Vidas: Hi guys, this is Vidas!
Ausra: And Ausra! V: Let’s start episode 478 of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast. This question was sent by MaryLu, and she writes: “I’ve been with you for only a few days, but what you say is right-on. I'm 78 years old, and hold a Bachelor’s degree in Music Education, and advanced degrees in piano performance, organ performance and church music. At the moment I work full time at a large church where I direct 4 choirs and play all English and Latin Masses. I also play several organ recitals a year. Over the last few years I have found that I'm in a rut, replaying organ repertoire that I've been playing for years, so this year I'm breaking out of that rut and preparing new repertoire which I plan to use for the first time this November. And I would VERY MUCH like a bit of guidance. Rheinberger Organ Sonata #17 in B Major (registration especially, though it seems straight-forward, I can't seem to get it just right. Bach "Little" Fugue in g minor (Can't believe I'd never played that one!!) which you have already reviewed -- that's how I found you! Alain Litanies I know this doesn't answer your questions, but . . . . . Thank you for being here! MaryLu” V: Alright! First, Ausra, let’s congratulate MaryLu, that she is still practicing organ despite her age. A: Yes, excellent, but that’s what she has to do, because she knows she’s a full time church organist. V: And she wants to learn new repertoire. This is really exciting! A: It is. I think it’s never too late to learn new stuff. V: And as long as you are learning new stuff, you actually postpone the aging process. A: True! I guess it’s very important in life to stay curious about something, and improve your skills, and learn new things. V: That’s right, Ausra. And she needs guidance about registration, and to make it less specific to her, but more general to other people, because everybody is playing Rheinberger Organ Sonata #17 and the other pieces that she works on, maybe we should talk about the principles that she could also apply to other pieces of Rheinberger and other pieces of Bach, and other pieces by Alain, and so forth. Right? A: Well, I would like probably to start to talk a little bit about Alain, because I don’t know which edition she uses, but I think most of Alain’s works are published by Alphonse Leduc, I believe, and they have specific registration marks written in the score, which you can get when you are playing Alain’s music, and if you are not well familiar with it, that some of his registration suggestions are very weird… weird looking. But you shouldn’t be afraid of that, because I guess Jehan Alain had a house organ which was a little bit weird, too. And I guess some of his organ compositions were registered based on that house organ. V: Right. And we should add that a famous Swiss organist who actually tries to, so to say, protect and develop interest in Jehan Alain’s work…. A: Guy Bovet? V: Guy Bovet, yes! He was in Lithuania back in 2007, I think, and recently, their association published facsimiles of Jehan Alain’s work. So, anybody who is interested in the original handwriting and orthography can actually have modern facsimiles of Jehan Alain’s work, and compare those things with published editions. A: But, I guess if you just follow the directions given in the score, you should be just fine. V: But do you know what a problem with the score… his sister sometimes has said that she edited her work, A: Marie-Claire Alain. V: Marie-Claire Alain, right, and she’s a great expert, of course, in his work everything, but she was very young, basically very little, when he died. A: Yes, and I remember that Olivier Latry talked about it during his master classes when we were in Nebraska, studying at Lincoln University, getting our doctoral degrees, and we played for him. And I remember I played for him the second Fantasie by Jehan Alain, and he taught that I need to be careful about registering his piece, because he told me that these registration marks are not actually original, but made later by his sister, and that’s he said, that she was probably too young to remember it. So I guess that it’s a very good idea to look at the facsimiles. V: And I would add that, yes, people need to look at the specification of the house organ of Jehan Alain that his father built, and then a lot of indications would fall into place. Obviously, people playing on modern organs and other instruments don’t have such an instrument at all, so they have to do some adjustments. A: True, you will always have to adjust some things. What about Bach? V: Bach Fugue, right? A: Yes! V: It’s relatively simple and straight forward, I would say. The tradition of playing non-choral based works of the Baroque period in Germany indicated Organo Pleno, right? A: Yes. V: Principal chorus with mixtures. A: Could you tell us what stops belong to the principal chorus? V: Depending on how big the organ is, it may have a 16’ Principal, or not, or even sometimes they don’t have an 8’ Principal. But in general, they have to have several Principals aligned of different pitch levels. So if you have 16’, 8’, 4’, that’s good. Then you continue with 2’, then go 2 2/3’ (this is a fifth) and go to a higher pitched fifth, maybe 1 1/3’ (if it’s a Principal), and basically, you could add a Mixture, and depending on if the Mixture is a lower Mixture, then you definitely need a Principal 16’, if it’s a higher Mixture you don’t necessarily need a 16’. A: Well, let’s say, what do you do if you don’t have Principal 16’ and Principal 8’, but you have, let’s say, Flute 16’ and Flute 8’? Could you replace the Principals with the Flute instead? V: You see, I think if you have an organ with 16’ Bourdon in the manual, then you definitely have would have Principal 8’, so…. A: But my question is, for example, okay, you have Principal 8’ but you don’t have Principal 16’. Would you put the Bourdon 16’ instead of the Principal? V: Yes! A: And let’s say your manuals don’t have 16’ stops at all. Would you then just start registering with 8’? V: 8’. Mhm! A: And what if you don’t have a Principal… V: 8’… I would add the Flute 8’ A: And then Principal 4’, yes? V: Principal 4’ and work my way upwards. What about you? A: Yes, I guess I would do the same thing. And what about pedals? What kind of stops would you add to play them… V: Well, with pedals, sometimes you have to check. Yes, you have 16’ Principal, 8’ Principal, 4’ Principal, and then you have Posaune and Trumpet and Mixture. You could add those things if they’re not too overpowering to the Organo Pleno sound in the manuals. But, in Bach’s day, he had a lot of Organs, especially in Saxony, that Silbermann built with only 3 stops! Sub Bass 16’, Octave Bass 8’ (or maybe it was called Principal Bass) and then Posaune. Those three stops would be enough to play with nice, not too big, Principal chorus in the manuals. A: Do you think he might have used also the manual couplers to the pedal? V: If there was one, yes, because lots of organs in his time didn’t have the pedal coupler, only the manual coupler, they call it Schiebekoppel, which is like a device where you mechanically move one keyboard on top of the other. A: Yes V: And they coincide, and then both keys of both keyboards can be played together. Alright! A: What, now, about Rheinberger? How would you…? V: Rheinberger! Rheinberger, Liszt, and... A: Mendelssohn, V: … Mendelssohn, and what else… Reubke, and to some degree, maybe Karg-Elert and Reger, right? These composers have certain colors similar to German organs. So Rheinberger’s tradition might be possible to do on modern organs following suggestions by Felix Mendelssohn, I think. Right? A: Yes. V: And Felix Mendelssohn, in the preface of his “Six Organ Sonatas” wrote that you could always have a 16’ stop in the pedals. Right? Always. Unless indicated otherwise by the composer. And then, he has, I think, 5 or 6 dynamic levels: pianissimo, piano, mezzo-piano, mezzo-forte, forte, and fortissimo. So pianissimo means what, Ausra? A: Well, you need to use the softest organ stops. 8’. V: 8’ Flute. Right? Or staying just one. A: Yes. V: The softest of any manual. And then, if you have piano, you could have a couple of those together, but also very soft—Flutes, let’s say. And then mezzo-piano would have maybe Flutes 8’ and 4’. Mezzo-forte might have Principals 8’ and 4’ already, and then forte could have, as he says, all the stops of the great manual, but without some of the loudest stops, which means without, maybe, reeds, and maybe mixtures could work already, I think. A: It depends on the mixture probably. V: It depends. You’d have to check. A: Some mixtures are so prominent, that you will save them for later. V: And fortissimo means full organ. This is simple. And remember, Ausra, we last played Čiurlionis arrangement of his Symphonic Poem, “In the Forest” in Denmark. A: And we did, I think, something similar, then, V: Yes, yes! A: ...because how many... V: 6! A: ...we had like 6 dynamic levels. V: Exactly 6 combinations. A: Yes. V: And we followed those… A: Of course in spite of having only 6 dynamic levels, we worked pretty hard, because we change between these levels a lot. V: Yes. Composers like to write those waves; louder and softer, so we always had to press pistons to adjust. A: So, do you think it would be possible to play Rheinberger’s “Organ Sonata” by using the Crescendo pedal? V: It should be, on a decent organ, yes. But you have to check, always, and if it’s not, if it’s not programmable, you have to then do it with pistons, I think; program by hand. And then you can be sure that these dynamic levels would work for your piece, I think. Agree? A: Yes. V: So, this is our advice to MaryLu and anybody else who’s playing Bach’s music, and Alain’s music, and German romantic music. Right? Maybe you have to adjust things, but these are general suggestions. Alright? Please send us more of your questions; we love helping you grow, and remember: When you practice… A: Miracles happen.
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SOPP484: James Flores about practicing and sharing in the right places to make miracles happen9/1/2019
Vidas: Welcome James, to episode 484 of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast! I'm very excited to be able to talk with you and we talked for another episode in the past about your 12 recitals in 12 months. That was a big adventure you were sharing at that time. And I know many things have changed since that time over the couple of years. So can you tell us a little bit more about what you are doing and what is your current situation?
James: Yes, so after those 12 recitals I was pretty tired so then the following year I didn't sign myself up for that many recitals but I staged the recital series. They picked up with interest and other performers wanted to play as well so that took a lot of pressure of it. I've always been a subscriber to your email list and I like to read about podcasts, I follow you on Facebook, all those social things and for some reason about 6 months ago I stopped seeing your posts on Facebook. And I was concerned where have you gone, what happened? Anyway, during one week I saw an email about Secrets of Organ Playing Contest and thought, "That's interesting..." I followed you for the first several weeks to see what the standard was like and whether it was doable or appropriate for me to enter. I think it was Week 7 when I joined and since then I've been hooked and you led me into this social blockchain called Steem and I can't stop recording myself. And that's where I am today. V. Yeah, I should've introduced you more formally probably. James Flores is our guest today and he is a man of many things now, not only an organist in Albury, New South Wales, Australia. But he is also an IT magician as I can testify myself and also very interested in all kinds of technological developments, new technologies which can revolutionize the world potentially and make many changes for musicians, for example, for organists. So since that last time we've been chatting with James over social media platform called Steem and I have this opportunity to do these Secrets of Organ Playing Contests every week. And James has been a constant, diligent and faithful participant every week, week after week and has been recording even more than it is required. He publishes a lot of his other posts and creative ideas online and also shares his other videos not related to the contest itself. So I've seen his work over this year and a half so much on Steem that he's become like a team member to me, really. We've been chatting every day about all kinds of things, about organ-related things, about Steem-related things so it's wonderful. Thank you so much, James for being a part of this community, I'm really grateful to you! Listen to the entire conversation Here are some places where you can find more about James Flores and his work: https://steempeak.com/@contrabourdon https://www.jamesfloresorganist.com/ https://www.facebook.com/james.l.flores Watch the video:
Vidas: Hi guys, this is Vidas!
Ausra: And Ausra! V: Let’s start episode 475 of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast. And today, we would like to talk about our recent trip to Denmark to Svendborg and Copenhagen. In Svendborg, we played our organ duet recital, in the Svendborg International Organ Festival, so I thought it could be a nice opportunity to talk about it in greater detail. Right, Ausra? A: Yes. V: Here is the video of the recital for our subscribers to watch. So, Ausra, what was your overall experience about this trip? A: About the trip, or about the concert? V: Let’s start about the trip. A: Well, it was a hard trip, because I was sick during the entire trip, so I had a very severe bacterial infection, and it just began during our trip at the beginning of this, so I had a fever while playing this recital, so it was basically a tough trip. V: It was difficult, I think, to travel without antibiotics, and without a prescription, you cannot get it easily. A: You cannot get it at all without a prescription, so… V: Right. Even at home in Lithuania, it’s a tough time, sometimes, to get those. You have to go to the doctor. But if you are traveling abroad and you are a foreigner, you have to know the local rules, and it wasn’t easy to find out. But, luckily, we managed to call a doctor late at night, and had a phone consultation with him, and he prescribed antibiotics for Ausra, which started helping her, I think. Right? A: But that was already after the recital, so it didn’t help me to perform. V: So, talking about performance, what did you think about that organ, first of all? A: I liked it very much, actually. I thought as a Marcussen, it was really nice. V: It was an improved Marcussen from 2016. They did renovation on it and added additional manuals—swell manual plus additional combination action, I think, plus some other things, too, so that the organ wouldn’t sound so screamy. A: Well, the more I travel and the more I try new instruments, actually, the more I probably dislike our organ at St. John’s’s Church, because it’s a clumsy and really difficult instrument to play. Despite all this beautiful church and all this wonderful acoustics, and despite some really nice organ stops, but in general it’s very hard to play it. V: It needs, also, renovation, I think, about mechanics. A: And you know, when you travel, for example, as we went to Alpe d’Huez or here in Svendborg, and you find these spectacular organs, well taken care of, and it’s just wonderful. V: Exactly. What did you think about our program? I know it was a new one for you, and not a very easy one. A: And I think it was new for you, too, or not? V: It depends. Some of the pieces I played as a solo, maybe we should… A: Oh, okay, I see, so I did the hard part, then. Yes? Learning all the new stuff! V: Yes! Maybe we should list the pieces that we played, first. We played…. A: Of course, nobody will no them, because they are all Lithuanian. V: We played an all Lithuanian program, and started with an arrangement of “Symphonic Poem in the Forest,” by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, a Lithuanian composer from the beginning of the century, end of the 19th century. And, I think that was the first time it was performed on the organ. A: Yes, definitely. V: I think my own impression was that I liked it, even when we practiced on our little home organ, and when we started playing it, it was such a wonderful experience in Svendborg. A: Yes, true. V: It sounded like an orchestra, really. Although, registration changes had to be done very cleverly and set up in advance, and it was very long—time consuming. A: Yes, I think this rehearsal a day before a recital was the longest that I have had in my entire life! V: Plus you were with fever. A: Yes. V: And then we played, what… A: “Reverie”, by Juozas Naujalis. V: Romantic composer. It was also a transcription; originally, it was written for string quartet, and it was a nice relief from Čiurlionis’ “Symphonic Poem.” Then, we played two pieces, or two cycles, basically… A: Well, one piece, and one cycle, to be exact. V: Yes, by a contemporary Lithuanian composer, Kristina Vasiliauskaitė. One was her early work for organ—for double organ, basically, “Sounds of the Forest,” which we dubbed more like a train sound, because it reminded us of train tracks. And the other one was a cycle with four Lithuanian folk songs! Which one do you like more? A: “Songs” of course! V: “Songs.” A: “Song Cycle,” yes. V: Her later style is more user friendly, although this modern sounding early piece was an interesting contrast, I think, too. A: Yeah, and then we played the Sonata “Ad Patres” by Bronius Kutavičius. V: Which was originally created for two organists and only later arranged for one organist. A: And Vidas and I both have played this Sonata as soloists. Of course, I don’t think… Have you ever performed it? Ah yes, you performed once at Saint John’s Church, and I played it way back when I was still a student at the Academy of Music. V: I think that my impression was that playing solo was easier. A: I think so, too. It’s a tough piece to play together, because it’s sort of a minimalistic style, and it’s very serious in character. It’s based on a cycle of funeral symphony paintings by Čiurlionis. V: Yes. A: So, it’s not an easy piece to manage, even psychologically. V: Now, we played two of my own pieces. One was the piece that we played once before, Fantasia on the Themes by Čiurlionis created by me, A: At least in this one, we could relax a little bit. Yes? V: Yes, this was… A: ...but of course, if you can call relaxation when the key changes like every eight measures or each four measures… so… but at least we have played it before performing it, probably played it before. V: And then, we finished our program with my arrangement for organ duet of Veni Creator Spiritus. It was originally opus 3, but I added a second organ part, and basically, it became like a new piece. When we practiced it at home, it sounded really convincing as a duet piece. It didn’t sound like a solo piece. A: True. V: I mean, both organists had enough to do on their own. A: More than enough, I think. V: Did it sound okay in Svendborg? A: You know, I can’t say how it sounded in Svendborg. I hardly remember what I was playing and how I was feeling. V: I guess we’ll let our audience decide. And, we finished our program with an encore, because people seemed to like our playing, and... A: Yes, we received standing ovations! V: Yes, and they demanded more, so we gave one more piece for them. It was a choral piece by the composer of Juozas Naujalis’ age, Juozas Gudavičius, a well known Lithuanian anthem called, “Kur giria žaliuoja” or in English it would be, “Where the Forest Is Growing” probably. And it is famous because it is sung in every massive song festival in Lithuania. And it’s so beautiful that it could be our national anthem, basically. A: Yeah, it would be better than what our anthem is now. V: It has two stanzas, or verses. We only played the first one, because it didn’t have text, obviously, but next time, I would prefer two, because it’s so lovely. A: Well, I think it’s always better to do less than too much. V: Yes, I would play less than 10 stanzas. But two, I think, is okay. A: I think moderation in life is one of the most necessary things, but not everybody can understand it, of course. V: No, not everybody. So this was our experience at Svendborg. In general, the weather was sort of good for us. A: Well, in general the weather was very changing rapidly and quite dramatically, because when we arrived, it was almost 30 ºC, and then during the next day, it began to change, and then the third and the fourth day were quite cold, actually, with rain and wind! V: And what did you think about Denmark in general? And Copenhagen? A: Well it’s a very clean and nice country, sort of a little bit boring. I found people quite cold, V: But friendly... A: Well… V: ...and helpful A: ...well, yes… V: ...in most cases. A: ...well, yes. But sort of, you know, nobody is in a hurry… V: Relaxed. A: Yes. And all those bicycles! You need to be really careful to not get killed by one of them. V: And now e-scooters zooming besides them, too! So, it’s tough to cross the street in Denmark. But a nice country to live in, I think. A: Yes. Did you get any adrenaline during the recital or before or after? V: At first, I was a little bit worried that you might not make it to the recital, and I would have to play your part, too, alone! A: How do you manage that! V: I don’t know. The night before, I was sort of, before I went to sleep, I was thinking, “What could I do to play the same exact program, but with my own two hands and feet.” A: I guess that’s impossible in most of the cases. V: Maybe I should have improvised a little bit and played some music here and there. A: Yes, and have four extra legs like an octopus, yes? V: Yes! Good that you managed to play. Saved me lots of nerves. A: Yes, but you know, it damaged my health a lot. V: Exactly. Did you feel adrenaline when you played, Ausra? A: No, not at all! And it was strange, because usually I get some adrenaline, either before or during or after recital. Because I remember when we played in d’Huez, we did all duets, but you did one improvisation, and actually, I got adrenaline during your improvisation, because I was playing the “Brandenburg Concerto” after that, and my hands were shaking. But in Svendborg, no, because I guess because of the fever, all my adrenaline was gone, so… V: I know what was different. In Svendborg, you didn’t have to fight that fly! A: But you know, in d'Huez, I fought that fly after most of the rehearsal already down on the floor, and I could play how I wanted. V: Right, but the feeling of the battle still was there with you. A: Do you think so? It might be. V: So guys, this was our experience. We hope you have enjoyed the recording, and if you haven’t listened to it yet, we will try to share it in this conversation, too. Alright, please send us more of your questions; we love helping you grow. And remember, when you practice, A: Miracles happen.
Vidas: Hi, guys, this is Vidas.
Ausra: And Ausra V: Let’s start episode 482, of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast. This question was sent by Susan. she writes: Hello Dr. V. I have subscribed to the Pedal Virtuoso Master Course. I am 76 years old, started playing organ after retiring from a non-musical career at age 70. I have taken organ lessons for 5 winter seasons in Florida (I am a snow-bird). I have fibromyalgia and found after week 1 of pedal exercises that my legs were very sore and tired; can deal with the soreness, but fatigue make them want to give out. Week 2 I could only practice every other day. Week 3 I did not start, because I had to continue to practice and be able to play for weekly church service, plus this past week was practicing for a funeral service. So now I am a week behind. Do you think I should continue this course? Also, regarding the lessons—are the arpeggios supposed to be all legato? I wear size 10 1/2 shoe but still find it difficult to reach g to c. Thank you for your consideration of my problems. Susan V: Let me first congratulate Susan for choosing to practice this strenuous course, right? A: Yes. It’s really a challenging course. V: Not too many start, and even less people finish what they start. But those who do finish, reap great benefits. So she is basically feeling strenuous in her, stress in her legs and they’re very sore from practicing pedal arpeggios and scales. Is this normal, Ausra, or is she doing something that could be avoided? A: Well since she has a health condition, specific health condition, yes, I think she maybe need[s] to consult a physician before proceeding with this course. I don’t know if it’s okay for her to practice. V: Mmm-hmm. A: Because really those arpeggios to play legato are really hard. Although she has a big foot but, long foot, but it still probably might be not [a] wise thing to do. V: Do you think she needs to play everything legato? A: Well, it’s hard for me to say about an exercise but if for example it would be a piece let’s say written by some great French master… V: Mmm-hmm. A: Dupre or Vierne, then yes, you would have to play it legato, of course. But what I do… V: Mmm-hmm. A: myself in places like this, if I have let’s say to play legato, G to C, with right foot, yes? I quickly, right before finishing that G note, I would place my left foot on that… V: Substitute. A: Substitute, yes. V: Mmm-hmm. A: And that’s how I would do it. V: For some people maybe, it maybe wise to adjust a little bit some pedaling... A: True. V: To their condition. And, but I don’t think she has to put so much stress on playing it so perfectly, you know. These are just exercises, not French masterpieces. And the point of this course is just to improve your pedal technique, right? And probably improve your ankle flexibility as well. So whatever you do, don’t overextend yourself. Don’t feel that you have to play everything one-hundred percent perfect. This is one point. And another point—take frequent breaks and rest. Maybe walk and do some other things which involve a different set of muscles. This is how I practice; if I rest before I’m tired, I’m never tired. I’m never tired. And I can practice for much longer this way, without any danger of damaging my body. A: Well, I used to love to practice for [a] few hours in a row when I was working on my Doctorate, for example, and was preparing for Doctoral recitals. Let’s say I would practice organ for four hours straight without ever going down from the organ bench… V: Mmm-hmm. A: and resting. And it was okay for me. It worked at that time. V: For a while. A: For a while. But now at the age of almost forty-three, I can’t not do it anymore. V: Cannot? A: Yes, I cannot do it anymore. So now I have to practice less and take longer breaks. So, you always need to consider your health condition. Probably not so much your age because sometimes being seventy-six you can be much healthier than being forty-three—just like I am. So, every person is really different. But I would say probably, half an hour shouldn’t be too long practice for probably anybody. Or maybe twenty minutes. V: Twenty minutes, fifteen minutes, if you need to take a break and then come back, yes? Yeah. Taking breaks is not a sin, right? Don’t feel bad if you need to rest. Okay guys, this was Vidas. A: And Ausra. V: Please send us more of your questions. We love helping you grow. And remember, when you practice… A: Miracles happen! SOPP483: Starting out “with a bang” on the 10 Day Pedal Challenge and Pedal Virtuoso course8/27/2019
Vidas: Hi guys! This is Vidas.
Ausra: And Ausra. V: Let’s start episode 483 of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast. This question was sent by Tamara. And she writes: Starting out “with a bang” on the 10 Day Pedal Challenge and Pedal Virtuoso course. It’s already Day 4 for me! My biggest issue will be making time every day to practice, say, for ½ hr or so, instead of trying to cram everything in on 1 or 2 days per week. So far I’m on a regular schedule. Could use support from the gang here in staying on track! Thanks to Vidas, Ausra, and all organists here! V: Tamara is our Total Organist student, and she has written this response, What is she working on currently, to our Total Organist community on Basecamp. And obviously, people have responded nicely with their suggestions and support. Let me see if I can find those things. What is your impression, Ausra, before I forget? A: Well, I think that Tamara is right, on the right track. V: Mm hm. A: I think it’s more efficient to practice every day a little bit, instead of practicing only let’s say 2 or 3 times a week for longer periods of time. What do you think about it? V: Ideally, you should practice more than two times per week. Three times per week minimum, right? Because if you practice two times a week, sort of twice, then you’re just staying in the same level. And then anything more than that adds a little bit of progress to your performance practice. But I think people sometimes manage to practice every day, and people who have more time, practice more hours. People who have less, practice for 15 or 20 minutes or 30 minutes. That will be wonderful, I think. Because then you can progress faster, right? A: Sure, of course. Because if you will do long intervals between your practices, then every time you will feel like you’re starting over, almost from scratch, from the beginning, so to say. V: Mm hm. And I found other peoples’ response to Tamara’s answer. And Jeremy writes, “I’m right there with you. We started school again this week. I teach at a university, and suddenly there is little time for practicing.” And Diane jumped in, “Striving for the same, doing my best despite life getting in the way, and a temperamental organ maintenance guy who can’t get here till September. But I will attempt to carry on.” So you see, everybody is on the same boat here, struggling to find time for practice. But whatever they do, I think, is working, right - everybody needs to find their own solution to challenges. A: Sure. V: But we are here as a community to support each other. A: And that’s very nice, you know, that we can talk to each other and share our problems and solutions, too. V: Yeah. Every day, people post to our Basecamp channel their feedback, and people respond. And we have those automatic questions to help them answer them on time, what are they working on, what are some things that they have been struggling with, right? Those things help them think about their organ playing and practice more deeply in detail. Not just go through the motions, but really think what is working, maybe what is not, what needs to change. I think this really facilitates their progress so much. And sometimes, we have questions, like once a month, asking, “How do you like Total Organist so far?” And this feedback gives us really great insights, what are people getting out of our programs. A: True. And sometimes, when you struggle with your problem and you think that, you know, it’s impossible to solve it, or you feel yourself that you are somewhat maybe less talented than others are, that’s not true. Because if you would share your problem, you would find many, many others who share the same problem. And maybe already have found a solution to it. So. V: You just need to join others in their quest. Don’t stick to yourself. Don’t be isolized - is it the right word? A: Isolated. V: Isolated, yes. Because to practice alone, it only leads to some progress, and eventually, it’s really hard to continue if you don’t have any support. So obviously, people who are listening to our conversations, or reading them as a transcript, they are getting support in this way as well. They feel that the community is present around this blog and podcast. But what we have around Total Organist is even more focused group, because there are only about 70 or plus people doing this, or maybe more, maybe with people who transcribe our podcast conversations and fingering and pedaling scores are also in this community as well, so maybe around 100 people we have as a team. And this feedback really help people feel they’re not alone. A: Which is very important, I think. V: All right, guys. This was Vidas, A: And Ausra. V: Please send us more of your questions. We love helping you grow. And remember, when you practice… A: Miracles happen.
Vidas: Hi guys! This is Vidas.
Ausra: And Ausra. V: Let’s start episode 480 of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast. This question was sent by Ruth. And she writes: Today I will be going over hymns not familiar to my congregation. The reason is that I would like to select several for them to learn, but only one at a time. V: I thought of including this question in the podcast because I think it relates to the challenge of selecting repertoire and hymns that are not familiar to the congregation, and lots of people are in this situation. Not only Ruth, I think. A: Yes, especially if you don’t have a choir that leads congregational singing. Then it might be hard to introduce new hymns into a service. V: It’s maybe a different situation for Ruth, because she is an ordained minister, and she selects hymns. And for example, a lot of organists just follow their ministers’ lead, and they work with what they have. But sometimes, organists select hymns, too. A: True. V: If you are a music director. A: Yes, appropriate for an occasion. V: Or you work maybe with a minister together, right? And sometimes, a minister might choose readings from the scripture that talk about certain things, and a sermon appropriate too, and the music director would choose some hymns appropriate to these texts. But then the question is either to sing a familiar hymn about these topics or unfamiliar one? A: Well, I guess it’s probably a wise idea that during one service you will have only one unfamiliar hymn. Because if you would put all the unfamiliar hymns, I don’t think it would work. And another idea that popped into my mind when I was reading Ruth’s question was that it might be a good idea to do rehearsals with the congregation. Like really short, brief rehearsals. Probably before the service. V: Yeah, music director or organist could come forth in front of the congregation and sing one or two hymns. A: Yes, and maybe do one line solo, one verse, and then to sing with everybody. That’s a good practice. We did it actually, many years back, you remember? V: In Vilnius? A: Yes. V: Have we done this in Lincoln? A: I don’t think so. Everybody just sang so well, so we didn’t have to do it in Lincoln. V: Yeah. If you start to teach something before the service starts, people are really attentive in that moment, and they appreciate the care that you're providing, right, they know that organist is doing more than it’s required. It’s not required from you, it’s not in your job description to lead those rehearsals. But obviously, it’s a nice gesture, I think, and people would appreciate it. A: True. V. Maybe not for everybody, and not maybe right away, but if you do this week by week, you will get this tradition of better singing. A: That’s right. V: Which means a lot. All right, guys. We hope this was useful to you. Do you think Ausra, this was useful for people who work in churches. A: Yes, I think so. Rehearsals with the congregation, I think it’s a good idea. V: And choosing hymns that are not familiar for congregation, but not all of them right away, but just one or two at a time. A: True. V: And please send us more of your questions. We love helping you grow. And remember, when you practice… A: Miracles happen.
Vidas: Hi, guys, this is Vidas.
Ausra: And Ausra V: Let’s start episode 479, of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast. This question was sent by Ruth. And maybe this is not a question per se, but an observation. I asked Ruth, who is our TotalOrganist student, to write what she has been working on and she wrote: Our church organist has been in the hospital with a very serious illness. I am an ordained minister, with some experience in music. In this geographical area, it is difficult to find substitutes for organists. So, for several Sundays now, I have played the piano for the hymn singing and have also led the worship service. For special music, I played the flute, on which I have done a lot of solo work. So far, it is working out fine, but I do not know when the organist will be able to return. For now, I practice music and also prepare the worship service. Preaching is a major part of the service. For me, it takes a huge part of the week to prepare the sermon, with an effort to study the Biblical texts in great detail, since those texts form the foundation for the sermon. So, my days consist of practicing music and studying for the sermon and service preparation. I ultimately have to write the service for the bulletin. Fortunately, this church has someone to type and copy the bulletin. V: What are your thoughts, Ausra, after hearing this? A: Well, I think she is doing a tremendous job. Ruth is being like a woman orchestra, basically, conducting all this entire service. People need just to appreciate her so much for what she is doing, basically, leading whole service by herself… V: Mmm-hmm. A: as a minister and as a musician. I have never heard about anything like that before. I think it’s quite amazing. V: Yes! Amazing in both respects, that a musician can write sermons and deliver them also. And also that a minister can perform music. This is quite extraordinary. But I suspect that we have some of our listeners who are in similar positions too. Maybe not doing this consistently, but have this skills, I think too. So I thought of including her feedback here on the podcast. And I asked her, actually, I’d like to find in our communication on Basecamp—I asked her how long is her sermon and she wrote that it’s about fifteen or ten minutes. So she has to write it every week, I think. A: Yes. For each Sunday. V: Mmm-hmm. Yes. She writes ‘they are usually about fifteen minutes. They have gotten a few minutes shorter since I started there. I noticed that the congregation listens better if the sermons are not too long’. A: That’s I think a good way to understand that, because I have listened to a sermon that would last for almost forty minutes. V: Mmm-hmm. A: And there the priest would start to talk about one thing and then would go and talk basically nonsense—it’s not related with the scripture at all. V: Mmm-hmm. A: So I guess it’s probably, it’s ten to fifteen minutes is the optimum time that you can still grab the congregations attention. V: It’s like a musical piece, also. A: True. V: If it’s a long piece, and it’s difficult to listen to it. If it’s a number of shorter pieces, it’s easier. A: Yes. But envy sometimes people being protestants because usually in those reformed churches, sermons are much better than in Catholic churches. V: Mmm-hmm. A: That’s my opinion from what I have heard. V: And if she’s doing this week after week, year after year, she must have created a large body of work, of her sermons. So I asked her ‘what is she doing with the text after the service? Are they sitting in the drawer or is she publishing them?’ A: She could publish them, definitely! (?) V: She could publish them as a book, self-publish, or with publishing house or she could put them online and let her ideas spread. That would be I think the easiest thing to do. A: And another thing that amazes me, how is she able to manage all the thing because I remember, used to, when I did my lecture recital for my Doctoral program, I played two chorale fantasies by Johann Adam Reincken and also talked about them. I was doing a comparative analysis of them, and I talked before one, then I went upstairs to the organ balcony and played it, and then I came downstairs again and talked about another one and then went and played the second one, which is probably the largest, the longest... V: Mmm-hmm. A: German organ fantasy. Well, and you know the hardest thing for me was to focus because of how after reading all the text, it was hard to focus and perform. So I really respect Ruth for doing it, when she has to leave the service and play it. V: Would it be difficult for you today, to do this, after all those years? A: Well, you know, it would still need to take an extra concentration. V: It’s a different skill than… A: Yes. V: than just talking or just performing. You have to combine story–telling and performing which for some people is a challenge and this challenge of course might be overcome by developing this skill of story–telling. I just wanted to end this conversation with an advice for Ruth. If she hasn’t published her sermons, to check out Steem platform where we are publishing our work. They have [a] wonderful community and various interests in that community. You can find people who are interested in religion for example, and Christianity, and those communities or are as they call it, tribes, can be concentrated and people in that tribe can really support each other. And this is really great work to start your blog today. If I was doing the work from scratch I would start with Steem I think. Alright guys. Please send us more of your questions. We love helping you grow. And remember, when you practice… A: Miracles happen!
Vidas: Hi, guys, this is Vidas.
Ausra: And Ausra V: Let’s start episode 476, of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast. This question was sent by James. And he writes: Dear Vidas, Forgive me emailing you again so soon, but I have recently been to two recitals by world—famous organists that were very disappointing. Reason? Playing in churches with very resonant acoustics which turned the music into a mere muddle of sound. I played one of those organs today (see attached) similar acoustics and layout to St John's Vilnius (a loud final chord took 6 seconds to be inaudible), with an attached console in the west gallery. Playing for my own enjoyment, I played at my normal speed and it sounded fine—the resonance wasn't so apparent in the gallery. But I know in the body of the church it would have sounded a mess. Are there any simple rules for judging speed, legato etc in these circumstances? Maybe this will be of interest to others. Best wishes, James PS am still working on "Memento" - a challenge, but the miracle WILL happen! V: By the way, created a piece for the organ based on Gregorian Chant called ‘Memento Nostri Domine’. And dedicated to James—James Spanner. A: Yeah, he’s working now on it. V: Yes. He’s trying to master it. A: Very nice. V: So, his question is about playing in reverberant acoustics. Hard to deal with it. A: Yeah. That’s a tricky question. And probably there is no one right answer. Because even when you have such acoustics in one church, and they do something about it, it might not work as well in another church. Because as James also noticed, that in different spots of the church, it may sound very different. V: My rule of thumb is to play in such a way that I would always listen to the echo in the church—not how it sounds next to the organist but deep inside of the building, as if I would be a listener. And then naturally I would slow down probably, articulate more, when I have to breathe, or when playing earlier music with more detached articulation. But this detachment also has some limits. You cannot play too staccato, still, it would be comical or humoristic. So I don’t suppose it’s a good idea to shorten the notes by more than a half of it’s value. But in general, yes. Imagine yourself as a listener and think about how they feel and listen and hear. A: And I think it all comes with an experience, because I may have told already this story. But there is a town in Northern Part of Lithuania called Biržai and it has quite a large three manual instrument and it pneumatical—pneumatical action. And I remember myself playing there many years back when I was a student at the Academy of Music, Lithuanian Academia of Music. And it was really hard for me to manage that acoustics and to play that organ because it seems like the sound came late, and instead of just relaxing and letting it go, I started to force that instrument. And the more I forced it the worse it got. And at that time I had no idea what I have to do. Of course we played the fairly difficult repertoire. Think we did some like Reger’s works and… V: Franck’s. A: Franck’s works, and it was not a piece of cake because we didn’t have enough time to rehearse before and our teacher was sort of registering whose pieces during our recital. V: Impromptu. A: Impromptu, yes. It was funny. But I had a really, really not a good feeling after it. And then we came back to that same organ many years later and I had no problems at all playing it. Because in those many years I had much of experience in various countries and various instruments with various programs and various situations. V: Mmm-hmm. A: And I don’t know what I did so much different but I guess I just had a better agreement with an instrument. That whatever you do, you don’t have to force it. Because if you will force it, it will become only worse. So I guess getting too much involved when you’re playing in the music, it’s sometimes not good when you are playing organ. Sometimes I envy piano performance that can to go into the music very deeply emotionally, get so much involved. You don’t do that with organ because if you will do that you will not be able to control everything. Here you need to play but at the same time to listen [to] yourself from the side, like a different person, like part of yourself is sitting at the organ bench and performing and another part of yourself is being downstairs and listening to what is happening. V: Mmm-hmm. So true. I would just add that in such cases it’s best to let go, to let go control, because sometimes we want to be in charge of the instrument, of the music, of registration, and sometimes it’s good to immerse yourself in the flow and just keep going while enjoying it, not forcing it as Ausra says. A: Well, and remember when last year we went to St. Paul's Cathedral to London to perform—I was really worrying about that acoustic because I knew that it’s twelve seconds long. We have never played an instrument with such a large acoustic. But strangely enough, that when I got to that organ bench, I could not feel that acoustics at all. It didn’t seem so long. V: Part of that problem is selecting the repertoire thoughtfully. If we had played some really advanced polyphonic works, then it might have been a problem but we stayed out of that period, not by accident, but on purpose, because this was the music that was not created for such environment. And therefore we played more the romantic sounding music than classical music. And even if Baroque music from the Baroque period, we played arrangements from concertos. Which are polyphonic enough but more are moving in layers, not in separate voices, but more like in layers in three instruments at once. Like three oboes, right? A: So if you have to play in a large acoustic don’t choose the Preludes and Fugue by J.S. Bach. Choose his trio sonata and you will be just fine. V: Why? A: Because in trio sonata you just three voices. V: Oh, I didn’t mean trio sonatas. A: (Laughs). Okay, okay. I’m just teasing you. V: Ah, you are so, so, what’s the word? Sneaky! A: I am. But of course if you will choose to play a fugue, let’s say Baroque fugue in a large acoustics and you will play it all legato, then of course you will get just a big mess. Especially if you will play it in a very fast tempo. Although if you won’t articulate you will get mess in anyway. V: Right. Articulation does make a difference. A: Sure. V: At St. Paul's Cathedral I played some improvisation as well during the rehearsal. And when you improvise, you try to adjust to the environment and instrument and seek out other colors of the organ and show them in a really appropriate way. Therefore, what did you think? Did I play that improvisation in a forced way? Something unnatural or was it convincing enough? A: No, I think it was convincing enough. You are very good at improvising, as we well know. V: Please praise me more. A: Well, we shall see how your improvisation recital in the cathedral on Thursday will be. V: You mean tomorrow? A: Yes. I mean tomorrow. V: Yes, I will be playing twenty-five minute long improvisation recital. It’s a short recital—lunchtime recital, but based on the biblical story about Jesus transfiguration. Okay. So, bottom line, guys is to experience as many instruments as you possibly can. As many different acoustical environments as you can. And then adjusting to the big acoustics will be a challenge, but not a big one. A: And as James wrote that he listened to famous organists, yes, renowned organists. I can also tell from my experience from listening to other performers—not always a big name, brings a great performance. Because you have various situations like the person might be just sick, or not feel well, or don’t have that style approach of historical performance, and all those details that might not work. V: Well, exactly. Maybe that organist is famous for some other area of repertoire. A: Yes. V: And when put into another acoustical environment it could sound really weak. A: Well and I have heard some of the performance that I know a renowned organist and sometimes they played really as a gods and sometimes they played really, really bad. So… V: Maybe they’re not gods after all. A: Well… V: Semi-gods. A: Yes, I guess so. V: Okay guys. Please send us more of your questions. We love helping you grow. And remember, when you practice… A: Miracles happen!
Vidas: Hi guys! This is Vidas.
Ausra: And Ausra. V: Let’s start episode 477 of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast. This question was sent by Suzy. And she writes: Dear Vidas, One of my dreams for organ playing is reaching higher and lower for pedals with confidence that I hit the right pedal. What is holding me back is: 1. Performance Anxiety which fluctuates. I have rituals for getting into a good mindset. I have a breath deeply, and center the mind so it is not fighting itself eg right and left centring. I imagine a dial in the middle of my forward that I have to press the word ‘Center’ switch. I must not be too analytical but go with the flow, and have muscle memory. 2. Sometimes the way I practice. I need to not just play through; I need to focus exclusively on the bars that need attention. Timing this even for ten minutes a time rather than playing through without corrective practice. I have to consciously prevent myself just playing through which is not practice. 3. Having confidence in my ability. Also setting targets. Realistic ones. Don’t keep starting new pieces without finishing perfecting them. Eg learn two new pieces per month. So I need to set targets. Also playing hymns at the right tempo. Thanks, Suzy V: So Suzy needs to perfect her pedal playing probably, in higher and lower levels, as she writes, but has performance anxiety and sometimes practices inefficiently, and probably lacks confidence in her skills. A: Well, I guess these problems are concerning many organists. I think it is quite common concerns, and quite common problems. Well, when you’re not managing pedal right, I think you just have to spend more time playing it, while it becomes as natural that you will stop thinking about it. V: When you played the organ for the first time, did pedal board seem natural to you? A: No, it seemed very unnatural at the beginning. But now I don’t think when I play about it. It’s like my third hand. V: That’s interesting observation. In many cases, organ compositions are created in a way that pedal line serves like a third hand, yes. That’s why we have three staves most of the time. A: Sure. Now what about rituals? Do you suggest for people to have rituals before performance, or not? V: Um, rituals to me, associate with people who want control, right? I have to clarify this. If you follow some rituals, you feel calmer, and your mind works clearer, and you feel more present and better prepared to cope with the problems that are arising in the moment. But what if you miss your ritual for some reason, or are unable to do it before performance? What if you just have to just jump in and play, if somebody asks you, right? A: Yes, that’s what I thought about it, too. But it’s sort of, maybe on one side it’s good to have some rituals, but on the other hand, you never know if you will be able to keep to them, and if you won’t, it might just scare you away so much that you won’t be able to play at all. V: Mm hm. A: You might panic. V: I met an organist once who swore she would never play in public again after a public performance. A: And I know people have all these, strange things. I heard that one, I think, Latvian organist, never eats like green cucumbers, fresh cucumbers before, on the day of recital, because his stomach does not digest it well, and all these funny things. V: What about Estonians? A: I don’t know about Estonians. V: If Latvians don’t eat cucumbers, maybe Estonians… don’t eat tomatoes. A: Well.... V: And Lithuanians don’t eat potatoes. A: Ha ha. If Lithuanians won’t eat potatoes on the day of recital, they might die. V: (Laughs) A: It’s our second bread. Well, I’m just joking. But in any way, I had some rituals myself, when I was still in high school. I wouldn’t eat the day before my performance, and do other crazy things. But then I would get really sick after performing because I would have, like, migraine, and all that other stuff. And when we went to study to the United States, I saw that I cannot have any rituals whatsoever. Because if you will have to let’s say to perform after, you know, at 8 pm, and you have classes going all day long and other things you have to do at the university, like teaching assistantship, and all that other stuff, so, what, when, just keep hungry all day long, and then you just faint near the organ bench at 8 pm? And sort of, this busy schedule changed all my habits and I stopped having rituals. I guess the most important thing is that, a minute before you, when you sit on the organ bench, how well you might concentrate and focus during that one minute. V: Ausra, don’t you think it’s sort of similar to the way people practice martial arts, and they do all kinds of rituals in the dojo as they call it, in the classroom setting. They bow, they breathe, they wear certain clothes, and belts of various colors. But what happens when you go outside of the dojo, and somebody attacks you in the dark alley, right? You cannot say to the attacker, “Oh, wait a second - I will do my 2 minute breathing meditation now, then I will change the uniform, and then maybe do a warm-up.” And so, you will get beaten in the moment. Or maybe you will surprise your attacker this way and he will say, “Oh, it’s not worth dealing with this crazy person,” and maybe he will walk away. It’s a good tactic maybe. To start singing, for example, when you are being attacked. Nobody expects you to sing, right? And this might end the fight, actually. A: I think all these talks are just speculation. Because you never know how you will react in real life. It’s easy for you to talk about it while you’re sitting in your chair at home, comfortably, and nobody threatens you. V: I’m not about that. I’m talking about if somebody behaved unexpectedly, had the guts to do this in a real situation. So, the same is with organ performance, I think. When the time comes for you to play, it’s a real challenge. It throws you off balance sometimes, and you have to react without preparation right away. A: Sure. Because you never know what will happen during your performance. And how well you feel on that day, and all other things. That’s what is the difference between amateur and professional. A professional has to play in any circumstances, in any situation. V: Mm hm. A: So. V: All right, guys. We hope this was useful to you. Keep exploring your boundaries, what you can do during public performance, and see how your body and mind reacts. You might be surprised. And send us more of your questions. We love helping you grow. And remember, when you practice… A: Miracles happen. SOPP473: I am trying not to worry about struggling, I just want to make music as good as I can8/4/2019
Vidas: Hi, guys, this is Vidas.
Ausra: And Ausra V: Let’s start episode 473, of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast. This question was sent by Ariane, who’s our Total Organist student. And I asked her on Basecamp, what is she struggling with, in organ playing. And she writes: I am trying not to worry about struggling, I just want to make music as good as I can. V: Ausra, is that a good approach A: I think it’s a wonderful approach. I think that’s what approach should be because sometimes you worry to much about the details, and we are not thinking about final goal. V: Right. To me, I think it’s already second nature—practicing and performing and preparing for a goal, certain deadline, like public appearances—that if I encounter a place in my musical piece that gives me frustration, then I just work on it more and more and more in wise manner, as I understand it. And that episode becomes easier with time, and I conquer it. Is that how you do it, Ausra? A: Yes. I think that’s one of the most natural way[s] to do it. V: Do you think about struggle when you practicing also, or you also enjoy music and try to play as good as you can? A: Well, yes and no. Well, I always know what is the hardest thing in [a] particular piece and I work on those things, because just thinking about struggle won’t help you. You need to take some sort of complete action. V: Mmm-hmm. A: And then you finally have to struggle. V: Right. What about pieces that we are playing today, organ duets for Denmark? A: Well, I think we are quite ready right now. V: Mmm-hmm. A: Beginning wasn’t so easy. V: By the time you guys hear this podcast conversation we might have already played this recital in Svendborg International Organ Festival in Southern Denmark. But I’m sure we will be talking about this recital in great details soon, afterwards. But this morning before we started recording this conversation, we had breakfast and before that, we practiced for a good hour, an hour and fifteen minutes, I would say—our duet program, right? And the day before we visited our friend Paulius, who works as an organist at St. Joseph Parish here in Vilnius, and we played for him several pieces. Did you feel Ausra, some frustration yesterday? A: Well yes because we played it on the electronic keyboards. V: Is that all? A: Well, that was the most frustration for me. V: For me was stop changes. Because different organ we didn’t have time to setup pistons. We just improvised the stop changes by hand. And sometimes those changes got quite unexpected turns. A: But I thought that we are in quite a good shape. V: I would say a few pieces need some slow work on our program, so that’s why we decided not to rush things, not to play in concert tempo, up until Denmark, I would say. A: True. But I remember when we just started work on this program. I didn’t think we will come to that point that we can make throughout entire program without stopping. V: You didn’t believe yourself. A: I didn’t believe myself because my muscles would start hurting even after practicing one piece. V: Right. And… A: Because we had such an enormous hot weather in June when we started to learn these new pieces. It was almost impossible to practice because of the heat and humidity. V: Mmm-hmm. I think we started in May. A: Late May, actually. V: Late May. A: Late May, which was also very hot. V: Right. So when you first started learning those difficult pieces, naturally some of the episodes appear very frustrating to you, even if you have lots of experience on the organ, right? But you don’t give up, Ausra. You find a way to succeed, right? Either work slower or repeated places with repetitions. A: I would say the main thing is to find time to practice. And if you will find time then everything will be just fine. V: Not necessarily because if you—imagine we had time, right? We would practice like we do. But we always would take concert tempo. Would that be beneficial? A: No, that wouldn’t be beneficial. And you know that very well, because we have talked about it so many times that you need to practice in a slower tempo. V: Mmm-hmm. And sometimes we do fast tempo because we need to know if we’re ready for concert. A: But some of these pieces were so hard that they were impossible to play in a concert tempo right away, even one single voice. V: Right. What’s the most difficult piece for your part Ausra, in our program? A: I don’t know. Now it doesn’t seem like there is any hard pieces left. But I think at the beginning it was your Veni Creator. V: Oh! Opus 3a. Back in 2011, I created Veni Creator for two manuals, the pedals, organ solo piece. And I performed it quite a bit and few people also performed it. Not only in Lithuania but as we were looking for the Lithuanian organ repertoire for this Svendborg Organ Festival in Denmark, because they wanted Lithuanian music more, I thought of making a duet, organ duet arrangement of this Veni Creator. And I called it Opus 3a. I made lots of canons there. What you think about that disposition? A: Well, it’s sort of turned out like a very nice piece, but it’s difficult at the beginning. Because the keys change so rapidly and there are some technical issues with left hand. For example, when you have to play parallel sixths in a fast tempo. Plus, you really need to have a good coordination and good action. I don’t think it would be so hard to play this piece solo, because when you are playing it solo, you don’t have all those endless canons. V: Right. And to me it was easier even playing with you because I knew the music. A: Well, I knew this music too by you playing it so many times but it didn’t make my life easier because I couldn’t play in a fast tempo as I used to hearing you playing. V: Hmm. That’s right. A: So, it took time to learn it. But now I think it’s going fairly well. V: To me, difficult piece is Sonata by Bronius Kutavicius which is called Ad Patres. It is based on the cycle of seven paintings by Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, Lithuanian painter and composer from the beginning of the Twentieth Century. And um… A: It’s like a funeral symphony. V: Yeah, like a funeral procession. A: Seven paintings based on funeral procession. V: Yes. A: Amazing paintings true, they are. V: Bronius Kutavicius has the style of Lithuanian minimalist school, and he uses lots of modes and lots of repetition. So there are a couple of episodes in this piece that are difficult for both right hand and left hand to coordinate. But when you play for organ duet—because this piece was originally written for organ duet, and only later transcribed as a solo piece—then it’s kind of easier right? Because you divide the parts between the two players. But in your, one episode, you have to add one extra layer, right? So to me this fast episode still was difficult at the beginning, in May. But now I think as we’re working slower and slower, I think I’m much more secure now. A: Yes, and also the piece called ‘The Sounds of Forest’… V: Oh, uh… A: By Kristina Vasiliauskaite, is difficult because it is handwritten. So we played from the autograph score. And it’s so widely spread that you have to do all this page turns and it’s quite frustrating. Plus, sometimes it’s hard to find your line, your three lines, and it’s sort of confusing. V: Mmm. A: I even marked my score, my three lines, in a red pen. V: Why did you choose red? A: Because that’s what I had to. V: Uh, I see. I thought red was your favorite color. A: No! It’s definitely not. V: Alright guys, you see what kind of struggles and frustrations we have. And I hope you have less frustrations than we, or different kind of frustrations, maybe. A: And you can share your frustrations with us. V: In your questions. A: Yes, and we try to help you out. V: Alright. This was Vidas. A: And Ausra. V: We are going to now record another podcast episode, but we hope you will start practicing today. Because, when you practice… A: Miracles happen! |
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Drs. Vidas Pinkevicius and Ausra Motuzaite-Pinkeviciene Organists of Vilnius University , creators of Secrets of Organ Playing. Our Hauptwerk Setup:
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