The Piano Pod, Season 1, Episode 14: First Annual TPP Recital!

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You're listening to a podcast right now. Driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and hundreds more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads like this, even with just 10 listeners a month. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, This is your sign. Start free at RSS.com.

You are listening to The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song, where we talk to the brightest minds in the industry about how they are bringing the piano into the 21st century.

Good evening, everybody, and welcome to a very special live episode of The Piano Pod. I am Eric Hunter.

I am Yukimi Song.

And Clara is muted. Clara, we still can't hear you. Okay, pick up your mic.

I am Clara Jeong. Can you hear me now?

Yes, thank you.

Perfect, great.

All right, so continuing on. So everybody, a few months ago we were having a podcast meeting and we started thinking, you know, we we've spent all this time talking about piano and no one has actually heard us play. Some of you have, of course, but not the official podcast audience. So we thought maybe we should do something about that. And so we decided to host our first annual TPP recital. Now, in the future, we hope to perform together live in a proper venue, but since the pandemic is still going on and things hadn't started to open up when we started planning this, tonight the three of us will play over Zoom from our own homes. Each of us will play for about 25 or 30 minutes with a little introduction before each performer. And now it is time to begin. Our first performer tonight is Yukimi Song, pianist, educator, and podcaster. Based in New York City, she has performed solo and chamber concerts at venues such as the Tenryu Institute, Frederick Loewe Theatre, and Le Poisson Rouge. Since 2014, Yukimi has toured Japan annually with her friend from high school, Natsuki Arakawa, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra violinist. Their eclectic programs have included repertoire by composers such as Albanese, Franck, Piazzolla, Scarlatti, and Gershwin. Past projects include the theme program "Mating Calls" with vocal quartet and narrator performed at Riverside Church. The concert explored contrasting definitions of love across two different eras through the performance of two song cycles, the Liebeslieder Waltzes by Brahms and the Craigslist Lieder by Gabriel Kahane. Upcoming programs include Poems for Insomniacs, an all-nocturne recital by composers such as Scriabin, Field, Chopin, and Lieberman, plus the piano transcription of Radiohead's Exit Music arranged by Christopher O'Reilly. Yukimi will also give a Broadway-themed recital with Clara and myself in the fall to celebrate the return of theater in New York City, so stay tuned for more info on that one. And now Yukimi will introduce her piece for you, the great F minor sonata by Brahms.

"Frei aber einsam," free but lonely. Brahms inserts initials of this romantic German phrase, F-A-E, F-A-E, into the last movement of Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor as a musical cryptogram. It was a motto that Brahms shared with this a good friend, Joseph Joachim, who was a violinist, the leading violinist of that time. The word Einsam, loneliness, lonely, derived from their sense of being out of place or being alienated for holding on to their Austro-German musical tradition as opposed to what was more popular or trendy at that time. Frei aber einsam. Free but lonely. That was precisely the state of mind I was in when I first heard a live performance of this piano sonata by Brahms. It was during the summer of 2004 at the Mozarteum International Music Summer Academy in Salzburg, Austria. I'd flown there from a small town in Florida where I used to work full-time as a faculty member, teaching— working day and night teaching students at a private college. As soon as I arrived in Salzburg, Austria, I couldn't help but sense the— feel the sense of freedom, free from all the restrictions, obligations, and exhaustion from heavy workload and everyday life. Um, the— I got to walk on the same streets as Mozart did 250 years ago. I got to study with incredible teachers. I was really influenced by a lot of incredible musicians, fellow musicians there, and I made some friends. We strolled the town and we went on a picnic. We went to concert together and we rehearsed together. And yet loneliness never left me. I was always lonely throughout the festival. The feeling hit me hardest when this Japanese pianist around my age performed this Brahms Piano Sonata in F minor brilliantly right in front of my eyes during one of the master classes. Tonight I will be performing all 5 but the second movement of this sonata. I'm just curious to know what comes up for you in your imagination, in your mind while you're listening to this piece. And I'm also curious to know what frei aber einsam, free but lonely, means to you. During a very difficult time like this. And you can feel free to leave a comment in the chat, or you can, if you're watching from YouTube or Facebook, please leave your comments in the comment section.

Yay!

Yay! Oh my goodness, that is so beautiful.

Wow.

For those of you that could unmute yourself and Mute yourself. Beautiful performance. Thank you so much, Yukimi Song. Well, our next part of the program is going to have Eric. Eric is going to be performing next, and I'll read Eric's intro. Eric is a pianist, composer, and educator. He has performed at venues such as Carnegie Hall Walt Disney Concert Hall, and in 2008 played an all-List recital at the home of the renowned pianist Earl Wald at his invitation. He's also an experienced chamber musician and accompanist. Among other outreach initiatives, he has worked as a music therapy consultant at the Austin Ricks Center for Mental Health in Stockbridge, Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a composer, Eric works in a wide variety of genres including classical, jazz, film, and electronic music. He was a prize winner in the 2012 Operation Cabaret Night songwriting competition. The following year, he composed the music for the multimedia piece Connection, commissioned by Arts Sight. In 2019, he scored for the animated short Pin and a Palm, which went viral. It currently has over 2.7 million views on YouTube. He also scored the multi-award-winning short Run Little Boy by Dominique Beddas, which follows themes related to the Black Lives Matter movement. When it comes to to teaching. Eric's private studio, piano studio, reflects his creative multi-genre approach. He works with all ages and specializes both in working with very young students and adults who are healing from trauma. He's head of professional development at the Piano Teachers Congress of NYC and has guest lectured at the School for Virtual, Virtual Arts New York University, Columbia University. He currently lives in Manhattan with his wife and two sons. Please welcome Eric Hunter.

Thank you, Clara, for the lovely introduction. I just also want to add, of course, I'm very happy to be co-host of The Piano Pod with Clara and Yukimi Song with Yukimi Song. And also thank you, Yukimi Song, for that spectacular performance of the Brahms. Before I begin, I just want to acknowledge my friends Amanda and Maria, who are loaning me this magnificent Yamaha C3 grand piano. So thank you guys so much. I love this instrument. Tonight I'm going to share with you all some of my favorite pieces by the French composer Claude Debussy. Debussy wrote two series of piano preludes following a tradition started by J.S. Bach with the Well-Tempered Clavier and continued later by other composers such as Chopin, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Shostakovich, and Messiaen, among others. Unlike some of these composers, Debussy didn't use any kind of organizing key scheme in his preludes, like the circle of fifths or having every prelude in a different major or minor tonality. Instead, each Debussy prelude is a perfect little character piece that stands on its own while somehow fitting into a larger narrative progression, particularly in Book 1. They each have a descriptive title telling you what the piece is about. However, in the original score, Debussy actually printed the titles at the end of each prelude, indicating that he wanted the listener to let their imagination be influenced by the sound alone, rather than what they thought they should be hearing. In that spirit, I encourage you all to ignore the program, particularly if you speak French, and come up with your own ideas of what these pieces represent. Feel free to share them in the chat. At the end of the performance, perhaps I'll read some of the interesting ones. So tonight I'll be playing 7 of these preludes, 6 from Book 1 and 1 from Book 2. I like to play these as a set without interruptions because I find that they flow so well from one to the next. I hope you enjoy the journey.

Bravo!

Bravo! Bravo!

Thank you, guys. You know, it's so nerve-wracking. You have no idea if the technology is working or not. I'm just playing for half an hour. I don't know what's going on.

Yes, yes, I hear you, but that was brilliant. Thank you so much for the— your performance. Very nice. Okay, so the show must go on, so we'll go on. So our final performer tonight is pianist Clara Zhang, podcaster and owner and founder of Rational Music Studios. Clara dreamt of becoming a professional musician in New York City from the age of 3 when her grandmother gave her a little keyboard for her birthday. With that dream, she began her unique journey with piano, starting at a small local music, music school, followed by Tianjin Music Conservatory. An unexpected performing tour in the Northeast region of the United States as a teenager led her moving to Topeka, Kansas, with a music scholarship at Washburn University. Later, she began her professional career in Massachusetts. And finally New York City. Ms. Zhang concertized regularly across the United States and Asia pre-pandemic. In the summer of 2012, she opened Rational Music Studios, a private piano studio based on Manhattan's Upper East Side. It has consistently been around— among the top 1% of NYC piano studios for the past 6 years on Expertise.com. In 2019, RMS won the Best Small Business Award in the Piano Teachers category from the New York Awards Leadership Summit. She's an educational partner of Steinway Sons and an executive board member of the Piano Teachers Congress of New York. Many of her students have been competition prize winners. And performed at venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. At RMS, they understand the value of classical music training, which is not only playing the piano but learning to be thoughtful and conscientious human beings who can contribute to a 21st century world. During the pandemic, Clara came on board to The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with several nonprofit organizations She's excited for the opportunities provided by new technologies to expand her musical outreach. Tonight, Clara will conclude our program with a diverse collection of works by Bach, Ginastera, Bartók, and Samson. But first, she is going to speak to you about these pieces. Everyone, please welcome Clara Zhang. Yay, Clara.

Yay. Thank you so much, Yukimi, for the lovely, lovely introduction. And thank you so much, everyone, for joining us from all around the world. Oh my goodness, I see so many familiar faces and it's just so warm. So without further ado, I'm going to tell you a little bit about the 5 pieces that I'm going to be playing. The first 4, I will play them together one after another. The first one is a Bach partita, the symphonia. And then followed by 3 dances by 2 different composers, an Argentinian composer named Alberto Ginastera and 2 Hungarian composer dances, but they are Bulgarian dances. So I will tell you a little bit about these pieces and why I chose them. First of all, Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach, None of us are unfamiliar with him. We all know who Bach is. But for me, I feel there's some personal attachment I have with Bach. I did not grow up very religious, but whenever I play Bach, I sometimes have these out-of-body experiences. So he is someone I consider very rational, even though he had 21 children, and so that was not exactly too rational, but He worked every single day and he was happy, and I feel like he was the teacher of all of us. And so I fell in love with Bach when I first moved to Kansas. When I was younger, you know, it was kind of difficult. Teenagers, we want to play really difficult pieces, but when I moved to Kansas, I remember a professor brought in this giant TV and showed us a video of Glenn Gould. And that was the first time I realized you can be different as a musician. We can all have our own voices as long as we keep on honoring the composer's intentions. So I will be starting with Bach, and I will continue with Ginastera. Ginastera is a— well, this is from a set of 3 Argentinian dances, and my lovely, lovely teacher, Dr. Hugo Goldenschmidt, is also in the audience today. He's just across the street from me, but he's streaming in. And so this particular dance is called Danza de la Hermosa Doncella, which means a dance of a graceful girl. So it is set on a Pampa land, which— Pampas, which is the village of Argentina. And it starts with a slow melody but eventually develops into a very expansive harmony. It's one of my favorite pieces. And then I will end the first part of my program with two Bulgarian dances, but they were composed by Bartók, which I consider probably— he's the beginning of the iPhone age, you know. He had this giant box and he recorded these little tunes from all the villages nearby and put them into pieces. And this is from a set of microcosmos. So I hope you enjoy, and I will come back with the last piece. Thank you. Alright! Thank you, thank you, thank you everyone. The sound is okay, right? Okay, awesome! Thank you so much everyone. Ah, I know, I know what Erica and Yukimi are feeling. You're so worried that there's no sound, you know, and you're like, whoa, what's going on? So, all right, before we end the concert, and thank you again everyone for joining from, oh my goodness, Malaysia, China, across the street, and Costa Rica, you know, everywhere, every time zone. We are so grateful. So the last piece I'm going to be performing, this is called Sun Song, Second Piano Concerto, and my dear friend Nadia is also in the audience, and she's French, and I've been telling her about this piece for a long time. So this particular, normally a concerto is when the instrument stand in the front and the whole orchestra would accompany them. So you have trumpet concerto, you have flute concerto, and this particular one is a piano concerto. Well, I don't have an orchestra here, so I will be accompanying myself. And this particular version is arranged by, um, Giorgio Bussetti. I'm probably not pronouncing correctly, but I have had a lot of lessons on that. And he is the famous composer who wrote Carmen. I'm sure my mom, dad, and aunt are all in the audience. They remember when I used to have this Carmen, you know, fantasy when I was like 4 years old. So when I think about this particular piece, first of all, Sun Sung is a composer people think that you start with Bach and you end with Offenbach. So he is a romantic composer. There's a lot of notes, so if it's too loud, you know, you can tone down your volume a little bit. But To me, when I play this piece, I think about the pot, The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with Yukimi Song. And I feel so grateful we were able to use this pandemic to start this passion project and interviewing all these people from all around the world. And it's like, you know, we are just pianists, but we are bringing in all of our expertise and we are putting together into a big project. So without further ado, I will play the Sin Song first. Second Concerto, first movement. Thank you. Bravo, bravo!

Bravo!

Thank you, thank you, thank you everyone!

Okay, so that concludes the first annual Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with Yukimi Song.

We did it!

Yay!

Yay!

Great work!

We would like to thank Lisa, Jeanne, and Norman, the High Tea team, for all their support tonight, for being our tech support and the Zoom moderators during the recital. We especially like to thank our audience for tuning in. You guys were great. We really had a lot of fun. And if this is your first time listening to The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song, we hope you'll check out the podcast.

If you enjoyed our performance, please tell your friends about us and rate us on whatever podcasting platform you use. Remember, you can always find the video versions of all our podcasts, including this recital, on our YouTube channel.

If you have any feedback for us, please leave it in the comments or DM us via social media, or you can also email us at thepianopodnyc@gmail.com.

Hope to see you all in a future episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song.

Bye everyone!

Thank you so much!

Bye, Heidi! Bye!

Bye-bye everyone!

Bye, Lucy! Good night, good morning, congratulations! Hava ki aho. Thank you so much.

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You're listening to a podcast right now. Driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and hundreds more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads like this, even with just 10 listeners a month. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start free at RSS.com.