Tuesday, August 4, 2009

I find myself watching Youtube for these fantastic piano performances from the past, such as this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhnRIuGZ_dc&feature=related by the master of all time Vladimir Horowitz playing Chopin's gm Ballade #1. I remember my father practicing and performing this in concert when I was a little girl. I knew all his pieces so well that I was probably the only one in the audience who picked up a mistake (and there were only a few!) My current students, who live lives of a whirlwind of activity and video games probably couldn't believe that I spend many hours petting my dog under the Steinway while my daddy practiced, just to hear the beautiful music and to be near him. (Sometimes I'd read a book, but it was pretty loud under there!) I had such a musical heritage from my father for which I will forever be grateful. My only small problem was that since he was busy concentrating on what he was doing, he didn't stop and tell me what piece of music it was, or even what composer wrote it, so to this day, I will hear piano music on the radio and know EVERY note, and not have a clue who wrote it, or what it's called.

I've heard recently of research that is showing prenatal memory, such as a newborn being able to pick out his mother's voice from others, but it goes deeper than that. I "played" (on records at high decibel levels) all 5 Beethoven piano concertos for my firstborn prenatally. I don't know if it had any effect on him or not, but he has almost perfect pitch singing, and has since before he could talk. All 3 of my sons are musical, but not the classical, or even jazz, and certainly not the piano. Not for lack of trying on my part. They all had lessons, but gave up early on. The youngest played sax and had a wonderful teacher, David Kay, who teaches students at Interlochen in the summer, and took lessons for several years. He could not only read the difficult rhythms in the jazz music, but could improvise as well. All 3 play guitar now, and much better than I ever could.

I know MANY people who took piano lessons and quit and regretted it, but have never met ONE pianist who is even moderately accomplished who regrets all the time they studied and practiced! Some of that I attribute to the books they had in the 50s and 60s that were pretty tough, had tiny print and required some serious practice. Nowadays there are nice big notes, pretty colored pictures, and even accompaniment CDs and disks to play along with. Bells and whistles don't change the basics that everyone needs to learn, but it makes it a little more palatable. (In my humble opinion!) note: as soon as I can, I switch kids over to the old school methods, since they might as well be playing actual Bach and Mozart, rather than pieces that mimic them. I LOVE Kabalevsky. The entire preceding paragraph was most likely BORING for non-musicians, but I'm putting the soapbox away now.

In fact, enough for today. I hope you go to youtube and watch the Horowitz clip. Even for non-musicians, it is inspiring. We should all strive for excellence in something!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhnRIuGZ_dc&feature=related