Take time to smell the roses

So much music, so little time. Music’s only drawback is that you can’t hear it all at once. Each piece has to unfold over time.

But I am impatient. I want to hear every wonderful piece at the same time. Likewise, I want to play every wonderful piece ever composed. I don’t want to pick and choose what gets played on a recital – I want to play everything, all the time! I don’t like living without Franck to work on Vierne. I don’t like to leave Widor in the filing cabinet while I work on Bach. I want them all, all the time! But my chosen profession involves tiny bites, and I learn to be patient. When I’m finally seated on the bench and playing for an audience, I like every note and am ready to linger among the roses. Therefore, I tend to play a little slower sometimes – I love the notes too much to plow through them without some tender caressing along the way.

Another way in which I’m smelling the roses these days is in recycling pieces on programs. Each year over the past eight years or so, I have been learning at least two full programs of previously unlearned or un-memorized music. I have enjoyed it so much, but there is a great deal of music out there, and I haven’t gotten to re-visit any of the great stuff I have already played. So I’m beginning to go back and resurrect pieces that I had a wonderful season with a few years ago. Don’t worry – I won’t be recycling things in your area that you’ve already heard. I keep detailed records on that sort of stuff, and I follow my own rules, explained in another post.

This post is short. I have to go practice some more wonderful music I can’t wait to get learned.