Studio Blog Part 2 – Beethoven In Da House

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”

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This is a quote by Wayne Gretzky. It’s a quote that can be used by everyone, every day, but it doesn’t mean you pretend to be Wayne Gretzky. What I want to say is, if I quote Beethoven to highlight something, it doesn’t mean I think I’m Beethoven…

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Emma, I didn’t understand if those people on the train were actually acting for a commercial for real? And just so you all know, I don’t have a cellphone…Are people like that in Stockholm? Hm. I’d say, if you want a friendly town, go to Växjö.

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How enormously great to see Romuald comment…one of my oldest and best friends (not old, but old friend!) and it made me warm at heart to see that a little innocent one-liner meant something. Well, I owe him a big bunch of one-liners he has given me through the years.

One little example is when we had a public discussion at the Helsingborg Piano Festival about different recordings of Beethoven’s piano sonata op.2 nr.3. The second theme ( it’s more of a transitional theme but that’s not important here) I thought everyone played too stiff, it should be quite flexible. Romuald turned to me (we were sitting on the stage) and said quietly “hmm, I think there is a scary, sneaky feeling to it, shouldn’t be played too sweet”.

I finally got what he meant, months later when I recorded, and now I’m pretty happy with it on the recording. For those reading my Beethovenblog you would know that much in the music is like Opera, and with “sneaky” he means that it should sound a little insincere, like a person who doesn’t really show what he is feeling. This melody somes around 0.20:

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Shan-shan is practicing Franz Schubert. Painfully beautiful music, that.

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To continue my Studio blog, the second day of recordings was waaaaay better, it was actually really good. I did everything I planned to do, and even a little more. Now, I’m back home and I have been working in my studio downstairs in our house. Inspired by Marianne’s comment (and yes, Svanö sounds amazing), I actually made a little video to show you how it looks like. Some outside the house, but no, no time for that, instead I have to spend lots of time in that basement. Which I proudly can say have soundproofed walls.

done

The music is track 11 from the first Beethoven CD…

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That is good advice indeed, Christina. I could actually say that I did that during the first day, partly I stopped recording and just practiced instead. But I didn’t walk away. And I think what we all think is that even when we have our downs, we just keep at it. We have to accept and work through the fact that not every day is blessed with us being our 100%. And that reminds me of another Gretzky-quote:

“The highest compliment that you can pay me is to say that I work hard every day, that I never dog it.”

And talking about feeling untalented, don’t even think about it. One of the quotes I’m proud of myself is from “Solisten” , I say something like “I don’t have the time to ponder whether I’m talented or not”

Talent is sometimes a very overrated gift.

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Sara, do you know what we did for Halloween? We went to watch some College Hockey! The teams were Princeton versus Yale. I expected some really smart plays…but those kids were rough and tough, I tell you.

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During the second day of recording, I had a short e-mail conversation with Per Bjurman, who was also stuck as I mentioned in the last post. I had commented on his blog that the last blogpost was much better, best of the year, and the conversation is as follows (sorry of most of it is in Swedish…)

PB:
Tack du.
Jag fick skärpa till mig helt enkelt.

PT:
Skärpa till sig är knepet. Inspiration is for wussies. Samma sak med musik.

PB:
Indeed

Heh.

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Majsan asks how I keep my hands strong. Very good question, because the interesting thing about strength on piano is that you should use as little muscle tension and effort as possible. Keeping flexible, flexible, flexible. Sounds simple, but it’s not, and it’s perhaps the most overlooked part of piano teaching. That part, by the way, I learned a lot from 1) Romuald and 2) because I did a lot of sports and there the coaches are teaching this ALL the time. You can’t shoot, run or throw anything if you’re not flexible and smooth in your movements.

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Strange…a really cool word. As Laura mentions, it can mean “not common”, “unique”. Like it means on the name of this blog, actually. And perhaps, if compared to The Ark’s studio blog, I should rather call it non-GLAMorous?
And thanks Laura, it is nice indeed to hear. Or read I should say.

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As i mentioned, the second day was so much better. I recorded this and I think I can actually hear how happy I am that things are working. And hey! Would I be that relieved, have that kind of happiness if the day before wasn’t crappy? It just struck me as I wrote this, but I think we’re on to something.

OK, some happy Beethoven:

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And oh, not to forget…coming soon to a store near you:

Hmmm…starting this post I had planned to quote Beethoven. That will have to wait until next one.

Studio Blog – All By Myseeeeelf…

Welcome to my completely non-glorious studio blogging. Laura mentioned before that I get to se many beautiful places, that may be true, but unfortunately I have been to all those places without really “being there”. You come to the concert hall, and most concert halls looks pretty crappy backstage, even Suntory Hall in Tokyo has a very…simple…feel once you leave this incredible concert hall:

Now, recordings, then you really NEED to forget where you are, and that can take half a day. Or I should say, it normally takes at least half a day. So here I am, at 9.51 in the evening having done so little today that I should be spanked with an audio cable. But luckily I know by now that this is how it is, and the only thing you have to be is patient and strong.

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I filmed the Bottleneck encore in Västerås, but used some funky “straight-to-DVD” bullshit camera, and now I can’t convert it to a format that makes me being able to put it up here. Bummer. Instead I give you this little radio interview before the recent concerts. (Sorry for those who doesn’t understand Swedish)

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Speaking about Per Bjurman, he says that he is not entirely happy with the way he writes right now. Just like I am not happy with this first day of recording. And then, what does one do when you feel that you are working without getting where you want? I guess we all have our own way. I know most people would say “take a break, don’t put too much pressure on yourself”. Maybe. But I’m just not convinced of that. I think the best thing is to just keep working even harder, in combination with two things:

1) A moment of a refreshing truth-telling to yourself how bad you are doing

2) Never be afraid of changing everything you thought you knew how to do

And then, just keep working hard, and TOMORROW will be another day. You will profit from all this he next day. But just walking away from your work thinking it will be different tomorrow. Well, I’m not talented enough for that.

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Only Majsan liked the Emery story. But you know, I watched an interview with him, he owned a hummer (the car) and got stopped by the police 27 times in 3 years…every time it was a “routine check”. He is, of course, black. So, it’s understandable he is a little angry, no? Marianne, that was not the real competition, the real one is still to come, with a very nice price. That price just got much better today, actually. Soon…

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Although I have a fancy concert hall as my recording studio, nothing else is very fancy. I work by myself. I listen to the takes, and 90% of them are not good enough. One minute of music can take hours if there is a day like today.

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Today was really crappy. No good. Let’s see if tomorrow is better and I’ll be happy to let you know, okay?

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New Jersey is the home of the meanest people in the world. Or, well, they are not all mean, they are just completely indifferent to each other. Except if you annoy them, then they let you know.

Sitting in the train from a rehearsal with NJSO…a man is talking quite loudly on his cellphone,

Another man shouts:
HEY, PLEASE TALK LOUDER SO WE ALL CAN HEAR ABOUT YOUR STUPID SHIT. LOUDER, PLEASE, THE PEOPLE IN THE NEXT CAR CAN’T HEAR YOU. COME ON, LOUDER, YOU IDIOT.

Welcome to New Jersey.

Wilhelm the great and a secret encore (well…)

First, a wonderful picture by Majsan from Kammaren. Isn’t this such a cool place to listen to some classical music?

I had four good concerts, hope to be back there soon.

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I’m sorry it took a few days to answer your comments in the previous post, but it’s done now.

Emma, I’m sorry that you missed this. My advice is to try to check on this site now and then. I can recommend the Bloglovin link, it works really well. I try to update for concerts here, and as Yvonne said, this is a better way to do it than sending mail.

Since Kammaren I have been in Switzerland and France, I played a Mozart concerto and a concerto for violin and piano by Felix Mendelssohn. It’s slightly insane because it goes on for some 40 minutes and it has a LOT of notes. And they are fast…very fast:

Pierre Amoyal was the violinist. He’s a pretty famous guy, and he is heading the Camerata Lausanne. It was fun to play with them all for sure.

And you just listened to something that Felix M. composed when he was…14 years old. Mhm. There is talent and there is talent. Crazy.

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I was going to write some on some interesting questions that Christina sent me, but I am just sooo tired. It’s going to be half-assed, like the New York Rangers. So I’ll do it next, but good.

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Christina and Sara, Gothenburg are in my thoughts. And I promise, I want to play there even more than you want it.

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Anu, you were at Shan-shan’s concert in Helsingborg? How deadly cool of you. It was the best concert of the festival. There, I said it. But I might be slightly biased, heh.

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I have now arrived in Falun, after an disgustingly early awakening in Geneva I flew here and rehearsed with the Dala Sinfonietta and Västerås Sinfonietta who are doing these concerts together. It’s a great group of musicians, I love playing with them. You feel welcome and play better because of it. Bjarte Engeset is the conductor, a great guy and a great musician, we found a way to make music together right away.

We play Sweden’s best composer ever, Wilhelm Stenhammar, his second piano concerto. I love this music with all my heart. It’s so Swedish, so sad. Listen to this beautiful piano solo part of the slow movement:

Wow, I totally don’t like how I played this…it’s from a concert with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting from some years ago. I play it quite a lot warmer now. I hope.

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Can somebody tell me why half of Falun seems to be named after Kristina?

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We play Thursday in Falun and Saturday in Västerås. You can read more here

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I have three true stories, and I want you to tell me which one you think is the funniest. OK?

1.
From reading Thayer’s 1000 pages book on Beethoven (written around 1850, which makes for oustandingly cool English) I learned this: The Elector (ruler) of Bonn some years before Beethoven was born was Joseph Clemens. The problem for Joseph was that it was included to be a bishop and that he did NOT want, he had way too much fun with all the wives of his staff. So he refused to take the priestly oath, until one day…he declared to the whole city that he would make a big announcement Sunday in church. The whole city of Bonn is there, the Elector solemny gets up in the preacher’s stand…looks at the crowd…and all of a sudden shouts “ZUM APRIL!!!” and runs out of he church, laughing.

2.
Ray Emery is a goalie in Philadelphia Flyers. He is a very angry man. While playing in Russia, he beat up the assistant coach.
He once made a $500 bet with Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson, among us hockeyfreaks called Alfie which required Emery to eat a cockroach that had been found on the floor of a Carolina dressing room. Yes, Emery ate the cockroach. And used the money to get another tattoo on his right arm which read, Anger is a Gift

3.
Francois-Rene Duchable made a big bang in the classical music world when he announced that he was going to stop playing because he thought the classical music world was just full of bullshit (he’s quite right, actually). The big bang was because of the way he did it. He took a helicopter, tied his grand piano to it, and in front of the TV cameras he dropped the piano in Lake Geneva. Very dramatic and very symbolic.

Only problem was, after a few days he got a letter from the police, telling him that he had polluted the lake and he had to arrange for a diving expedition and have a huge boat fish up the piano again…

Which one is your fav.?

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Lastly, the encore for Thirsday and Saturday…it’s by a Swedish composer. It’s for piano and strings. It’s originally a pop song. And its name starts with a B. Oh, and it sounds AMAZING with a full symphony orchestra…Any guesses?

One For The Road

Update: for those of you who got the OPUS-CD at Kammaren, you can see what the tracks are HERE

Hello all,

last night at home for a while, I’m leaving tomorrow and will be back in 3 weeks or so. First, the following things are awaiting:

Oct. 14-15 Kammaren, Stockholm,

Oct. 20 Lausanne, Switzerland

Oct 22 Falun

Oct 24 Västerås

And then, recordings of…Beethoven, of course.

Many of you have seen this via Facebook, but if you have not, here is Part 2 of BoB:

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Heh, I heard today that our favs The Ark is going to blog from their recording session. Aha! I don’t want to take credit for this, in no way, but I can say that Ola and I had a little conversation on this on the train to Uppsala, based on the fact that this blog had 1200 hits the night we (and I mean, me, Jonas and you guys) had a live blog from Växjö…

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Christina asked me in a message about playing differently in recordings, or concerts, or another day, or…that’s an interesting subject. I’m a little too tired to write well about that tonight, but I will shoot for the next post to explore it.

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For those of you who live near Stockholm, I can recommend the concerts at Kammaren, their website is here .

It’s in a quite special place, a large photo studio if I’m not mistaken (Jon, if you read this correct me in a comment…). The atmosphere is relaxed, you can have a glass of wine before, during, and after the concert. There is one show at 17.45 and one at 20.15, and they are not too long, so you can easily show up “after-work”.

Usually unusual things happens at those kind of informal concerts. I will play a couple of Beethoven sonatas you haven’t heard in the Beethoven blog before also…

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Oh, I have a little idea about a competition, but I’ll start that one in the post AFTER next…

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Time for me to go to bed, if you read this in the morning and needs to wake up a little, I have this video for you. I know, I still have some stuff from Växjö to show you, but I have to make those little movies and they should be good ( I’m slightly proud of my work with the Yiddish thing…it’s done with only one camera on a table which didn’t move or zoomed. Final Cut Pro is tricky but absolutely amazing)

Until soon…and comment away folks!

Battles of Beethoven&Liszt…and some Yiddish

Hello everyone,

thanks for all the kind words on the Live Blog. It was so much fun, it will happen again.

I’m going to EMPAC tomorrow to do the “Battles of Beethoven“. I’ll get back to you after to tell some of how that evening turned out. Here is a nice article about it.

I made a quick visit to Mexico City, and the concert was filmed. I was lucky to be given a few minutes of Funerailles, håll till godo:

I also promised some filmed stuff from Lieder Of The Pack, and here is a first one. Although I know many of you watched it via Facebook already.

Live From Växjö – The End

First, I want you to listen to Yvonne singing a song from Kristina från Duvemåla, live take from the second concert. Listen while you read. This is absolutely outstanding singing, the voice, the coloring, everything.

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SJ’s (Swedish Railroad) web service sucks a horse’s one. There is no other way for a hockey fan to say it. WTmajorF.

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I’m not really Live in Växjö now, since I’m writing on the train to Uppsala. Last LOTP for a long while. Now it’s time for me to play Beethoven, Tschaikovsky and all the other guys, and for Ola to rejoin The Ark for their new album and tour.

It has been great fun for me, one of the best things has been to meet all you new listeners who has embraced my music, too. It matters more to me than you will ever know.

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Why exactly, can one not have the discipline to go to bed at, let’s say 2am, after a concert instead of 4am? Those extra drinks is just very regrettable the next day.
But I was surprisingly fresh yesterday, though.

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The Yiddish dance and song was completely unprepared, actually me playing the piece to start with on the piano was not prepared. I just realized when Ola sang Jungfru Maria that we had so many slow songs. Then Ola caught on with the Yiddish stuff. Expect that to happen tonight again…

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Christina and Majsan, what are you talking about? Your comments are most fun to read when they are just chattily without filter. I wouldn’t erase them for the world.

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It’s amazing how cool all the artists are backstage. Yvonne of course, but also Fanny seemed totally unfazed by the sell-out crowd. Just having fun. It was nice to meet Fanny’s parents, they could light up a dark room with the proudness they had for their daughter. I think Ola and I were the most hyped. We were discussing the order of the songs pretty frantically. Second show felt more calm.

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Doing a Live Blog was fun, it really was. It will be hard to get the right concert and moment to do it again, but I would really like to. I’ll try to come up with some ideas for the next time to do it. And to have the luxury of Jonas filling in was also a huge factor.

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One thing about Jonas is that he conducted An Arkeology and Bottleneck Barbiturate by heart, without score. Rrrrespect!!!

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I wanted to do something special for the concert in Malmö in January, when I play the famous Tschaikovsky-concerto. Christina told me it’s almost sold out…for a concert in January! So I’d better think fast.

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I have great stuff in my camera, but I need to do that with a little care, so it will have to wait until I some home from Mexico. Check back for videos.

Here is, as a finishing touch, the complete This Sad Bouquet, Live From Växjö. It’s the best version we ever did, I think. Enjoy…

Thanks to Sara Love for this picture. And thanks to Jon Bergsjö for arranging this, Thomas Karlsson for supporting it, Peter Johansson is as always invaluable, Peter Lindblom is the best stage guy I ever met.

Now I have a concert to play. So that’s all folks. For now.

Live From Växjö Part 15 – The Next Day

And Hello everyone,

I will write a longer post later, but here are some things that was heard last nigh, some Cygnet, some of the singing of Fanny, she has such a stage presence that girl, and last, some Grieg I played and after Ola sang to it in…Yiddish. What happens is I play, then he says, “oh, I know that song, it’s a Yiddish folkdance!” Then he started kind of dancing, and just when I finish, he starts to sing…which is too late (it’s on purpose, of course) then we take it again, and this you will here…

OK, let’s go

Live From Växjö part 14

Oh damn…this technical stuff was complicated, and while I was waiting for bounce and such, I went to eat something since I was dead hungry. And then I got stuck. I am so sorry!

Now it’s past 4am and I see all the comments and I really wanted to put up an mp3 of some Cygnet, and I made the mp3, and…this damn website is on strike all of a sudden.

I’ll try one more time, if it doesn’t work, I’ll go to bed and try again first thing in the morning, OK?

You guys who followed the concert here, you are just the best. I can’t tell you what a cool feeling it has been to have you present. Really. You are the best.

OK, let’s try this mp3 one more time, then it’s some zzzz for me. But I do have a lot of filmed stuff. I’ll promise to share…

Good Night everyone, this was fun. I think I can get better at it, and I think I’ll do it again.

Thanks everyone.

Per

Live From Växjö Part 13

Jonas again:

Now they’re doing the final song of the concert. Final song of the evening. Final song of the project…

Always very strange after the last song. We’ve all been working for quite a while to get the show working, and now we have to move on to the next project.

BUT, the evening isn’t over, I’m sure Per will add some more to the blog quite soon.

And the final question from me: Why is Ola talking about some “Majsan” all the time?? Hahahaha, funny guys, Per and Ola…

Live From Växjö Part 12

Jonas again: This sad bouquet… Best version I ever heard. Breathtaking…