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oy, paganini!

Photo 14

Just had my first hack-through of the La Campanella with my wonderful pianist (Sandra Bleiweiss).  What a shock the first run-through often can be!  Carefully thought-out interpretive decisions seem unbelievably stupid and inane.  Tempos seem either naive or hideously self-conscious.  Mainly, after the run-through of the Paganini, my thought was “why?!”  As in, why did I choose to try to play this piece, why can’t I play it, and why do I seem to favor herculean musical labors at the end of a long season, peppered with healthy amounts of public humiliation?

Well, I have a few days to work out the kinks…