Confessions of an anxious pianist day #10: The Polonaise
About once a year, I buy a Fry’s Turkish Delight bar, a slab of faintly fragrant sugary pink jelly covered in chocolate. It has no nutritional value, no crunch, no…
Confessions of an anxious ballet pianist day #9: Oh no! What was that?!
You sit at the piano, and watch the teacher address the class, rattling off directions, her hands a blur as she marks movements with her hands at 8x fast forward…
Confessions of an anxious ballet pianist day #8: The dreaded slow mazurka pirouette
The moment I see a teacher marking a pirouette that has a massive, sweeping balancé in it, I know there’s trouble ahead. Like the dreaded 2/4 sissonne of yesterday’s post,…
Confessions of an anxious ballet pianist day #7: The dreaded 2/4 sissonne
A short but apposite entry today, because I’m off to record a whole bunch of examples of exactly what this post is about: music for that kind of sissonne exercise…
Confessions of an anxious ballet pianist day #6: Playing the Black Swan variation music
The music that is harder to find than a black swan Let’s start with a few facts. Although this solo, and the Black Swan pas de deux that it comes…
Confessions of an anxious ballet pianist day #5: Playing for the White Swan variation
I’ve already written an entire recent post about one problem with accompanying this variation (The perils of musicality when you’re accompanying a ballet solo) but that’s not the end of…