Cellist Walter Joachim spend some time in Calcutta, India. He recalled: “I bought a monkey with which to amuse myself. We played. He was sitting on my shoulders for hours when I was practising.” Joachim practised at least one or two movements of a Bach suite. “I started my day usually with Bach or a scale, played a Bit of Bach, then worked on the technical things that I had to play. You had to be on your toes.” Source: Siblin, Eric (2009) The Cello Suites. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, p. 123.
A monkey on his shoulder
by
Tags:
Featured Content
Mozart’s piano returns to his home
“The piano that Mozart used for the last 10 years of his life and which he used to compose much of his music was returned to his former home in Vienna for a performance of his music. ‘A big, positive shock was how good the instrument is,’ said Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov after the concert […]
Vaughan Williams on Hubert ParryVaughan Williams studied composition with Dr. Hubert Parry at the Royal College of Music, London. Vaughan Williams recalled: Many … entirely misunderstood Parry; they were deceived by his rubicund bonhomie and imagined that he had the mind, as he had the appearance, of a country squire. The fact is that Parry had a highly nervous […]
Gershwin: the life at the partyGershwin was often the life of a party, entertaining on the piano. He said: “The trouble is, when I don’t play at a party I don’t have a good time.” Cited in: Greenberg, Rodney (2008) George Gershwin. New York: Phaidon Press, p.47.
A pen and a hen“A pen is to me as a beak is to a hen.” John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, in an interview with Philip Norman. “The Prevalence of Hobbits”, The New York Times, 15 January 1967, http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/01/02/11/specials/tolkien-mag67.html (accessed 20 July 2020)
Any room for me?“Arthur Rubinstein was standing in the lobby of a concert hall proudly watching the audience filing in to hear one of his recitals. Finally, when the last one had gone in, Rubinstein made a move to enter. An usher blocked his way. ‘Sold out, mister’, he said, and to reinforce his words he pointed to […]
Smooth SailingTitle: Smooth Sailing Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano duet Level: Piano 1 – 1.1 (five finger position) Product medium: PDF score (audio of accompaniment track only)
Some curious devicesIn the late nineteenth-century, some quite curious mechanical inventions were created to deal with the body with relation to pianists and conductors. The following is an account of a presentation by T. L. Southgate on The Physiology of Pianoforte Piano. The paper presented was written by W. Macdonald Smith. This account appeared in the […]
Blessed the People the Lord has Chosen (Setting II) – Psalm 32 (33)Title: Blessed the people the Lord has chosen (setting ii) Text: Psalm 32 (33) Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part SAMPLE:
Rachmaninoff as a young studentFrom 1882, nine-year-old Rachmaninoff moved to St Petersburg to study at the conservatoire. In the comfortable knowledge that, even if he did not practice, his efforts were more successful than those of his classmates, young Sergei grew lazier and lazier. In the end he did nothing at all, showed a marked preference for shirking his […]
Piotr Anderszewski on interpretationTo me it’s all about how you read and translate the music you play: the most important thing is to reach the point where you feel you understand what happened in the composer’s mind before he actually wrote it. Musical notation is a very sophisticated yet imperfect system; it was the only way for the […]