Happy Repertoire Season

Hello Blog.

Well, it looks like I let February go by without a single post. Shame on me. The good news is that the blog going dark doesn't mean I've been ignoring music. Au contraire, I'm in the middle of a busy "repertoire season". This is the time of the year for me to be learning brand new pieces to add to my repertoire. Immediately after the late-Fall ConcART, I like to start planning a new program, and that means finding new pieces to play.

I usually hunt around YouTube for pianists I like and composers I'd like to try. If a piece jumps out at me I'll go get the manuscript from the library at UT and spend a week or so reading it and trying it on for size. And if it survives reading week, I order my own copy of the music.

Right now I'm working up four brand new pieces by Johannes Brahms, Manuel de Falla, Robert Schumann (arranged by Franz Liszt) and another new Spanish discovery: Joaquín Nin-Culmell. I realize it's a bit pretentious of me to claim him as a discovery, but when there's only one recording on YouTube, I think that counts as a discovery. I'm also resurrecting an old George Frideric Handel.

The Handel, Falla and Nin-Culmell are already memorized and up to speed. I'd say they're "performable" (given adequately loose performance standards). The Brahms is memorized but not up to speed. It's definitely not at performance, but it will be. The Schumann/Liszt is still in the earliest stages of learning.

Counting everything except the Schumann/Liszt, my memorized repertoire sits right now at twenty: Albeniz, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Falla, Ginastera (×3), Granados (×2), Halffter, Handel, Liszt, Mozart, Nin-Culmell, Rachmaninoff, Schubert and Soler.

Happy Repertoire Season!