A Wise Man Once Said, Volume 2
The following conversation, reproduced here verbatim, took place a few days ago, while I was being driven from my home to a rehearsal in Newark with the New Jersey Symphony.
Driver: So what are you, a conductor or an instrumentalist?
J: Instrumentalist.
Driver: What do you play?
J: The piano.
Driver: What do you know!
J: Yeah.
Driver: My least favorite instrument.
J: ___
Driver: Because, you know, everyone bangs on it.
J: Well, that is sometimes the case.
Driver: Why, why do you people always bang on it?
J: Well, I try not to, myself.
Driver: Good.
Fin.
March 3rd, 2009 at 3:54 am
I couldn’t imagine that a discussion with a driver would have so much importance for an artist…however, when I choose the artists’ driver here, at the orchestre national de Lyon -where I believe that you are going to play Brahms 2 in 2010- I am always very carefull about the relationship that they have with music… so your driver in Lyon next season is playing jazz saxophone… I am very happy to welcome you next season as I have heard you with the NYP in 2003 in the Beetoven Festival during an Intership at the Artistic department. Marguerite
March 9th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
But pseudo-passionate banging is a must for the wannabe concert pianist–how else will he fool the audience into thinking that the music moves him more profoundly than the gold and glory of many admiring faces?
Other favorite ploys (endlessly fun to observe):
- Rotating torso
- Androgyny
- Periodic glances of agony at the ceiling
March 16th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
I attended the matinee New Jersey Symphony concert on Tuesday May 3. Your playing inspired me to download some Beethovan sonatas from itunes
November 22nd, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Last Saturday afternoon, november 21st. you performed at the IJ-Salon chamber music programme in Amsterdam, hosted by Michael Gieler. My wife and I loved your music-performance, especially your seven Játékok-surprises. To us, it was a completely new form of piano-art ! First of all, we loved the intricate way you played, but besides that, you are a star performer in the way, you were there present in speech and in the way you became music itself ! We asked afterwards if your Játékok-pieces were ever recorded on dvd. People didn’t know. It would be an enormous joy to us and undoutedly to many others to see you play again the way we did; some project to realise but as we see it, priceless !
Keep us informed if you do ! Lot’s of success, joy and love from Lydia & Paul Eykenduyn-Heuveling van Beek, Hilversum, The Netherlands