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2005年07月30日
It's easy to forget how beautiful the Grieg concerto is. I went to Oxford last night which is also such a beautiful town... It was inspiring to perform in the old theatre for the first time in my life.
投稿者 Freddy : 17:55 | コメント (1) | トラックバック
2005年07月29日
...back to school
I suppose I should really say back to work as Finland seemed more like a holiday than work.
I have a busy 3 days now - concert last night, Grieg concerto tonight and Rachmaninov concerto no. 2 tomorrow! Last night was quite funny in fact. I normally do check the program when I arrive just to make sure that I know exactly what the audience expects. Yesterday however I some how forgot, probably due to British traffic which is HORRENDOUS. It took me 3 hours to drive 115km of which most was motorway...
Anyway I was about to walk onto the stage when I saw the promoter, a friend of mine, holiding the program... "Good", I thought but when I looked one of the pieces was not the one I thought. You can imagine what I was thinking as I sat down as I didn't really know what to do. In the end I played the other piece and it went fine.
投稿者 Freddy : 20:20 | コメント (0) | トラックバック
2005年07月27日
Life is Finnish-ed!
Hello everyone. I've been trying to add to this page but because I've basically forgotten how to read Japanese I always end up deleting my entry. This is my 5th attempt now... Patience...
I've been doing my summer "rounds" and just had a lovely trip to Finland. My sister lives in Finland and after the last ten days I can finally say that at least part of me wishes it could live there too. I was in Kuhmo at the chamber music festival and life there was such a change from London. I was sitting in my car today grinding to a halt on the road to my gym because Police had shut down the whole area in front to try to catch terrorists...
In Finland I was always being told to "Get a bike!" every time I tried to nag someone about parking. My bike-riding leaves a lot to be desired - I almost had a bad crash with a gentleman because I didn't know who was meant to stop. I just kept going and barely missed him and then he tried to teach me some Finnish. Another time I almost hit a car because I didn't realize the car was stopping. The most embarrassing thing was when I almost knocked over a little girl of about 9 or 10... She was passing me on my left and I tried to go right to give her more space but instead I found myself going LEFT!! She didn't fall but had to stop and put her leg on the ground and I never ever got so many nasty looks from so many people.
For the first time in my life, thanks to many things including Dvorak's beautiful F minor piano trio, I finally understood and experienced the emotion that(, most relevantly to me last week,) inspired Rachmaninov and of course Dvorak to write music about their lives in the sense that they had to leave something behind that they loved (; their countries;) even though it broke their hearts to do so. I find myself performing Rachmaninov's 2nd concerto in a completely different way now. It was very emotional to perform the Dvorak on the night before leaving Kuhmo too.