Book Intro #1 - "Play it again: An amateur against the impossible" by Alan Rusbridger. This is an inspiring book by the Editor of the Guardian, one of the world's foremost newspaper. Alan, who gave up the piano at 16, gave himself a year to learn Chopin's Ballade No. 1 forty years later, and this book deals with his focus, discipline, and desire. It is, above all, about the sanctity of one's inner life in a world dominated by deadlines and distractions. A great read - available at NLB (... See More
Book Intro #1 - "Play it again: An amateur against the impossible" by Alan Rusbridger. This is an inspiring book by the Editor of the Guardian, one of the world's foremost newspaper. Alan, who gave up the piano at 16, gave himself a year to learn Chopin's Ballade No. 1 forty years later, and this book deals with his focus, discipline, and desire. It is, above all, about the sanctity of one's inner life in a world dominated by deadlines and distractions. A great read - available at NLB (Esplanade, Tampines, Woodlands, and Jurong).
A short video about Alan's book by Alan himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwJKGEWarAk
Currently going through this book and must say it's very well written and full of insights. The content is laid out in the style of a diary and I especially love the ending where Chopin's Ballade... See More
Currently going through this book and must say it's very well written and full of insights. The content is laid out in the style of a diary and I especially love the ending where Chopin's Ballade is analyzed thoroughly page by page, section by section - kind of like an amateur climber tackling the Matterhorn, one cramponed step at a time.
Very inspiring.
Absolutely!
Here is a single paragraph from the following entry "Friday, 25 March":
Lunch with Noriko Ogawa today. She's just flown from Japan and looks emotional and sombre. I... See More
Absolutely!
Here is a single paragraph from the following entry "Friday, 25 March":
Lunch with Noriko Ogawa today. She's just flown from Japan and looks emotional and sombre. I suggested a couple of weeks back that she might give a Kings Place concert in aid of the Japanese tsunami relief appeal. She immediately agreed - and promised to play the G minor Ballade. After a single course, we steal off for a very quick lesson in one of the rehearsal rooms in Kings Place. She begins by playing the piece to me. I realise that this is the first time since I started on this journey that I have heard the piece live and played by a 'proper' pianist. I've of course sampled numerous recordings on YouTube and iTunes, but nothing in the flesh. She plays it with incredible power and certainty - especially given the inner turbulence she must be feeling after such personal exposure to the tsunami, which has wrecked the concert hall where she most regularly plays. The piece today has an extra dimension - the sheer elemental feeling of some of the passages, that sense of being almost out of control, or rather in the control of wilder external forces. At the end, she seems shocked by what's happened. We both sit there in silence for a few moments. Noriko then asks me to play. I struggle - even though it's a new Steinway O - to make the piano sing, to tease a delicate sound out of it. On Saturday at Fish Cottage I was flying on my newly arrived Steinway. Further evidence that progress is not linear.