And a Year Later...

 And a year later ...

I performed a 2-piano recital with my long time friend and colleague, Meg Gray (on faculty at Wichita State University).  When she proposed the idea almost three years ago (before Covid), my first thought was "I'll have to use music."  But then I decided that I really wanted to do a 2-piano program, and this presented an opportunity to get back to the piano, which I had not touched since my Mom died in 2018.

My husband and I have performed 2-piano works in the past.  Mostly concerto movements, and I memorized my part, so the whole dyslexia thing never bothered me.

Meg chose the program, and from the very beginning, I realized this program presented problems I had never considered.  The program she chose was Bach "Sheep May Safely Graze", Brahms Hungarian Dances Nos. 3 and 17, and Waltzes Nos. 14 and 15, the Milhaud "Scaramouche", and the Pinto "Scenes of Childhood".  The Bach and the Brahms are technically one piano four hands, but we played them on two pianos, which I consider more fun anyway.

The problems I ran into included the choral-type of composition in the Bach piece, which meant multiple voices and multi-directional stems, which added up to a lot of visual confusion, especially since I was on Secondo.  The Secondo of the Brahms dances and waltzes meant a lot of octave work, which was okay, and also a lot of jumping around with the octaves, which meant me getting lost in the score.  Again. And again.  AND AGAIN.

Then came the Milhaud.  After watching YouTube recordings and the BLAZINGLY fast tempos taken, I realized I would have to memorize the first and third movements to play them at performance tempo.  But the first movement is written out improvisation, with no traditional rhyme or reason, and so memorizing proved a challenge, playing it by memory at tempo proved a greater challenge.  The constant jumping from one end of the keyboard to the other cemented the fact that I could not watch the score and play at the same time.

The Pinto presented similar challenges.  More tonal than the Milhaud and making more musical sense, the five movements still presented problems that memorization did not completely resolve.  Besides, I was looking at memorizing an hour of 2-piano music, which made me uncomfortable for several reasons, the chief one being the threat of getting off with Meg and not being able to get things back together again.

In the majority of concerto music there are breaks when the orchestra takes over and the soloist takes a rest.  Not so with 2-piano repertoire.  Both pianos go non-stop from beginning to end, and if one pianist loses their place and is trying to play by memory, all kinds of problems rear their ugly heads.

I'm not saying I won't play another 2-piano program.  Now that I understand better the handicap I face when trying to play 2-piano works, I'll go into future program possibilities with my eyes wide open.

It's times like this that I really envy "normal" readers.  2-piano collaboration should be FUN, an opportunity for 2 pianists to get together and make some really really cool music.

Dyslexia takes all the fun out of it.

For those of you interested in watching our performance at Wichita State University, here is the link to the video:

https://www.facebook.com/WSUSchoolofmusic/videos/1639801973045516