For those who believe in fairy tales ...

France's government has released extra funding for the new (totally  unnecessary) Parisian Concert Hall. See here in French.

Good luck to France and Paris and all involved ... but I have already expressed my huge doubts ...

The 86% percent solution ...

For French speaking readers an interview of the intendant of the Migros concert series. Please note that they are doing ads on TV for the concerts and have now an audience capacity of 86%. Marketing works ... even for music.

(and yesterday was the last round of the Geneva Piano competition, report is here.)

Old Memories

My blog is getting dusty. Daily work is intense and I have not posted for a while ...

I was yesterday meeting my friend Pascal Rophé who is conducting the OSR for tomorrow's final concert of the Geneva Piano Competition. A review of the concert will be in Concertonet.

I told him that I am ashamed at not remembering the name of our old common  High School music teacher (I think that it is Archambaud but I am not sure ..). With more age, I realise that his course was fantastic and that I owe him a lot. In France, after the mid-class level of "Troisème", around when I as 14 or 15, music became an elective course taken by studentes to get a few points extra credit at the Baccalauréat.The exam was composed of playing a piece (I did Bach's Chromatic fantaisie, at a time when I was sight-reading Schoenberg op 11 ...), a musical dictation (is this the correct English word, this is when one plays a tune on a piano and we have to write down the notes ?) - I was not good and very bad with chords ... - and commenting several pieces - there I was better, not good but better.

Thanks to the work of our teacher, I discovered the pleasure of following a score while listening to a work. We did this for Bartok's string quartets, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, ... I cannot hear the closing pages's Adoration de la Terre without being sensitive to the timpani's decelerating rhythms ...

or the timpani's subtle pedal in Bartok's second violin concerto ...

Such professors are so important.Countries that recognize this will lead this century.

I am sorry not to  be sure of his name and I cherish his memory fondly.

Moral Support not entertainment ...

Courtesy of Massorti  Rabbi Dalsace who gave me some wonderful lessons back when in was in Nice. He is now in Paris and his articles can be read in his excellent site.