hello everyone, i just found this forum today......everyone seems to be extremely nice...and i'm so glad i have somewhere to finally talk about the piano and classical music online. a bit about me: i'm 21, i love the arts and the outdoors, and music is my passion in life. liszt is my favorite composer, some others are berlioz, saint saens, chopin, alkan, prokofiev, weber, and i like ginastera's piano works too. i know it's not a personals ad or anything like that, everyone just seems to know everyone else quite well, so it a bit about myself seems proper. so hello!

(oh yeah, and i do play the piano)

Welcome! Good to have another Liszt fanatic aboard!

Do you play much, and if so, what are you playing right now?

Welcome Rodion!

Mat D.

Welcome Rodion,
Im pretty new myself to this forum but everyone seems very nice and they sure are helpfull... and funny !
In all it's a really nice place to 'hang out' and the place to go for a good laugh

here is my piano history, as briefly as i can put it:

i started at age 12, with a neighborhood teacher...i had her for 2 or 3 years, then started taking lessons from a friend of my mom's. as a college student she used to teach at utah state university - so she groomed me and pointed me in the right direction, taking away my new age sheet music (thank god!) getting me out of crappy lesson books, etc. a year or two later, i auditioned at usu, and started the once a week drive 90 miles away for my lessons.....that lasted three years, after i graduated highschool i joined the marines. so right now i'm in southern california, but i put salt lake as my location because in two weeks my four years are up, and i'm a free man again.
pieces i've learned before the military are chopin's third scherzo, weber's konzertstuck, first movement of saint saens fifth concerto, and the first movement of kabalevsky's third sonata, in F major. i bought an extremely nice keyboard/digital piano (yamaha p-200) to keep in touch while i'm in the service. i haven't been able to practice consistently enough to learn much of anything new, and i'm sure i've picked up some very bad habits, but my sight reading is 100 times better than it ever was and i've been able to keep up some of my old pieces too. the only thing i've been able to learn all the way through is liszt's liebestraum (not much, but i was on a ship for six months too!). my plan is to practise until my fingers fall off when i come home and start with lessons again. i need to know if i'm good enough to persue some sort of career with the piano.

lately i've been learning the spanish rhapsody (liszt of course) and rachmaninovs g minor prelude (for my mom). the rhapsody is amazing, i'm always astounded by the brilliance of the way he wrote that piece, the fingerings and mechanics of it all, and it's not really as hard as i thought it would be but still pretty damn hard. after practising that piece for a week or two everything else i've ever learned almost seems easy.

well i'm sorry i wrote so much, you don't have to read it if you don't want to! i probably should have put this at the top then?

thanks for the welcome!

phillip

Phillip,

You've obviously plowed your way through some heavy repertoire. Had you ever thought about playing in a service group? A buddy of mine is joining the army this summer and is going to play keyboards in one of the bands. Maybe it could be a nice supplement to your regular duties if you're able to do so.

The Spanish Rhapsody is extremely difficult...all of those octaves and leaps. I've never played it, but now I'm working on the b minor sonata, which also isn't as horrifying as it sounds. There are some pretty insane octave passages, but it's like everything else that Liszt wrote - the writing fits under the hand so well. I'd be interested in hearing you play the rhapsody...I'll probably post an mp3 of the sonata for all to listen to sooner or later.

Brendan

when i was thinking about joining i did try out for the marine corps band....i would have made it except i had no background in the other types of music i needed to play....latin and jazz, mostly the stuff you play from the 'fake books'. he told me what to learn and if i had learned it then i'm sure i could have made it, but i really wasn't interested in playing that music...

as for the rhapsody, i unfortunately haven't had the time to consistently practice it, so during one month one part is getting better, then the next another part - while what i was playing before dwindles....i've got all but the last couple pages actually learned though. it's definitely going to be my focus in a few weeks though when i go home. amzingly enough, the octaves and leaps really aren't that bad for me - i'm having troubles with the five finger scales mainly, and the broken tenths towards the end i know will be a problem when i have enough will power to tackle them. i love the passion liszt puts into his music, i love the way he expresses it with his chords and minor keys....his music is always like a drug for me, it's so ecstatic. being a rhapsody makes it difficult too, not only technically, going from one type of playing to another over one or two pages, but musically tying it together is a challenge.

i would love to hear the sonata when you have it ready, and i would love to post some of my music when i get a chance (read "get a piece good enough that i feel comfortable sharing it").