·An oasis for adult piano students and musicians with hearing loss·
·An oasis for adult piano students and musicians with hearing loss·
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Three weeks ago I played piano in public for the first time. Much to my young children’s disappointment, my debut performance wasn’t in a recital room at my music school, nervously awaiting my turn to showcase my beginner skills among a lineup of their elementary school classmates.
The repeated tenor notes, which patter underneath all but a few of the measures in the Chopin Raindrop Prelude—first A-flat, then G-sharp, then back to A-flat again, so evocative of raindrops—make the piece almost wholly unique in classical piano music.
For a train journey down south, Paul Elie took along a triple-CD set of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.
Indusekhar Menon hails from Pune, India, a city known as the Oxford of the East. In his early 30s, after looking upon a grand piano for the first time, he joined the global community of people with a passion for classical piano music.
I fell in love with the Chopin Nocturne in E-flat Major after I heard the work performed in concert. Five times the melody arched up over an octave, as though calling out.
Ten days before Christmas, my schedule arrived for a conference I was to attend over New Year’s weekend in Charleston.
Today we remember Frédéric Chopin primarily as a composer, yet he also made his livelihood by teaching adult piano lessons. The number of professionals that he taught during his lifetime amounted to no more than 20. The rest were amateurs with a passion for the piano.
Last week at a New York Piano Society audition, I learned first hand the value of having reentry points in my classical piano music.
So instructed Chopin to one of his favorite students, Emile von Gretsch, a member of high society who also happened to be a gifted and hardworking amateur pianist.