/15 Brahms, the A major setting (by Brahms himself). Currently stuck on the opening piece as I shape my fingers to it, but I love it and I think it will be a useful building block to 118/2, the other great expression of unrequited love I think. From the Celtic repertoire, there were the following pieces:
Blind Mary (O Carolan)
Gracelands (Cunningham)
Gaelic Air (unknown, sadly)
Eamon A Chnoic
The Foggy Dew
Kimiad (based on Stivell)
Voyage en Irlande (Bensusan).
All pieces that I love. I also touched Exodus, Scarborough Fair, I dreamed a dream from Les Miserables, and I think that was about it for the late night session last night.
For my next trick I need to start booking grand piano time a bit more frequently, and then I also need a tripod for my phone so I can film the exam submission by the end of the month. I’m really pleased about this.
The Isle of the Dead is playing in the background. I used to want to learn that; it’s a transcription of a Rachmaninoff piece. I’ve changed my mind.
So, to practice this week. I survived to Platinum for a second week in a row and to be honest, that was doing well because while I practised every day (go me), I only had one long practice. Next week has travel and two after work engagements. I’ll have to do a lot of active listening to offset the lack of practice next week because they will be mostly short sessions. Still and all, I intend to hang in there for my practice streak.
Tuesday was the big session and it must have done well. Since then, for probably hormonal reasons I’ve struggled with finger accuracy and memory issues across the board. It’s infuriating but as I don’t think anyone reads in here, I’ll be frank. I had sleeping issues and headaches and some serious nausea. All of that points to hormones all over the shop and yes, my period showed up yesterday.
Most of the practice time was devoted to CPE Bach. I can now play the piece more or less cleanly but far too slowly. So the effort for this piece is to raise the speed up to around 100bpm initially and then up to 125. After that, I think it may be dangerous. There are moments (time rather than place in the music) where I can tell my fingers where to go but not when. I would like it to be secure. It needs more time.
That being said, every practice sessions now starts with a performance run through of all four to get myself accustomed to playing them in sequence. I was wondering when I would get to the point I could do this.
All in all, would like it if my brain didn’t succumb to my ovaries but still on schedule to deliver the exam video before end of April.
One of my bucket list items has been to go to Verbier, and I am thinking of trying to make it happen this year. There are two or three concerts I’d like to go to – Alexandre Kantorow’s solo recital is one because that I would like to see.
By the way:
Alexandre Kantorow and friends celebrate their teacher’s time in France
I start off with Verbier because well, another bucket list item but which felt unattainable was grade 8 piano. And somehow, this is now realistic.
I love pianos. I’ve played piano in one shape or form since I was 8 years old. The world is full of people who are much better than I will ever be at this stage. The world is full of people who started learning at the age of 64. I’m better now than they are ever going to be.
But I wouldn’t be here without some hard thinking about a year ago and it boiled down to this: the work schedule I had would not allow me to do another university degree. It simply wasn’t possible and to be frank, I didn’t see the point any more if the outcome was to be more intense and constant exhaustion. In 2022 and 2023, I was constantly stressed and exhausted. So things were going to have to change.
So I started wondering about going back to music lessons and to see what I might yet be able to manage on that at this stage of my life. I looked on line and found Canada’s RCM and its extensive list of pieces. I have to confess, I didn’t realise it was in Canada until after I had selected some pieces for Grade 6 that looked doable. As far as I could remember, I had done up to Grade 5 in Ireland.
When I figured out it was Canadian and not UK system, I went looking again for a British one as I assumed there would be exam centres here in Belgium. This is how I discovered ABRSM had these performance grades that you recorded and uploaded. Also, they allowed me to prepare 4 pieces and avoid some of the other skills that I didn’t really want to try and structure according to their syllabus. I play by ear, and I play a rhythm instrument as well. I wasn’t totally worried about that.
But I had to do Grade 5 theory or prove I had done it in Ireland before. I figured it was easier to just do the Grade 5 theory rather than search remotely for proof I had done RIAM. In any case, I don’t think I did Grade 5 with the RIAM in Dublin, but with the Leinster School of Music which isn’t on the list of accepted alternatives for ABRSM. Doing the exam was a good idea.
It was really interesting. I learned a lot. I learned that I could still remember most of the theory covered up to Grade 4. What I didn’t know was really interesting and helpful. It covers a lot of how I think about music. From my point of view, obligation or no, being aware of Grade 5 theory is a good thing and I haven’t excluded doing further theory grades. For now I’ve been working on the performance grades.
I play the piano almost every day – if I miss a day it’s usually because I am travelling. To that end, I can now play pieces by Mendelssohn (dream come true), CPE Bach (love the piece), and two other composers that I didn’t really know before I fished them out of the syllabus. It’s really great.
The benefits though have not really just been musically inclined. I think the simple decision in April last year to start working towards something that a person I used to be has pushed me back into being some of the person I used to be, someone a bit more comfortable in myself. It took a long time and I’m really only starting to see the benefits now. My self esteem was still rock bottom in January; but these days, I think about those moments when I fly through CPE Bach – and I learned that incredibly quickly. I learned it in 6 weeks to be honest and now it is in polishing mode. I can’t quite believe it to be honest.
In the journey, it helped me to move around changing other parts of my life so that I could manage stress more effectively. That I could realistically think about learning some of the lots of sheet music I own. I go to more concerts. I’m thinking about going to a master class in the local conservatory. My resting heart rate is down. I’m sleeping better and some other health indicators around stress are also better.
I still have a lot of things to fix both musically and personally. But genuinely, making room for the exam one of my colleagues thought was crazy has changed my life.
