December the 16th is Beethoven’s birthday if you didn’t know (I mean who doesn’t know that?!).  So if you’re in the DC area, you can tune to wgms (104.1 or wgms.com with live feeds) to hear a lot of him mixed in with the traditional holiday crap.

He’s definitely one of my favorite composers and it’s probably a toss up between him and Chopin for most stuff I’ve played.  His stuff is so much fun to play, if sort of a pain in the ass to learn.  My favorites are all “named” sonatas (do I like them because they’re famous or are they famous because they’re awesome?).  I usually tell people that I’d pick what I’d want to learn by whether it’d let me show off or not.  And all of these fit squarely within that category – flashy, technical pieces that everyone loves.  In the order that I learned them:

• Tempest – This was the first one that I played.  I forget how young I was, but I remember not liking it at the time, but I think I’ve changed my mind.
• Pathetique – I love the opening movement.  It’s such a shock as the first note slams into you and then goes super quiet before going loud again.  Imagine me as a youngish teenager getting to basically play with as much force and contrast as I was capable before suddenly cutting into a quick tempo
• Moonlight – Everyone, and I mean everyone, has heard the first movement:  it’s beautiful, haunting, blahblahblah.  It’s boring as shit to play.  On the other hand, no one knows the 3rd movement which is set at a presto! tempo and consists primarily of long runs of arpeggios.  This was the first piece where my hands were actually tired after playing.  The 3rd movement was also the piece that got me into learning Beethoven in the first place.  I was really little when I heard someone perform this at one of the recitals that our piano teacher would hold for all her students and wanted to play it ever since.
• Waldstein – The opening 2 bars are a perfect example of Beethoven’s ability to make music out of a very simple arrangement of 4 notes.  It opens with a repeated staccato of chords with no melody!  He keeps at it somehow creating a melody out of that mess.  Wonderful piece to play, but again your wrists are so tired at the end.  The 3rd movement has a beautiful melody and it’s one of my favorite pieces to play.  Feature of note is that on your right hand, you’ve got a continuous trill in your thumb and forefinger while the melody moves through the rest of the fingers and even sometimes into the trill fingers.  Try keeping that going fast without dropping the trill!
• Appassionata – I’d always wanted to play this piece when I was younger, but it was still out of my ability level.  I lost to some dorky russian kid who played this at a competition when I was playing the Pathetique.  My consolation was that I didn’t practice 8 hours a day like he did or wear girly gloves before the competition so his hands would stay warm.  I still hate him.  This is the only piece that I’ve got an mp3 recording of me playing the first movement.  Although writing this reminds me that I should get around to converting all the tapes of me playing when I was a kid to digital audio.  Anyway, if you’ve gotten this far, here’s my recording (if you’ve known me after college, you’ve heard this before). Vox is generating an error when I try to upload it so you just get a link (also it’s really really quiet and I probably need to adjust the volume setting next time when I upload it).

Permalink: Beethoven’s Birthday

Do you play any musical instruments?

After 20+ years of taking lessons, I hope to god that I can play something.  Only ones of note are piano and clarinet.  I’ve been playing piano for 20+ odd years now.  Although, having not seriously touched a piano since college, I’m not sure I can count some of those years.  Clarinet was only for like 6 years (although that definitely felt like it was longer).  One of these days I’ll get around to writing up all the stories and memories from the piano competitions and band trips.  Everyone needs more navel gazing.  Or reading about my navel gazing.

There’s a bunch of other stuff that I can “play”.  I played the marimba for high school marching band and I can remember most of the technique from there so I suppose that counts.  Band director vetoed my request to just play the pieces on a keyboard hooked to an amp.  2 mallets per hand was pretty challenging and it also built callouses in some strange places on your hands.  Due to the similarity with clarinet (and hanging out with a bunch of saxamaphone players), at one point I was passable with alto sax.  I took a pipe organ class for a semester in high school – never any good at it.  I didn’t like having to slide my butt around on the organ bench while “walking” the pedals.  You really look like an idiot doing it and that’s not something my ego was comfortable with.  And a couple years ago, I wanted to be able to play a pop instrument so I attempted to learn guitar a couple years ago (failing miserably due to lack of motivation.  It also hurt my hands).

All within the classical genre.  The world of jazz improv frightens and confuses me (I’m awful at being creative).  So don’t ask me to play jazz.  Also, I don’t play billy joel’s ‘piano man’.  I wish I’d gotten around to learning how to play the violin as it’s such a beautiful and expressive instrument.  I think that’d overload my asian quota of musical instruments though.  I also wish I had learned how to sing.  (no, it’s not just for karaoke you bastards).  I think that covers everything.

Permalink: QotD: Strike Up The Band

Who’s the most famous (at least in your opinion) person that you’ve met? What was the experience like?

The most famous that immediately comes to mind is Dave Brubeck.

I was in governor’s school for the arts at the time and we were able to do a piano masterclass with him for most of the day (I still have the autograph somewhere).  It was awesome and then later that night, he performed for the whole school with some of his buddies that were also helping out with masterclasses for other instruments.

Permalink: QotD: Brush with Celebrity