Things I Love

I can declare that moving country has not diminished my love of fish finger sandwiches. I think this is one thing I'll never tire of, oh and the piano. Seriously. The piano. I love not only playing the piano but also the instrument itself.


Thanks to a friend of mine here in Pescara, I discovered Odradek Records, a non-for-profit, artist controlled record label. The best bit is that, although an international company registered in the USA, the recording studio is in Pescara! I find the concept exciting and loved that to publicise their brilliantness and showcase their artists a series of concerts were organised in 5 cities in Italy: Rome, Florence, Cagliari, Trieste and Pescara under the title Progetto Odradek. The final two concerts in Pescara are this Wednesday and Thursday I'm gutted I can't go but I have a Meetup to host and.....PAOLO NUTINI to see live!

Last weeks pianists were utterly fab. As a "pianist" myself I was in awe at how different their techniques were and how they adapted their playing styles to fit different pieces.  The way the fingers move seamlessly with all the movement from the knuckle is astounding, for me it was so interesting as lately my piano teacher has been helping me keep my fingers closer to the keyboard.  I seem to have developed a strange techinque of lifting my fingers high off the keyboard even in quick passages of music...the diploma is a long way off yet!

Thanks to the performance by Domenico Codispoti on the Wednesday night I have fallen in love, again, with Liszt's Sonata in B minor, the piece I wrote about for my dissertation in 2007!  It's a long'un and my friends who also went to the concert were amazed at just how long it is, around twenty-five minutes.  How the devil one person can remember all that music is beyond me.  I'm literally having problems remembering quite a tuneful piece by Mozart, and just the first page, let alone the Schonberg pieces that Pina Napolitano played on the Thursday night.  Pieces that are atonal based on the 12-note tone row, by memory, one hours worth....erm... that's dedication!

And then.  To me.  The best bit was when a friend asked to look inside the piano once the concert was over and the majority of the audience had dispersed.  She had never looked inside a grand piano, let alone a Steinway.  The hammer action, and the strings and the coda shape, ah, to me it is one of the most beautiful things in the world.  The way everything in the piano is "just-so" in order to enhance the sound, to ensure the tension of the strings can be maintained so that the pianists light touch of the keys can make a sound that fills a concert hall.  I had to stop myself from sitting down and bashing out the measly forty-two bars of Mozart I have managed to memorise, only another eleven pages to go to complete the Sonata...I better get practising!

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