notes on notes

I couldn't not try to play this one. I know it's one of the more popularly played pieces out there, but that doesn't make it any less beautiful (or tough). Once more, I am crippled by the smaller size of my hands and the existence of octaves. But it really is a gorgeous, gorgeous piece and I love it so much.

It's one of the most "simple" things I've played in a while, considering the amount of Romantic rep that I've been inundated with for the past year or so. But, to my surprise as a typical Romantic lover, I'm ending up enjoying this piece a lot. Its charm is not in sweeping octaves or runs (ahem, the Rach and Liszt I played a few months back)—it's in its Classical-era Mozart clarity. Zeroing in on that clarity—and trying to make it sound simple—is what I really enjoy here.

I'm lucky that I had this as my first piano concerto and even luckier that I was able to play it with my school's symphony orchestra. The intro is iconic and dramatic (I preferred it on the slower, grander side) and definitely makes you feel really cool playing it. In terms of piano concertos in general, many people consider it to be on the easier side, but it still gave me a tasty challenge. Metronome work was crucial on the quintuplets (and especially the cadenza, which I'll get to in a moment).

The animato was the thing that screwed me over so bad. That needed far more practice than any other section (except maybe the cadenza). In performance I took it slightly down tempo to avoid crushing all the notes together and making it sound like a mess. And the downward chromatic scale in thirds was also kind of diabolical but doable after a lot of practice. Then the Piu lento & cantabile section is just one of the most gorgeous things ever, the cello soli is beautiful, the melody is beautiful, the piano part is unbelievably fun to play. As with basically every other piece with octaves, the big octave chords as it starts speeding up also kind of killed me, but it was okay in the end. And again, it makes you feel really cool.

And the cazenda. Oh boy the cadenza. I used it for my first round audition and that was probably a good idea because it's definitely one of the cadenzas ever written. It took me an unfortunate amount of time to puzzle out the LH septuplet arpeggios (that just sounds awful, and it is) against the RH melody and the RH 32nd notes. Again, metronome for what felt like forever. But the next section is super cool, and coming out of it just feels enchanting. The ending of the first movement is tough because of the octaves, but super fun.

I'm sad I only got, like, 4 rehearsals with the symphony orchestra. It was really fun and I'm surprised I got one of the spots to do it. Would 100% do again.

This is just simply an insanely fun piece. Our clarinetist ate on the intro (as did all of our soloists). It's dramatic, bustling, grandiose, melodramatic, showy, all the adjectives, in its themes. And again, just so fun to play. I'm super lucky (once more) that I was able to play this.