Score-Marking

Today was a great day - more harpsichord playing, more working on the instrument in preparation for Saturday's concert. I helped my sound technician vacuum out the harpsichord, in case dust was disturbing the action inside.

I also discovered another amazing thing about my iPad Pro, and its indispensable app for a musician, ForScore. There are a whole bank of common musical symbols, and some less common ones.

I was in search of something that I would never need for another thing, and I found it ... 

It is ... wait for it ...

My mark to turn my page (wirelessly) through Bluetooth pedal.

Ah, the bliss of being a 21-st century musician. My forefathers would have surely approved of, and used this, had it been around in Vienna, Leipzig, or Bayreuth ...

And we are counting down until Saturday's event! Non vedo l'ora!

This sign is outside St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Elkins Park, PA. Please join us!

The Force of J.S. Bach

We have a big concert (and two big concerti) tomorrow night! It’s the third annual “Bach by Candlelight.” Click here to purchase tickets. 

PHOTO: A Go-Pro photo of Bach practicing, Concerto in d minor, BWV 1052. Come on Saturday to hear it! 

 

Here is a video link to something I made. Click on this ...  See if you get the joke - you have to watch until the end of the video - 

And here is a quote by Glenn Gould that perfectly sums up why I / we do this concert every year, and my feelings on Bach’s music in particular …. 

 

"I think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of any one composer during all that time, that composer would almost certainly be Bach. 

"I really can’t think of any other music which is so all-encompassing, which moves me so deeply and so consistently, and which, to use a rather imprecise word, is valuable beyond all of its skill and brilliance for something more meaningful than that — its humanity."

Count-down

I forever love the quote from a book I read about the Guarneri String Quartet. They (jokingly) make light of the fact that there is rarely any money in chamber music, and when there is any money, it certainly isn’t much. I am determined to solve this problem. 

The arts don’t sustain themselves financially. In the days when Bach would have been alive, he was essentially writing “pop music,” much in the vein of how a praise band would write a chart for a contemporary worship service. Back in those days, we didn’t have “early musicians,” rock musicians,” “pop musicians,” or “classical musicians.” 

We had musicians.

And we need to go back to that. There is just as much to learn from Jimi Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner” improvisation and Billy Joel’s amazing piano lick in “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” (the one in G Major, right before the “Oh-oh’s,” and before the great re-transition to F Major) as we can from studying the cadenza to … basically any instrumental concerto in the canon.

I have long worked on the precision and cleanliness in my playing, and it has come along way. Any musician who plays classical music needs to then swing the pendulum in the other direction, as to call upon the spirit and presence of the original. As if to say, “Bach is in the room. Let’s groove it.”  

 

 

PHOTO: Lukens Trio and Friends, from “Bach by Candlelight 2014"

Or another way to think of it is to “transcend” the instrument. Beethoven, in speaking to Schuppanzigh, said, 

“Do you think I worry about your lousy fiddle when the spirit speaks to me?” 

(this was after Schuppanzigh complained about the difficulties that he encountered when playing one of the quartets).

My goal in playing the d minor Bach concerto coming up will be to (of course) play accurately … 

but even much more than that ...

to make the listeners feel like we have taken a time machine back to Leipzig, and we are listening to some of the greatest music ever written and enjoying the thrill of the idea that it “could” have been created on the spot.

If you would like to attend our concert on 12/19/15, please consider reserving your space in advance. You might even consider a CD! You can click here (Lukens Trio Kickstarter) to learn more about that. Thank you! 

Continuo

"In order to be faithful to the written music, one must be prepared to alter the written notes." (from ON EARLY MUSIC)

What? 

I think it is easier for a classical musician to understand this as "one must know everything so well, and be so free, that one can transcend the score." 

In playing anything in public, but specifically an unrealized continuo part, one must call upon skill sets closer to what jazz musicians use. You have to be at home with form, harmony, sequences, riffs, licks, and gestures. You play as if to say, "Yes, and ..." 

I am an especially lucky girl these days. I have been able to borrow and practice on the collection of harpsichords which UNM has (they have *six* good instruments under lock-and-key in the basement!). 

These instruments tell stories in a way that a modern piano can't. Their uniqueness, and what the instrument will-or-won't hold, regarding tuning. 

I purchased a tuner for my iPhone (on encouragement from my historical performance teacher at Eastman, Paul O'Dette), which will help you tune an instrument within any "meister" or "comma" imaginable. When I do the Bach and Shostakovich project recordings, I will take advantage of this. 

Late November and all of December are two parties for baroque playing for me. Last weekend was another performance at Chatter (same great institution, just a different location) ...

(PHOTO: from my GoPro, playing some wild Biber pieces)

... and December 3-4 will be an off-shoot of "Movable Sol"'s concert series, "Barokk Werke Verzeichniss." (A play on BWV). On that docket are several preludes and fugues from WTC I (I have been doing more WTC II these days, but the WTC I is always wonderful to revisit), a Boccherini gamba sonata, and some works for unaccompanied 'cello.

December 19th will bring a blissful reunion with my wonderful trio back on the East Coast. I will get to perform again Bach's great Harpsichord Concerto in d minor (I last performed this in the winter of 2004. This performance has brought about new practice techniques, much more work and training since then on my technique and on harpsichord, and new scores and editions have come out since I last performed it). 

Here's to continuo until the end of the semester ...