When I wuz 5 I unleashed da Kabalevsky blowns at ma preschool.
My parents even brought da footstool n sheeyat. It wuz a chill unleash n far bettah den any prax.
I also remembah doing random chill digi unleashes of Czerny n Moszkowzki etz on random 88z when we came to da US, esp in Brooklyn. Iād juz go up n randomly unleazh, n I had pretty much only ETZ in ma rep.
I distinctly remembah da MUZIC teachah doing sum group singalong in brooklyn, so I jus cum up n unleazh sum et on da DIGI fo da clazz.
Den I spent like 2 years learning mostly Bach fugues. Daim.
da zepp haff a diztinct memory from when he reztart da 88 at around 13
da firzt 3 zongz i learned from dat tym:
da GREG ELF dance
a random 3 page tranz of da BROTHA zymph5 mvmt1 from da muziczcore.com
a random non-ROCK BEE tranz wiz da moz WTF LH chordz, from da zame webzite
deze 3 zongz becummah da zepp cumplete rep fo da firzt yr of hiz return to da 88. da BEE in pardickulah zhorly a COMME 25/12 level zheeyat
now when i look back, i realized dat rapin thru deze 3 zongz ovah n ovah again ended up definin ma whole approach to da 88 til diz day. bazically i learned n internalized:
cg dance rhythm from da GREG
zpazz rape from da BROTHA 5
n random ticklah from da BEE
Ahaha. I think an 88 arrived when I wuz about 7 and my mum has tapes of me improing from around then.
Az for actual unleazhez, I definitely remember trying to get da CHOP minute waltz undah a min and deliberately playing da AZZPAZZION 3rd mvt az fazt az pozz. I think da target wuz 4 minz Probably I wuz about 14 when I did dis.
I didnāt really discovah da till I wuz about 16.
da X has only raped through Czerny and Hanon exercises - my brother and I used to challenge each other and compete in who was the fastest - but I remember I was scorched by my music teacher in high school for playing Fantaisie-Impromptu too fast. He was wrong⦠Still is.
Summary
Thatās a funny story incidentally - he was a Polish ex-pianist who had somehow ended up in Sweden as a general music teacher, a job he clearly thought himself overqualified for. Known for scaring the kids with his Polish wolves he said he kept in the closet, he had a building of his own on the school yard with a grand piano no one but him was allowed to touch, and a side room filled with classical music scores for which he had no use in his teaching. I hadnāt thought about it, at the end of a class in 7th grade I just sat down at his beloved piano and played a Chopin Impromptu while waiting for a friend to finish a test in the adjoining room. After a few bars he came in with wide open eyes and looked as if his long lost son had returned home. Since that point on I was his best friend. I went there and practiced after classes every now and then (strategically almost exclusively Chopin), and I showed up at his classes, but I never took any more tests, didnāt have write to write the theory exams, and was spared the singing tests everyone else had to do for higher grades.
This is a most interesting subject because it brings me back to music that hasnāt been in my mind for 40+ years.
The first feeling of mighty āunleashā was probably with some very simple pieces of Walter Carroll when I was 10. When I think about it, this earliest experience with āstorm musicā may be the reason why Iāve always loved the genre, whether itās Beethoven, Liszt or Sibelius.
Da zepp az teachah wud nevah tell a minimofo he iz playin too fazt tho
When da zepp teach a zong, i uzually ztart wiz a zpeed demo. den when da ztudent reach diz zpeed, I demo again a lil bit faztah. If he catch up again, I go bit faztah yet. Repeat ad infin, a zumwut fruztratin cycle fo da ztudent tru
I played the revolusheeyat et and da fantasie imprompsheeyat in da local eistedfodd, from what i vaguely recall, was pleased i got through it no mistakes. The judge said it was too fazt. I clearly needed Zepp ztyle adjudickation.
Hehe. He never was my piano teacher in that sense, we just talked music after his classes and sometimes he would offer opinions on my playing. In Op.66 what I remember he said was that he thought the melody which appears in figurations after the first few opening phrases was about love, and that he wanted me to play it slowly, dearly and with feeling. He probably had a point - I was 13 or so at the time and more than likely just rushed through it trying to hit all the notes - but if you play it the way he sang it you either have to drop the tempo suddenly there, or begin the piece at a tempo which is essentially Lento or Moderato. Still today, I donāt agree with either. There is a time for calm and tenderness, but it comes in the mid section.