Listen to the song here (Can't see an audio player? It might not work if you're viewing this in an email client. If you are on the site directly, you may need to try a different browser.)
Once you finish making a recording, it's fixed forever. Thankfully, musicians have a tool that can help them control their need for perfection. We can play a song better later and re-record it. This brings the two sides of the coin together: we can listen to how we sounded in previous years, use our new knowledge, consider all the ways we could have done it differently, and actually do it differently.
In fact, in case you're curious, that’s what I’ve done with today’s recording.
Enjoy your last 10 days of 2023 - and keep filling your teacup with music!
~Liya
We usually associate "Carol of the Bells" with Christmas because of its English lyrics. (I've seen many versions, but they're all about Christmas.) However, the original Ukrainian version of this song, "Shchedryk," was about the New Year. In 1919, Mykola Leontovych wrote it based on Ukrainian folk chants. The lyrics describe a little bird coming to a home, proclaiming all the good fortune that is on its way. If only it could visit us this year...
Listen to the song here (Can't see an audio player? It might not work if you're viewing this in an email client. If you are on the site directly, you may need to try a different browser.)
In my last 2 posts, I wrote about how recording is a way of defining how you played at a certain time. It also lets you see all your mistakes and missed opportunities.
If I feel like recording your music doesn’t just entail perfectionism, but is perfectionism, how do the professionals feel?
How do they work up the courage to lay their music down on records? They’re in a public position, representing the peak of piano playing. The consequences of slipping up on a famously difficult section, or missing some information about how the music should be played, are an order of magnitude greater.
Now think about professional musicians in the early 1900s, the start of the recording era, who are now being listened to over 100 years later! They put their playing on full display, with limited editing capabilities, for future generations to hear. I was pleasantly surprised to find how many of these recordings we still have!
Listen to the song here (Can't see an audio player? It might not work if you're viewing this in an email client. If you are on the site directly, you may need to try a different browser.)
Recording your music gives you a window into your past playing. On the other side of the coin, it can be more stressful than even a live performance. Once you play the notes, they don’t disappear in the air; they’re saved for you or others to listen to at any time. The recording defines how I sounded playing today’s song in 2021.
I'm happy with how this recording turned out, but oftentimes when I listen to my old recordings, I think of new techniques I’ve learned that I could have used. Sometimes I’m even disappointed with how I stumbled through a difficult section.
I think I'm forced to be a perfectionist in some sense when I record. I can't escape it; it's just part of the process to keep trying until your recording is the best it can be.
Listen to the song here (Can't see an audio player? It might not work if you're viewing this in an email client. If you are on the site directly, you may need to try a different browser.)
I’m planning to post 4 Christmas songs this week, but I can’t think of 4 ideas to write about, so I’ll take my 1 idea and split it up. Who knows, maybe you don't have the time to read 4 posts in one week!
Today’s recording has gone through a long wait to be posted here, so now is the time. One advantage of making recordings is that I get to hear what my playing sounded like 2, 3, or 5 years ago. I don’t have to sit and try to remember; I can just listen!
At long last, Maria Szymanowska is coming back. Here is another piece I know by her, a Nocturne in A flat. It was written for 3 hands, so I layered two recordings of myself together.
Listen to the song here (Can't see an audio player? It might not work if you're viewing this in an email client. If you are on teawithliya.blogspot.ca, you may need to try a different browser.)
Today, I am playing a Prelude in E Major by Maria Szymanowska. It is the third in her set of 4 Preludes. Szymanowska was a Polish composer who doesn't get nearly as much attention as Chopin, but could be considered a forerunner of him. Who knows how many composers there were like her who have simply been forgotten despite their achievements?
Listen to the song here (Can't see an audio player? It might not work if you're viewing this in an email client. If you are on teawithliya.blogspot.ca, you may need to try a different browser.)
I've decided to continue with romantic era piano pieces, and that means it's time for Chopin. With so many admirers of his unique style, we couldn't forget about him. Even one who has heard very little classical music will have come across a Chopin nocturne or waltz at some point. "Favorite" or "most influential" composer lists can never be proven "right," but whenever one is made, he is usually in the top 5.
Somehow, I didn't know much about Chopin for my first, say, 5 years playing the piano. At that point, I had not learned any of his compositions yet. I remember having little to say when my teacher made a pun regarding a "Chopin board." Granted, I was very young during those years. This was the time when I didn't know how to pronounce Liszt and all I knew of Rachmaninoff was that he had big hands. As I noticed from my folders of sheet music, I have played a lot of Chopin since then.
Listen to the song here (Can't see an audio player? It might not work if you're viewing this in an email client. If you are on teawithliya.blogspot.ca, you may need to try a different browser.)
Yes, I have already made a Liebestraum post, but I failed to mention in the title that it was the third Liebestraum. I have changed that now, but eventually, someone will be confused that I played the third piece in the series before the first one. (This was most likely because I heard it before the other two.)
If you have heard that piece, or if you saw me last month finding flour in Budapest, you also know who we are talking about today. Before someone suggests that I rename my site Tea with a Lisztian (TwL), I have a good reason to bring the famous pianist back.
I just discovered that Franz Liszt played this piece at his last-ever performance, just two weeks before the fateful day of July 31, 1886.
137 years ago. (Sometimes I don't appreciate the force of how long that is.)
Listen to the song here (Can't see an audio player? It might not work if you're viewing this in an email client. If you are on teawithliya.blogspot.ca, you may need to try a different browser.)
I think now's a good time to get back to some songs that have been sitting in my folder, waiting to be posted. Here's one that has been there for 2 years.
Listen to the song here (Can't see an audio player? It might not work if you're viewing this in an email client. If you are on teawithliya.blogspot.ca, you may need to try a different browser.)
If you looked down, you would see "the greatest pianist of this or any other century," as one of his students called him. Known for hundreds of years now, he is still looked up to as one unlike anything else we've ever seen. Merely looking at him strikes fear into the hearts of pianists (but apparently not music researchers). So, this time only, I hope you have never played a piano, or this will remind you of your inferiority to him all over again.
(I do have a recording. I just moved it down so viewers on my home page will have to click the button first.)
Listen to the song here (Can't see an audio player? It might not work if you're viewing this in an email client. If you are on teawithliya.blogspot.ca, you may need to try a different browser.)
Welcome back to Tea with Liya! I feel like 2023 is sort of an "odd" number -- not just in the sense of not being divisible by 2, but rather "different" or "unexpected." Does that mean this is a good time to add a song by Thelonious Monk, a jazz pianist known for being distinctly unlike any others? I think it's the right time. Today I will be playing for you "Round Midnight," a jazz standard that Monk composed in the late 1930s or early 1940s, and published in 1943. I hope you like it!
Listen to the song here (Can't see an audio player? It might not work if you're viewing this in an email client. If you are on teawithliya.blogspot.ca, you may need to try a different browser.)
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