It was quite obvious to me my new blog would have a relation with the corona crisis we’re experiencing. A blog not build on an “interesting” musical subject or piece of music but a reflection of these times of crisis – Read more
When depicting the musician as the artist who plays with passion and expression, tempo rubato is an important issue. And a difficult one for sure. Because , in its very essence, it can only be an individual, personal way of playing. Which makes it difficult to judge.Describing rubato as a way of playing where one deviates from the basic tempo makes it almost sound like playing wrongly, not keeping the tempo. But then that’s what it actually is: to free Read more… – Read more
One of the hardest things when explaining time and rhythm to a student is the bar: it’s function other than the visual structure on the page. What does it do, what does it actually keep together? A number of beats, yes, but what does that “do” when playing the music? When playing a waltz it becomes quite clear the “1-2-3”, the “oom-pa-pa” is one thing, one entity which we could actually feel and count as “one”, one sway. The bar Read more… – Read more
Though reading this blog you might think otherwise I’m not a regular radio listener. But when I do listen it’s Klara, the Flemish classical radio station, I like most. They still have that atmosphere of awe and wonder when talking about music. In fact, that’s their slogan: “blijf verwonderd”, stay in wonder. It was Klara who introduced me to this piece of music. To Manuel Blasco de Nebra, a Spanish keyboard player and composer. I immediately fell in love with this Read more… – Read more
