Monday, December 6, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Operaplot
Check out my friend's competition, participate, win prizes. Jonas Kaufmann is this year's judge! All ends this Friday. http://theomniscientmussel.com/2010/04/operaplot-2010-rules-and-faq/
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Proust
"Because happiness alone is good for the body; whereas sorrow develops the strength of the mind. Sorrow kills in the end. And it is in this way that are gradually formed those terrible, ravaged faces of the old Rembrandt, and the old Beethoven, whom everybody used to laugh at. Let us accept the physical damage it does to us in return for the spiritual knowledge it brings us; let us leave our body to disintegrate, since each new particle that breaks away from it comes back, now luminous and legible, to add itself to our work, to complete it at the price of sufferings of which others more gifted have no need, to increase its solidity as our emotions are eroding our life. Ideas are substitutes for sorrows; the moment they change into ideas they lose a part of their power to hurt our hearts and, for a brief moment, the transformation even releases some joy. As for happiness, almost its only useful quality is to make unhappiness possible."
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
György Sebök
The video www.youtube.com/watch?v=h427L7297xM of György Sebök prompted a friend of mine, who was his student, to reminiscence thus:
"I was told he lost his mother and sister in the Holocaust. He never spoke of that though. But I remember one lesson where I played the Prokofieff "War" sonata #7. Afterwards, he just sat there. Then he said, "never play that for me again" and it was the end of the lesson. Sometimes when I tell people that they laugh, like "wow you played badly". But I understood exactly why he said it. For me it was one of the best lessons ever. I learnt that in art, there is a human limit. And it is sometimes necessary to step observe that limit in art, that even in art, one cannot become inhuman. I feel that Sebok's survival to an old age was an act of will to live as a human. He saw things inhuman, and he was the most sensitive person I've ever met. And somehow, he found his humanity and taught us to see ours. He was a great, great teacher. When he died, Janos Starker called him "the greatest pianist of the 20th century". He wasn't perfect but he was excellent and took care of us and I loved him."
"He never ever judged a competition or entered one. Once I decided to go to one. He said, "well, enjoy the circus". Though he won the Grande Prix du Disque for one of his 50-odd records. He could sit down and play anything in the classical repertoire. His Bartok was a revelation but so was his Schumann. He didn't believe in repetition in practising. He believed in understanding what you did. Re promotion, he told us once that he had never solicited an engagement. He had only played when others asked. He had no agent. Some people thought he was a poor model for university students that way, he wasn't in the "real world" because he didn't teach PR and competition winning. The odd thing though is that of all my teachers, he is the one who taught me the most about the real world. Because his way of focusing the mind showed me how to cope with life situations and professional situations. I think of his words all the time and they give perspective."
"I owe so much to him."
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
Sebök looked back on his concert at age 14, and drew a connection between that event and his teaching philosophy. "During the third movement I made some mistakes," he recalled, "but I didn't feel guilty about it because I felt I had done my best." Similarly, Sebök helped his students overcome fear of mistakes in order to give their best performances: "One has to accept that to be human is to be fallible, and then do the best one can and be captured by the music."
"I was told he lost his mother and sister in the Holocaust. He never spoke of that though. But I remember one lesson where I played the Prokofieff "War" sonata #7. Afterwards, he just sat there. Then he said, "never play that for me again" and it was the end of the lesson. Sometimes when I tell people that they laugh, like "wow you played badly". But I understood exactly why he said it. For me it was one of the best lessons ever. I learnt that in art, there is a human limit. And it is sometimes necessary to step observe that limit in art, that even in art, one cannot become inhuman. I feel that Sebok's survival to an old age was an act of will to live as a human. He saw things inhuman, and he was the most sensitive person I've ever met. And somehow, he found his humanity and taught us to see ours. He was a great, great teacher. When he died, Janos Starker called him "the greatest pianist of the 20th century". He wasn't perfect but he was excellent and took care of us and I loved him."
"He never ever judged a competition or entered one. Once I decided to go to one. He said, "well, enjoy the circus". Though he won the Grande Prix du Disque for one of his 50-odd records. He could sit down and play anything in the classical repertoire. His Bartok was a revelation but so was his Schumann. He didn't believe in repetition in practising. He believed in understanding what you did. Re promotion, he told us once that he had never solicited an engagement. He had only played when others asked. He had no agent. Some people thought he was a poor model for university students that way, he wasn't in the "real world" because he didn't teach PR and competition winning. The odd thing though is that of all my teachers, he is the one who taught me the most about the real world. Because his way of focusing the mind showed me how to cope with life situations and professional situations. I think of his words all the time and they give perspective."
"I owe so much to him."
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
Sebök looked back on his concert at age 14, and drew a connection between that event and his teaching philosophy. "During the third movement I made some mistakes," he recalled, "but I didn't feel guilty about it because I felt I had done my best." Similarly, Sebök helped his students overcome fear of mistakes in order to give their best performances: "One has to accept that to be human is to be fallible, and then do the best one can and be captured by the music."
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Palin's Second Book and Chopin's 200th
When I told my rather simple, born in a small Ukranian village grandmother the story of Proust who in mid-life shut himself away in a room to write a book for the rest of his life and rarely emerged from its confines, she - while not being truly aware of the magnitude of the achievement but nonetheless impressed and full of reverance mingled with awe not due to snobbery, but from a deep-rooted human instinct for admiration of great deeds (in the same way she admired Chopin) - said something to the effect: "Imagine sacrificing oneself like that and WRITING A BOOK...". And then I think of the present day where anyone who does anything notorious, be it stupid, trivial or even criminal, writes (or rather has it written for them) a best-seller. And I reflect on how the intrinsic value of a book must have fallen greatly over time in the subconscious of the mainstream society due to the overexploitation of this last bastion of the written word's prestige.
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