Been a bit lazy as of late

The past week was spent catching up with the rest of my trio and getting lessons and getting to know new people in the London Masterclasses, which was an interesting and enlightening experience. Here's an excerpt from an email I sent to Katherine, my teacher back home in New Zealand - the [redacted] implies I don't want what I'd written there to be public information, ha ha. Here goes:

"Dear Katherine!
I'm sorry I've been out of touch for the last little while – I've been swamped with London Masterclasses and although I did want to tell you about everything, I haven't really had time to process anything properly.

I'll start with some news, this may be good or bad but I choose to see it positively...I received an email from Professor Perl in Detmold saying that although I passed the audition for Masters level there, he is overloaded with students and unfortunately they can't offer me a place for next year. I had been told previously that things like this may happen, because schools often limit their placement availabilities after auditions. It's a pity, cos it seemed like a really nice place to study and I was looking forward to it a lot. But I am in good faith that God has the best prepared for me, and that studying with Professor Kropfitsch in Vienna will do me some good. Plus, Vienna is a fantastic city and I so enjoy being there amongst all the culture and liveliness! I also think that having Ann around will be really valuable. So all in all, I still got into a prestigious school in a great city with a renowned teacher and the future is looking bright :)

On to the London Masterclasses.
I had a fabulous time [redacted] in Benjamin Zander's conducting classes. He is a truly incredible man, a real treasure...in a lot of ways he reminded me of you and Jim with the way he approaches, lives, breathes and LOVES music. He has written a book called 'The Art of Possibility' which he talked a bit about in an evening talk we had and it sounds very beautiful and interesting, I plan to read it sometime. Ben has conducted NYO in the past and in fact he is very interested in coming back to New Zealand. I think it will be absolutely fantastic if he could give a talk to the music department or the Hillary Scholars or in fact ANYONE and EVERYONE, I think we could all benefit from such zest and insight and the awe-inspiring stories...I mean really, he has said he would come and give his time if it can just be arranged! He really is an amazing person and I hope that one day you and Jim are able to work with him. Every conducting class I went to I not only got to acquaint myself with beautiful symphonic works but felt a real sense of camaraderie, vulnerability, and LOVE. He really really does care about his students. It was such an eye opener and it was reassuring to know that out there still are genuine musicians.

He used our Brahms B major as an example of rubato in Brahms' music in conducting class. That same day we had had an awful coaching [redacted], so we were really down and feeling defeated when we went to play in his class. But then lo and behold, everything that we were told NOT to do in the other classes, he was telling us to do MORE! I got so excited during a certain passage that I exclaimed “YESSSSSS!!!!!!” while playing and everyone cracked up laughing, hahaha! I mean, of course there were valuable things to be gained from [redacted]the other classes[redacted], but this, THIS I felt touched on the essence of the music the most. He moved and swayed and gesticulated and sprayed while yelling in our faces and pushed and pulled the music to extremes, perhaps too extreme at times, but WHO CARES! Everyone was really touched by the experience, especially us, who had our whole day turned upside down from bad to stupendous."

Next week we are off to another summer school, this time the Cadenza music school at Purcell School. Should be a lot of fun. It's been stressful juggling so much repertoire in one go (from March this year I've had to learn four complete piano trios, and learn/revise bits of a Bach prelude and fugue, a Debussy suite, the Schumann Fantasie, a Chopin etude and a Haydn sonata...and now I have to revise a Schubert sonata as well on top of all that) and trying to rehearse and be productive, but hey, it's all good learning experience. It feels so great to make breakthroughs and also to look back on what has been achieved as well. (However, not so great, living out of a suitcase all the time. How am I going to pack this all up again?!)

London was beautifully sunny during the week of the Masterclasses; now it's back to its natural form of being grey, cold and rainy. Ah well, good rehearsing weather.

Peace!