Author Topic: Embarrassing Prayer Request (Read 5424 times)

Sigismund · « **Reply #15 on:** July 25, 2012, 08:21:57 PM »

Prayers and best wishes!

jen51 · « **Reply #16 on:** August 06, 2012, 07:54:06 PM »

Vladimir, I was wondering if we could have an update? Is it over? If so, did it go well?

I've remembered you in prayer frequently as of late, as I am very familiar with the anxieties you've expressed. I pursued the concert piano as well, and recitals... ohhh I don't even wish to rehash the memories of the weeks before a performance.

Sigismund · « **Reply #17 on:** August 06, 2012, 08:09:56 PM »

Yes, how did it go?

Vladimir · « **Reply #18 on:** August 06, 2012, 10:28:18 PM »

Thank you all for your prayers.

In short, let me tell the tale from the beginning.

I graduated high school a few months ago. This piano recital has been planned since around December 2011. The program then is almost entirely different from its present state.

Aside from the unexpected deaths of my uncle and grandmother in early 2012, I was seriously contemplating quitting piano for many months until very recently, when a rather random encounter with Rachmaninoff's Second Piano concerto rekindled my love for Romantic piano literature. So aside from being out of state and losing months of practice due to funerals, my heart was not in practicing piano. I was very lazy about it.

To complicate matters, I was at that time the organ scholar at a local cathedral. As part of this position, I had to give a 45 minute recital just about a month ago. So after I graduated high school, I had to make a one hour commute to the cathedral to practice on the organ for several hours straight, kill time at the local library while I waited for my father to finish up at his workplace and then finally commute back home in the evening, after which I was utterly exhausted and in little shape to practice piano.

Only after I finished with that organ recital last month could I finally devote all my time to piano. But it was not to be so - because now it is close to the time that I need to pack up my things and get paperwork straightened out for going off to college. So I have been juggling so many things at once.

Even though my love for piano was reignited, it's not as though that turned me into Franz Liszt overnight. But the time I vowed to take piano seriously again, it was far to late into the game to finish my proposed recital program in time. True, I could rush and fake it through some of the pieces, masking my mistakes with the pedal like an amateur - but as my first solo piano recital, why would I want to start it off like a pseudo-musician?

In the end, I emailed my teacher, explaining to him my feelings and apologizing for my ineptitude and laziness but firmly informing him that I had to cut two pieces from the program if I was going to play at all.

I am feeling a lot better, although I am still convinced the recital will be mediocre. Cutting those two pieces out has turned this recital into half-an-hour of medium tempo pieces that will bore most listeners to death.

The recital is scheduled for this Friday.

Here are Youtube recordings of some of the pieces I played in the organ recital (not played by me in the recordings though!)

Mendelssohn – Prelude and Fugue in C minor

And here are some of the pieces that I removed from my Friday piano recital.
They are actually learned, just not in performing condition.

Chopin – Etude Op. 25 No. 12

These are a few pieces that are in my program. Though they do not display the same pyrotechnics as other pieces, they are works of extraordinary emotional intensity.

Poulenc – Melancolie

poche · « **Reply #19 on:** August 07, 2012, 04:24:36 AM »

PenitentWoman · « **Reply #20 on:** August 07, 2012, 07:23:02 AM »

I'm sure you'll do wonderful. I will be praying for you.

Congratulations on your recent graduation as well!

jen51 · « **Reply #21 on:** August 09, 2012, 06:48:48 PM »

Thankyou for the update, Vladimir. :)

I do hope you aren't too hard on yourself about not having your pieces exactly the way you wish them to be. It sounds like the past year has been a bit tempestuous. A person can only shoulder so much before our limit is reached emotionally. FWIW, it doesn't sound like your problem has been laziness, but the trials in life. I think you telling your instructor you had to cut down was a prudent move. Surely they understood.

GREAT choice on the Poulenc piece, btw.

The big day is tomorrow! May God's provision be with you!

Telesphorus · « **Reply #22 on:** August 09, 2012, 07:11:13 PM »

Those Chopin Etudes would have been a tall order.

When I was a senior in high school my choir teacher was very generous and kind and offered to help me learn to play the first movement of Grieg's piano concerto. Unfortunately I was such a miserable tyro and a hopeless neophyte that there was never any hope of my learning the piece in time for the recital. And I was extremely depressed as well at that time, which didn't help matters one bit.

I did learn to play quite a bit of the cadenza though, doubtless in an atrocious manner, but enough to impress people who didn't know any better, including myself.

:wink:

Vladimir · « **Reply #23 on:** August 09, 2012, 07:22:29 PM »

Thank you.

Here is the rest of the program:

Poulenc Novelette #3
(only playing the third one in concert)

I'm not playing the second movement of the two-movement Beethoven Op. 90 because it is a very long rondo and the program is already slow enough as it is. It is learned (or rather it was learned - out of practice for several months now), and I did perform it for a contest which I, as the only contestant, won by default.

Telesphorus, you should learn the theme from the third movement of Rachmaninoff 2 to show off whenever someone asks you to play something on the piano! It's actually not that difficult.

Raoul76 · « **Reply #24 on:** August 10, 2012, 12:52:36 AM »

I play a couple Debussy Etudes and a Stockhausen Klavierstuck every morning before breakfast. Then I limber up with the Medtner "Night Wind" Sonata, before challenging myself a little bit with a four-hour Sorabji opus later that night. Usually not the whole thing though. Then as a nightcap, I play the Marc-Andre Hamelin transcription of "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins, in the style of Godorowsky.

Belloc · « **Reply #25 on:** August 10, 2012, 10:37:37 AM »

Quote from: Vladimir

Thank you all for your prayers.

In short, let me tell the tale from the beginning.

I graduated high school a few months ago. This piano recital has been planned since around December 2011. The program then is almost entirely different from its present state.

Aside from the unexpected deaths of my uncle and grandmother in early 2012, I was seriously contemplating quitting piano for many months until very recently, when a rather random encounter with Rachmaninoff's Second Piano concerto rekindled my love for Romantic piano literature. So aside from being out of state and losing months of practice due to funerals, my heart was not in practicing piano. I was very lazy about it.

To complicate matters, I was at that time the organ scholar at a local cathedral. As part of this position, I had to give a 45 minute recital just about a month ago. So after I graduated high school, I had to make a one hour commute to the cathedral to practice on the organ for several hours straight, kill time at the local library while I waited for my father to finish up at his workplace and then finally commute back home in the evening, after which I was utterly exhausted and in little shape to practice piano.

Only after I finished with that organ recital last month could I finally devote all my time to piano. But it was not to be so - because now it is close to the time that I need to pack up my things and get paperwork straightened out for going off to college. So I have been juggling so many things at once.

Even though my love for piano was reignited, it's not as though that turned me into Franz Liszt overnight. But the time I vowed to take piano seriously again, it was far to late into the game to finish my proposed recital program in time. True, I could rush and fake it through some of the pieces, masking my mistakes with the pedal like an amateur - but as my first solo piano recital, why would I want to start it off like a pseudo-musician?

In the end, I emailed my teacher, explaining to him my feelings and apologizing for my ineptitude and laziness but firmly informing him that I had to cut two pieces from the program if I was going to play at all.

I am feeling a lot better, although I am still convinced the recital will be mediocre. Cutting those two pieces out has turned this recital into half-an-hour of medium tempo pieces that will bore most listeners to death.

The recital is scheduled for this Friday.

Here are Youtube recordings of some of the pieces I played in the organ recital (not played by me in the recordings though!)

Mendelssohn – Prelude and Fugue in C minor

And here are some of the pieces that I removed from my Friday piano recital.
They are actually learned, just not in performing condition.

Chopin – Etude Op. 25 No. 12

These are a few pieces that are in my program. Though they do not display the same pyrotechnics as other pieces, they are works of extraordinary emotional intensity.

Poulenc – Melancolie

hey, that is today, my freinds some hearty=

Sure you will do fine and trust me, no matter what, tomorrow is another day to get up and start again......I know many artists same as you, very serious and committed on their art......trust me, you will be fine.....

jen51 · « **Reply #26 on:** August 14, 2012, 07:08:13 PM »

So, Vladimir, how did it go for you?

Viva Cristo Rey · « **Reply #27 on:** August 14, 2012, 08:37:13 PM »

My prayers are with you and everyone including everyone here at Cathinfo.com.

Please, Please pray for my husband and me too.

God Bless you all and good night!