Last Friday I was extremely excited to attend the first Fridays @ 3 presentation at ANAM. They're free lectures presented every fornight, usually by artists engaged at the Academy that week. I've been to a couple in the past, which were really interesting. It was packed, which was fantastic to see. The lecture 'Hidden Meaning in Music' was presented by composer Martin Bresnick (Professor at Yale) and his wife, the phenomenal pianist Lisa Moore. They opened with a performance of several movements of Robert Schumann's Album for the Young. Her playing was absolutely beautiful and riveting. Bresnick went on to explain Schumann's various sneaky devices, hidden messages to Clara, the pictures painted that contradict the titles etc. Very interesting. I was so moved I went straight to the VCA library and copied the pieces she played to analyse them. Turns out some of them are simple enough that even I can play them! Which has a dual purpose in improving my keyboard skills with something that sounds beautiful. The little electric keyboard at home doesn't quite do Schumann justice, but hey.
Friday night saw me go the MSOs concert which was: Faure - Requiem, Debussy - La Mer and Rachmaninov's The Bells. There were very interesting colours created in the Bells, which I hadn't heard before. But Lisa Moore's piano was the highlight of the day.
Randomly, I'm very much looking forward to all the upcoming opera: La Bear/Angelique and Bliss in particular (as well as the production of Tosca mentioned in a previous post).
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