Alice Sara Ott - why you shouldn't judge a book by its cover

'No one's perfect', now a phrase thrown out of my books.

After finally seeing Alice perform live at the Royal Festival Hall today after an almost 2 year wait, I believe I, in all 19 earnest years of my life, have seen perfection in the face. She absolutely STUNNED in a bright red floor length gown, a perfect bob haircut and perfect figure, with her mischievous personality on full display.

If you think this is gonna be another rant about some other amazing piano prodigy, then you're right, but this one's special, because it's Alice Sara Ott.

I discovered Alice randomly on an article I read way back, when I was a newfound fangirl of Chopin and someone had rated her as 'one of the best interpreters of Chopin alive'. What made her instantly stand out to me as was that at first glance, she seems like a naive, graceful young pianist with an extraordinary talent. Her photoshoots do no justice to her actual playing as they all portray her as this dainty creature shrouded in grace and as the Pianist magazine put it, 'an air of remarkable serenity'. Which is why I was incredibly shocked when I actually heard her playing. It also sparked my interest as to why she always plays the piano barefooted, and why as pretty much a newbie, she chose to replace Lang Lang at such short notice when she knew there would be handfuls of critics sitting in the concert hall waiting to judge her.

In real life, Alice has in fact got a sassy punch of attitude to her generally determined personality. In her interviews, it's quite obvious but it's even more obvious when she's delivering a piece of music on the piano. I think the Times critic gave a good summary:

"There's a beauty, and mischief too, in her playing, which rings out with a freedom, fluidity and lack of contrivance which is entirely refreshing."

Today at the concert, even though I had rubbish seats and could only see her back, I was still entirely taken away by her interpretations of Schumann and Schubert. In a classical sense, her playing is almost 'wild' and uncontrolled, as if she hadn't taken notice of rhythmic structures and was playing completely based on her gut instincts, but when you close your eyes Schumann was still there looking at you in the face. It's an elevating sense of freedom and liberation which is just so damn refreshing to hear in a formal concert hall. There was something very impetuous about her dynamics which I thought really worked with the pieces she picked today. Especially in Mussorgsky's Pictures at An Exhibition - I thought that piece could be written for her.

There was one thing she keeps reiterating in her interviews which gave me a deep impression. She said that music to her is a form of communication. When she was younger, she felt that no one could really understand her, and when she heard a piano concert for the first time, she felt if she mastered the art, she would be able to make people understand her better. I believe that this type of communication is what makes classical music still so well loved today. People sit down in concert halls nowadays not to only hear that famous piece of music that's been around for centuries, but to hear the musical personality of the musician that is playing the piece, and how it is communicated to them. Why does Ott's interpretation sound different to Horowitz's? Why was this phrase played at such dynamics/tempo in this rendition? People who pay to hear live music should all be (or at least I hope so) looking for answers to such questions.

I think what the musicians do to deliver a piece is just as important as how the composer wanted the piece to be delivered. It's the same for fashion. A designer wouldn't create a top so that a certain type of person could wear it. It would be more meaningful to see how people of all sorts would wear this top, how people can make this one top unique to them. With music it's often a heart wrenching decision to decide whether to play a piece how the composer wanted you to play it, or play how you feel like playing it. Being the young, stubborn pianist Alice is, she obviously chose the latter, and I give her full credit for it. Why should a person living in the 21st century play based on the instructions of a dead man? Alice has the right to perform the piece the way she likes. If something from the piece speaks out to her, she has all the right and ability to tell the audience 'listen to THIS bit'.

I often get livid about this, but honestly I think this sort of respect for musicians is just so entirely lacking in the current classical world. Music is all about technique and interpretation, but at the end of the day 'interpretation' just becomes another technique. We are all so worked up by technique that we lose sight of more important things in music. Beethoven didn't write a piece because he wanted all pianists who played it to be technically perfect. It's often more accurate to guess that inspiration for that piece came to Beethoven in the form of a memory, feeling or dream that was entirely spontaneous. With such foundations, I fail to understand why some people get so angry that a piece was delivered 'too emotionally' or 'glosses over important musical technicalities'. Take a look at this frustrating critic of Ott on The Guardian:

"No on expects a pianist in her early 20s, however prodigiously talented, to be the finished article. Yet Alice Sara Ott's recital was still a bit of a disappointment, not because of any weaknesses in the German-Japanese pianist's playing - her technique is as buoyantly brilliant as her recordings suggest - but because too often, even in a programme that had clearly been chosen to showcase the extrovert side of her pianism, it allowed her to skate over the surface of the music without hinting at what lay beneath."

If a concert is CHOSEN to showcase something you expect, and in the end you see what you expect to see, what is the point of going at all? We don't live to hear the same pieces delivered in the same ways it had been done for hundreds of years, or even what we EXPECT should be delivered. We go to concerts with a blank mind and let the musician fill it up with THEIR ideas. Hence why we go and listen to THEIR playing in the first place.

He then continues to criticise her on how her rendition of Mozart's Duport Variations K573 "hardly seem like late Mozart at all", and how her Beethoven Sonata Op 2 No 3 "didn't give the slow movement the space it needed [...] there was something perfunctory about the way everything was presented, with no sense of music threatening to redefine the boundaries of classical sonata form as Beethoven did in these early works." It's as if he came to the concert expecting her to be Mozart or Beethoven or something. How did he know Ott deliberately didn't want to play as if she's redefining boundaries of sonata form? Why should she anyway? Maybe playing 'like' Mozart was not what she wanted to convey to her audience. I don't even think it's a rebellious move from her trying to be different. I just think her being honest to herself through music.

The fact that Alice has lived through these harsh criticism and is still flourishing in her own intrepid musical style makes me support her all the more. The fact that she is still touring increasingly more continents and is welcomed by an expanding fanbase gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, other people out there also see the importance of a musician's personality rather than technique and ability to mimic the composers. Through her interviews, I could tell she's a very brave girl, knows her direction in life and is very honest to herself. All these qualities I wish I could perfect on.

Music wise I'm nowhere near as talented as her, but I do think we think in similar ways in many aspects. For example we both think that music is played and listened to best in the dark with no 'visual distractions'. We both believe that practising comes down to self motivation, and not whether your family is rich enough to buy you a Steinway or whether or not your family members are musicians. Personally for me, music is a haven where I escape to from my crazy life, and she seems to think similarly. In her interview with The Telegraph she talked about the dangers of the modern culture - women at airports with their heads buried in their BlackBerries, 'who don't breathe, who don't take time to think'. I'm pretty thankful that I realised these dangers too, especially since my future is going to be 100% in the financial sector, so that in the future I will not be making the same mistakes.

She sees music as a universal thing with no boundaries and no segregation - I remember my music illiterate mother looking at my violin music and telling me 'it doesn't matter what language you speak. This sheet music is something musicians from across the globe will understand'. On this topic Alice says:

"If you hear music in a concert hall, you can forget time, you can forget your own language, your culture, and your own skin colour... it makes no difference which country I'm in." 

This cut from the Telegraph interview also stood out to me:

"Growing up in two cultures, she also found a refuge. 'In Germany people sometimes call me "ching-chang-chong", their expression for Chinese, which I have got used to now, but which used to freak me out. They think Asian people are all the same. And in Japan people are shocked that I speak Japanese. In music it doesn't matter what nationality you have. It is more important what you want to say and who you are. With music I was welcomed everywhere. We were talking in a language above all this hate and racism."

It's quite remarkable how she uses music to distance herself from racism. I live in London and am pursuing a career in the finance, so it's pretty much on a daily basis that I get racist remarks from everyone at every place imaginable (even today when I was at M&S the man who served me said 'happy new year!' followed by some incoherent blubbering which he presumed was Chinese). As a result I feel extremely privileged to know so many music lovers at my uni who I can talk about and play music with without having to touch on our cultural differences, and so happy that I have Alice as an idol who thinks in the same way as I do about music.

About her playing barefoot, she says it's because she wants to treat each piano as a person, and it helps her to feel closer to the instrument. Which I kinda understand even as a violinist, because for example I've never played the violin with gloves on.

I sincerely wish Alice all the best in the future and I hope she shines bright in this industry, and at the end of this journey get all the happiness and freedom she deserves. I hope she never changes her impulsive, gut-instinctive way of playing because it's what makes her so perfect in her own way!

Some clips of Alice playing:

Liszt

Beethoven

Liszt with interview:

Ivo Pogorelich

Short post, but I just want to introduce you guys to this amazing pianist if you haven't yet heard of him.

He's called Ivo Pogorelich, a Croatian pianist, known for his eccentricity and fabulous style haha

Actually, he's known for being eliminated from the 3rd round of the International Chopin Piano Competition in 1980, because the boring judges thought his style and behaviour on stage was inappropriate. I mean I seriously laughed at the last bit, guess they couldn't handle his fabulous self. Well at least Martha Argerich acknowledged that he's a genius and left the jury in protest. If I was her I would have done the same tbh.

He's definitely a genius, and his playing, I can't describe it, just go listen to these:

At the end the bitch face he gave the audience!!! omg this man is perfect


lol the way he entered XD I just don't feel the nerves when I hear him play, even though this is an international competition

hair flick at the end :D

but in all seriousness, he is a really good pianist. I especially like his Bach

stress relief piano music

It's 7 days before my exams start so I've been trying to study intensively. Still got loads of work to do, mostly practice, and everytime I look at my practise papers just reminds me of the stress times I had during my A Levels. I did further maths, so that means literally hundreds of practise papers to be done. I was completely dying and not coping at that point, but now in uni I don't want to repeat that sort of hopeless feeling, so I made a piano playlist on my ipad and listen to whenever I feel like crying lol.
There are two songs that I particularly like, both new age, I thought I'd share it here:

Reflection I - Song Kwang Sik


Eversince - Yiruma

Good luck revising everyone, it's not too close until the end! I've already planned what I'm gonna do everyday for 2 weeks after the exams lol Orion string quartet is coming to London adfsasdfdsjhfsdhf;ashdfashdfahdfasdf;akshfksadhf

Johannes Brahms

This post's going to be about classical music again.

TODAY'S TOPIC IS: BRAHMS!

Brahms is one of those composers that can be grouped in the fame category together with Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Schubert, Chopin etc. AKA he's one of the big names in classical music. The 'three B's' is a common name for classical music lovers, and they're Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. So you know that if you're going to a concert to hear their music, you're in for a delightful treat. If I scan through a concert schedule, my eye would instinctively pause on his name and browse the repertoire that is to be played. In classical music things work the opposite way. Nowadays people go to gigs for the musician (whether or not the music is composed by them or not), but for classical music, concert goers select based on the composer(s) to be featured.

There are many detailed and insightful articles on Brahms on the internet, but I'm here to give my own personal opinions (what you do in a blog). For me, Brahms has it all. Master of harmony and rhythm, his skills in the use of counterpart is only second to Bach. While he goes crazy experimenting 'new' styles of the Classical Era technique in his own perfectionist way, he still makes sure the foundations of music are firmly locked into his works. His flawless use of development is just as accomplished as Beethoven and Mozart.

To many pianists and music critics, Brahms means power. So it seems but nowadays there are various theories about how Brahms himself would have interpreted his own music. I was made to believe that the technique of playing his works requires a lot of energy and heaviness, but true or not I have no idea. But I trust my opinion because the first ever Brahms piece I heard was of course his famous Violin Concerto and the power of the 3rd just blew me away with it's overflowing vigor.

Itzhak Perlman's version of the 3rd movement (my favourite)


Next up was listening to his First Symphony for the first time; the heaviness and broadness of the opening notes were almost suffocating. It was just like what Michael Stern called it, an 'epiphany' (though he was talking about a different piece.. I guess that word suits a lot of Brahms' pieces). He was also quite a bear of a man and words like 'monster' and 'beast' are often found in comments of youtube videos and articles about him.

The oboe part at 2:25, I wish I could play it *-*


However after I heard more pieces by him, I decided that he was probably not as aggressive as he seems, and concluded that he actually might have been an introvert. The type that had a very exciting inside character that he kept to himself. For example his 2nd Violin Sonata is definitely a lot more light and lyrical compared to his other well known works.

I had the honour of attending a concert which featured Brahms' Tragic Overture, and was lucky enough to sit in the gallery area right above the string section so I could clearly see the sheet music and bowing of the people directly below me. I hadn't heard it before, so the power it brought was beyond astounding to me. All the violinist played with a bow-breaking power which filled the hall with so much richness of sound I thought Brahms himself would have been pleased to hear it. Many players' bow hairs actually snapped int he process. I think this was the piece that made the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra (who was playing that night) to enter my top 3 orchestras list now.

The theme at 2:25 AND MY FAVOURITE BIT at 12:30 (must listen) is really what Brahms is about. It's him in his element


A couple of days ago I went to my local bookshop and found this treasure: the Vienna Philharmonic playing Brahms' 1st Symphony AND the Tragic Overture. And it was discounted to £2.99 so I bought it without hesitation. The Vienna Philharmonic is currently my favourite orchestra (though this may change), which I had decided after listening to a few of their recordings. Their skill is in my eyes second to none, and the sweetness of their sound is so overwhelming that every time a piece is played it's almost perfectly delivered. Not to mention that the orchestra owns 5 Stradivarius instruments, which if you have heard live will know of its subtle distinction from all the other makes. An interesting thing though is that some of my favourite and most renowned violinists of our age and all time, like Itzhak Perlman, Gil Shaham, Maxim Vengerov, Eugene Ysaye, Niccolo Paganini, Anne Akiko Meyers, Janine Jansen, Joshua Bell, Yehudi Menuhin, Kyung-wha Chung, Leonidas Kavakos, Fritz Kreisler, Frank Zimmerman, Jascha Heifetz, Akiko Suwanai, Julia Fischer, Midori Goto, Nicola Benedetti, all use Stradivarius violins. I've heard a couple of these soloists lives, and each of them I remember very clearly, down to the notes I particular enjoyed, because the sound of the violins were so unique and hard to forget. Of course the players' world class techniques play a huge part in their sound, but I think their Strads have definitely enhanced their playing which other instruments would not have been able to do. (The bookshop actually has a good collection of CDs that put together a lot of my favourite pieces, for example there was one with all of Bach's 6 violin sonatas, another with Beethoven's 4th and 7th symphonies (my favourite out of the 9.. actually I have 3 favourites: the 4th, 7th and 9th :D), and one with Stravinsky's Petrushka and Ravel's 1st Piano Concerto on one disk, which I very nearly bought if I had liked the orchestra playing it, which I didn't haha.

Listen to them here if you're interested.. Stravinsky and Ravel are 2 of my favourite composers who write that weird, modal/atonal music:

Petrushka


Ravel's 1st Piano Concerto
Listen to it whilst watching the clip from 'The Snowman' below this video in mute. It fits so well!! The theme starts at EXACTLY the same time the snowmen play the flutes!!




Currently, London's Kings Place is doing a programme full of Brahms' works called 'Brahms Unwrapped'.  I only recently found out about it, so I've missed out on a lot already, but I didn't know MY FAVOURITE STRING QUARTET OF ALL TIME the Orion Quartet is coming to take part in the programme!! (I already knew from last year that they were coming this June though, because I actually wrote to them and they replied back thanking me and telling me that they would come to London in 2012 XDDDDDDD) But at that time I didn't know what they were playing. When I saw their name in the brochure, I actually said in my head let it be Beethoven or Brahms, and voila DREAM COME TRUE!! I'll probably go for all three nights because they play a different repertoire each night. Am considering whether to bring a fan sign or not (lol joke) because my love for them is like, unexplainable <3 Plus my exams finish on the 29th May and that's their first night out of the 3!!! It would be the BEST end of exams/start of summer treat for me <3

Chopin Piano Concerto No.1 in E Minor, Opus. 11 - 2nd Movement, Romance Larghetto

I'm been listening to this track non stop for almost the entire day~ Chopin writes the most beautiful piano melodies!

Added some pictures below to accompany the music~

At 1:56, most romantic melody probably ever written <3

Why do YOU listen to music?

Does it make you think about certain things?
Does it make you forget certain things?
Does it echo/change your mood?
Does it make you feel better/worse about yourself?
Does it make you feel like you are somewhere/someone else?

Most people will say 'yes' to these questions thinking about the songs that they love.

Music, to me, is a form of art that evokes the senses and the emotions.
Which is why I hate it when people judge whether a song is 'real music' or not. If a song speaks to you, they it is good music, to YOU.

If you've been to numerous live concerts, you will know that most of the time, they make you high if you know the piece, or if it's a gig, you become elated when the crowd is reacting positively to the music. But did you actually feel the music itself?

The concerts that are most memorable to me are the ones that made me feel my emotions shifting in response to the music; it may last only a couple of seconds, it may not happen at all. But no matter if it's the musician's technique or the echoes of sound against the walls, something in the music becomes part of you. It syncs to something in you; it might be your breathing, heartbeat, thoughts, memories, anything. It's such a euphoric moment that it's powerful enough to make you extremely happy or break down immediately.

I love live classical music, mostly because it is the rawest interpretation of the foundations of music. Mathematically, layered chords can evoke more feelings from us than most modern music.

However I love all sorts of music, and there are always some very hardcore guitar riffs that really wake me from my senses better than any classical music can.

For example, I sat at the front of the Cadogan Hall yesterday and listened to Brahms' First Symphony live. I was right in front of the double basses with their amazing ground shaking low notes. And especially since it was played after a very averagely played Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, the first few bars felt amazing. The oboe part at 02:08 definitely jerked my tear ducts.



On Monday I also went to see St Vincent, and during her song 'Your Lips Are Red', she did this amazing i-don't-know-how-to-use-words-to-describe guitar thing and staged dived whilst playing it. I remember closing my eyes and feeling the whole place rotating in my head. The sound literally shook the ground. Was incredible.

02:53, check it out:


Also this Flying Lotus piece called Heaven, the outro at 02:04 (though only a few seconds) was the climax for me:


Thank you for listening to me rant!! Since it's already practically dawn right now, I'm going to bed listening to Satie's Gymnopedie No.1, which always helps me clear my head. Ima share it here! xx

Russian Composers: Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Glinka

Today, I'm going to talk about Russian composers (and try not to mention the biggies Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky.)

For me, Shostakovich means his violin duets. They are remarkably different from his atonal pieces like his first violin concerto and violin sonata op.134. All the Shostakovich I've managed to hear live in the past were from second-half concerts (you know, when the first half is a famous piece like Brahms' first symphony, and the second half is a less well know one.) I don't know why programmers always put Shostakovich as the end tag piece, or why they always put in the less interesting jazzy pieces of his where those trippy tone rows just play with your mind and you lose track of any melodies present. Hence so far all the pieces I've heard by him are those gloomy, restrained, dissonant ones, as if they all have potential to be great works but his editor majored censored it or something.

It wasn't until I looked through the 2nd hand music books sale at my music school when I discovered Shostakovich's real talent. Actually at that time my knowledge for duet pieces was so limited that when I wanted to duet with someone and they asked me 'what do you want to play' I would always reply with 'err.. Bach double violin?' So I was on a hunt and thank god I found Shostakovich. Here's the Three Violin Duets performed by Perlman and Zukerman:



They just sound so beautiful and sophisticated. The melodies and simple and harmonies and clean. The mastery of the players' techniques just make it all the better.

Stravinsky. When anyone says that name, images of Russian dolls and Polish dancers/yodellers in their dresses come to my mind. This man works MAGIC with wind instruments. His pieces are very psychedelic too, but it sounds more like a frustrated classical era musician improvising and trying out new things. The classic structures and forms of the classical era are definitely still present. Hence the hidden tonal and harmonic quality that comes out in bursts. When I say bursts, I mean that word in every way. Stravinsky's identity is the use of pushing notes beyond the bar lines; he tries to fit in notes so that they are bursting out from the set rhythmic frame. To me, he seems less concerned with phrasing, and sometimes is quite abusive when it comes to rhythms (he always uses a staccato rhythm for bars and bars on end).

Two of my favourite pieces by him are his Violin Concerto (especially the 4th movement), and a piano piece called Petroushka.


Played perfectly by Gil Shaham (there's an ongoing debate between me and my friend on whether Perlman or Shaham plays better, haha). Listen to the opening wind instruments. I don't think any other writes so well for winds in orchestral piece. (Okay maybe Rachmaninov does.)


See the abusive rhythms? It's like a more tonal version of piano bashing. But Kissin bashes it very well :)

Just a little bit on Glinka. Honestly I haven't heard enough of his pieces to gush about technical things, but I have heard his Ruslan and Ludmila Overture, which I love very much. I'm going to see this piece next month together with the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in one concert, and I can barely contain my excitement! It's lightning fast, and just makes me feel so.. jubliant (lol). Can't believe that people at the time hated it when it just came out.



That's it folks! I'll be back with a French composers post (most likely to be talking about Debussy, Ysaye and Satie!)
xxx

music and workkk

I'm so glad I managed not to post on Valentines Day. I just never want to think too deeply about my love life, it depresses me really.

BUT, yesterday I did attend the Valentine's Day concert at the Royal Festival Hall to indulge in some lovey-dovey music. The programme was Rachmaninov: the 2nd piano concerto and the 2nd symphony. An introductory leaflet correctly wrote 'Rachmaninov means romance.' The number of couples present also added a matching atmosphere which made things work.

If you know me personally, you will know that I dislike symphonies, but have soft spots for Beethoven, Lalo, and HUGE soft spots for Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky. Also, Rach 2 being my favourite piano concerto for around 3-4 years now, I had been planning for sometime to see a live of it on Valentine's Day.

I won't go into depth about the concert (but if you haven't heard the piano concerto yet I highly recommend Evgeny Kissin's version [see end of post] *he's coming to London on the 2nd gush gush*), but I've got to take a moment and congratulate the London Philharmonic's performance of the 2nd Symphony. Normally that piece drives me to sleep, even though I understand why it's considered one of the best symphonic works of our times, but it is 1 hour long and if it's not deafening like Beethoven's 9th Symphony I can't see how any audience can get through the entire thing without feeling drowsy at some point.

The sound of the 1st movment was so overwhelmingly sweet it was hard to stop having stills from Audrey Hepburn films popping into your mind. As the whole symphony was written to express Rachmaninov's recovery from depression and writer's block, it was perfect for me because currently I want to forget some things and move on. I really FELT the 3rd mvt, the violins did a brilliant job.

Anyways, I can go on for years about music, but I've got to get back to my maths..
Also, my photos I took for my uni's fashion show MIGHT be appearing on the next issue on Tatler 8D really looking forward to that (but of course it's not a guarantee because there are 4 other photographers' works from which the magazine can choose from..)

A little update on my uni life: Maths is getting so difficult beyond anything I'd imagined. I'm starting to think whether I should post some questions on this blog just in case a genius happen to drop by and answer it for me...

Anyways, enjoy the discounted Valentines chocolates today! xx


The 1st movement is so perfectly written, I literally cannot find one fault in it



Here's the entire symphony in HD. Listen to the sweet melodies from around the 7:40 mark :)