05S33 Blog

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8281382.stm

Question: What is the name of the parrot?

Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto 1, 3rd mvt



[At 16, in 1957, when she won the Busoni and the Geneva competitions within three weeks...]
... the Liszt Sixth Hungarian Rhapsody. That's where I played the Liszt the first time. I hadn't played it before, not even for myself. At that time I was very superstitious so I wouldn't play a piece all the way through even for myself. I was afraid that something...so I just waited until I passed to the next round to learn the next pieces.

... Memory was not the problem. It was the playing. I was afraid that I couldn't, so I didn't want to play, you see.


[Pronunciation of her name]
I don't know. I say, "Ahr-ge-reech." Whatever comes it doesn't matter.


[On how her interest in music started]
I was at the kindergarten in a competitive program when I was two years and eight months. I was much younger than the rest of the children. I had a little friend who was always teasing me; he was five and was always telling me, "You can't do this, you can't do that." And I would always do whatever he said I couldn't. Once he got the idea of telling me I couldn't play the piano. (Laughter) That's how it started. I still remember it. I immediately got up, went to the piano, and started playing a tune that the teacher was playing all the time. I played the tune by ear and perfectly. The teacher immediately called my mother and they started making a fuss. And it was all because of this boy who said, "You can't play the piano."


[Asked if she was forced to practice]
Later, yes I was and I hated it. I didn't want to be a pianist in the first place. I still don't really want to be, but it is the only thing that I can do more or less. (Laughter) I wanted to be a doctor!

. . . I love very much to play the piano, but I don't like to be a pianist. I don't like the profession. And when one plays, of course, it is important to practice. But the profession itself - the traveling and the way of life - all this has nothing to do with playing or with music, absolutely nothing! This is what I do not enjoy about being a concert pianist. You never know when you are very young, when you are studying, what this profession is about. No one tells you, and the people outside the profession don't have a clue. They think it is marvelous.


[On whether it's harder for a woman than a man]
I suppose, but it is complicated for me because I had the type of teacher and parents who used to tell me when I was a little girl that my fiance was the piano. I didn't have much freedom as a child.


[On being told her "fiance" was the piano]
And isn't that terrible! (Laughter) My teacher used to tell me this to hypnotize me I suppose - I don't now what. I hate this type of reasoning, this idea of being high priestess or something. I don't like this attitude in life, generally. I would never do that with a child of mind.


[On playing difficult concerts when she was 8]
How do you know about this? I played the Mozart D minor Concerto (isn't that funny, all the Wunderknder play that and it is one of the most difficult in certain respects) and the first Beethoven Concerto and the Bach G major French Suite in between.

... But I heard a tape the other day of a concert of mine, of the Schumann concerto when I was 11 and of that Mozart Concerto when I was nine. It's a very distorted tape, but I was touched because, my God, pianistically, it is absolutely amazing. I mean, I don't understand how I did those things. I just brought this tape back to my mother. It had been in a deposit box in Switzerland for ten years.

Prawning? Hahahha....think you might not be able to get any response now, since that everyone is so busy. Now the thought of eating prawns is starting to make me salivate, but eating prawns lead to high cholesterol, so must not eat too much ( I talk like an old man...)

Hm....actually each time I want to post something here, I have nothing to talk about. Wonder if that is the case for other people?

Thank goodness today is friday. (Even though I will say the same thing on tuesday because I am free every wednesday this semester). But every holidays I have been spending almost the whole day trying to do just one piece of tutorial and end up with a few undone questions and a feeling that I have just wasted my whole day.

And so when are the UOC pple going to fly off? Or have they flown already so it seems? Just curious, other than MH and a few UOC people, how many others are actually studying (or is going to study) overseas? I have poor memory nowadays, probably from not facebooking for a month.

Speaking of which, few days ago I cheated (confession mode, beware)... I saw my father logging on to his facebook account and I was curious to see the state of my account, so I hitch-hiked his account to check, but I swear I didn't do anything other than just a glimpse which lasted no more than a minute! Since then I have not done anything like that.

Shall rush for math lecture later, right now going to surf some internet.

Why is this place so quiet?

It is only when school starts then will I understand the meaning of this Latin phrase

"Dum vita est spes est"

"While Life is, Hope is"