uploaded page d'album (page of an album)?? ... finally something that's debussy and short enough to be hosted. bleargh. my favourite prelude (bruyeres from book II) is too big! some of the shorter other pieces are not dreamy enough... and i didn't really want to upload le petit negre. still wondering why he wrote that to make fun of blacks... so racist. but i guess many whites living during his time would have felt at least a little resentment against the blacks and vice versa.

piano lesson went okay today... beethoven was, according to ms ching, better than last week. but she said i need to "hear" orchestra instrus when i'm playing, not piano. cos sonatas are symphonic. and i'm supposed to be the conductor, who's supposed to be in control... which i'm totally not. and then still need to breathe more... hahaha i guess i always eat up an eighth of quite a number of rests when i'm too kan cheong to enter with the next material. hungry glutton! =P didn't know why i actually dared to play mozart even when i didn't even practise it for the past two weeks... i guess it sort of showed when i screwed up at the usual running passages. i keep changing fingering and now my fingers are too confused to run properly! hahaha... the speed also gave me such an adrenaline rush. think she got quite fed up and we skipped to the second movement. she said it's better but still need to sing more. bleah. that's bad... i can't sing! (both literally and in terms of playing piano) but i think it's better than if i had played ravel. really cannot make it! going to do slow practise for ravel during weekend... can't wait for friday to be over!

ms ching was asking about toh chee hung masterclass at the beginning of the lesson. she asked whether proko's variation serieuses were good and what was commented or corrected. of cos she asked about kk's mozart too, in fact, that's the first thing she asked. hmmm... she wasn't surprised to hear that toh chee hung commented on kk's rushing and i think she was happy that kk can change colour effectively. i'm jealous! i also wanna change colour as effortlessly as her! then she asked about the tk girls and i really didn't know what to say... ended up saying that they had not enough strength. (sounds like me...) and mentioned that pohning said i used to sound like the girl who played britten. just dunno if i still do. didn't mention the beethoven girl's poor sense of rhythm (or laziness to count...), forgot the key of the sonata she played too... ("how can u forget! it's was just two days ago!") ... hahahaha... that's how blur i can get.

4 more days to practise! =)

fridays are moody days. on the one hand you're looking forward to two days off school, on the other you're dreading the long day with an absolute killer timetable plus the pile of work waiting for you during the weekend. sigh.

was even more moody today cos during civics mr ong was seeing everybody individually about the chem results... it's rather depressing. he just doesn't understand that it's not because i didn't spend time on chemistry. in fact, i spent so much time on chem that i think tt's one major factor causing my maths results to drop so drastically. but it also doesn't make sense that my chem results could also drop so much when i really studied harder for it than last time. i still can't figure out what happened... everything doesn't make sense. mr ong said it may be the things we learnt between mct and jct that pulled me down, cos the decrease in marks only came after jct. but how could that be possible when we only did aromatic chem, thermochem and electrochem during that period? he's the one who said my organic chem is pulling me up, plus my thermochem is okay (maybe not, just recalled how i carelessly drew an energy cycle when they wanted an energy level diagram) and i think electrochem wasn't that bad too. maybe i'm wrong... i should really review my paper again.

and then mr ong always asks the same question... are you spending too much time on music? oh please. if i were i wouldn't be getting such marks for it. 2 out of 15 for malay music... pathetic. can't believe myself! the first things that came into my mind were "bamboo gamelan" and "tingklik" (coincidence that the only things i remember from bamboo gamelan were those two words)... why did i change my answer and write bronze gamelan instead? argh. what crap. mr ong just refuses to believe that we always only mug mep last minute when all the other subjects' papers are over. seriously, if i were to mug mep before any of the other subjects he doesn't even need to see me anymore... i would have been kicked out or worse, retained. (yes, getting retained is worse! think of doing spa, and classical string quartets! eurgh. thank you very much, but i'd rather study somewhere else.) even when it comes to practising time, that's really been cut down alot. what used to be like a daily routine of an hour or more of practise is reduced to like... trying to utilise free periods and the time waiting for dinner to practise. definitely not enough!

and somehow mr ong likes to make people flustered during chem prac. he just keeps coming around to the bench to remind you how little time you have left. today he kept hurrying me and i think the pressure makes me even worse than i already am. for one, i wanted to bring the red book to study during lunch... but i forgot. so there's no red book to study. crap. then he keeps emphasising that time is running short and i totally panic. my brain just can't recall what's supposed to be going on in the reaction. i'd really be surprised if i can pass this prac man. luckily it's not spa. thank god i was born earlier than 1987!

haven't been this happy for days... finally! success is sweet. piano lesson was a success today! can't believe it. didn't get scolded, except for the beginning technical exercises... what a great change man! hahaha... just can't help feeling cheerful! at the beginning of the lesson i told her about the masterclass, she seemed quite happy... "good, u can learn something even if u get scolded... ..." then answering the question of what i should play... "i was thinking of sculthorpe because it has more conviction than your beethoven but it'll be good if u play beethoven and improve on it" er, something like that... can't remember the exact words. i agreed that beethoven is a better choice than sculthorpe. i seriously think that no matter how bad my beethoven is, sculthorpe is really cannot-make-it standard!

the bad thing is... of cos, got to play beethoven for her. totally freaky! i haven't been practising that... was concentrating on the 4th mvt of op.2 no.1 in case i get scolded again. too bad... luckily i at least tonked a bit on the boston in school. the first two chords were eauuurgh... clink clonk everywhere and lots of wrong notes. hahaha atonal chords in beethoven! "can we be clean?" ok, start again. no wrong notes... but, rhythm not clean. start again. yay! my third attempt worked! no more stopping! dunno what happened but she finally seems pleased with my playing. then we went on to mozart. was so nervous, didn't touch mozart for like a month. as in, seriously practise... not tonking for fun. but once it started it was better... plus the euphoria from not being scolded for beethoven still lingered. yay! no stupid mistakes and stumbles like last time! at the end of the lesson she said now my playing sounds more generous, open and broader. i still dunno why it did... can't figure out why and how i produced such results either. just really want to retain this sound or try to get a better sound... that's the only pressurising part of today's lesson. to continue producing a good sound and not "slip back to the old way of playing"... according to her. sigh. masterclass in three weeks, must work hard! they're not here to care about wrong notes... they need to hear the expression, conviction etc... bleah... all the things i've been missing until today. and now i've got to keep them here!

yay! liszt piano concerto no.2 rocks! but i only managed to cut it off at 1:34 cos it's already 2+ MB. nowhere else to cut to fit into 3MB limit unless i cut it in the middle of some phrase. which is "bleargh"...

the two pianofest concerts i went to were superb! gyorgy sandor was good... considering his age and his injured left hand. imagine being 92 and still performing with a bandaged hand! i dun think i can even manage to play slow passages, much less play running passages like him. okay la, some were too muddy and stuff but it's quite impressive he actually managed to run with a bandaged hand. he left quite an impression when he walked slowly on stage taking all the time in the world, oblivious to the audience. it's like he's sitting down at the piano to play for his own enjoyment. and his patience with the interview... people asking stupid questions and he gives such long answers that he doesn't sound irritated. and a bunch of kids ran up to him at the autograph session and asked him how to pronounce his name. "geeeorge... my name is geeeorge." hahaha so cute! i just started smiling! it just happens when i see curious little kids questioning patient old people. so sweet. the only bad thing was that he spoke so softly during the interview i think only one-third of the people in the concert hall could catch what he was saying.

paul badura-skoda was even better. he's very engaging and i think i see what my teacher calls class... the way he walks in and sits down and play. i guess he's younger than sandor so he's more energetic? really engaging... even with all the bad commments about how mozart's fantasy is a boring work, i still found it a little interesting. no need to mention that he played better than sandor... considering he's younger and not injured, it's already expected that he should fare better. but of cos all pianists make mistakes, even the professionals. what was really professional is that he can mangage to continue normally after his mistakes, play as if nothing happened and continue to engage the listener. if i made a mistake... everything will go downhill (though not much cos the hill won't be very high... maybe i should say "go down-slope"?) i will be distracted by the mistake, i will get nervous (what if the next one goes wrong too?!), and i'd be too cautious to sound nice.

anyway, thanx to the mepers for the cake and the pianist! =)

yes! exams are over! though there's still a harmony paper to go... oh crap! i left my harmony with the whole stack of mep notes in ms!!!! bleargh... why am i so blur nowadays? luckily i should be able to ask kk or gerald to help me zap and pass to me during pianofest. whew!

mep was quite crappy... only studied beethoven, saint saens, weber, liszt. the essay was mendelssohn, or violin concertos. oops! can't remember mendelssohn's points but neither did i pay much attention to violin concertos in my study of bee. even if i did it's only one... supposed to compare two! okay... so just take the risk and do mendelssohn. making up non-existent points as i go along... crapping all the way knowing ms chew would probably not have to read more than two sentences to realise i know nothing about him.

brahms pc 2 was better than expected. considering that i had nothing related to it in my head minutes before the exam... it was quite a good attempt i think. at first qn 1 seemed easier cos it seems like u could just pick out features fromt the score and describe them. but when i flipped to the passage, realised that it's a hard passage to describe cos i haven't even given much thought to it. attempted qn 2... form of 1st mvt can't be that bad... or so i hoped. wrote the longest essay i've ever written during common tests or promos. whatever... hoping that at least half of the claims i made are relevant. hahaha

listening extract was quite a relief when i first heard it. my favourite concerto! liszt... so romantic. the hard part is to describe in what ways it's considered romantic. ms chew is so good at predicting what we can't answer well. plus... the tonality, cadence and harmonic relation qns were killer. other than all those (which should amount to abt half the section), the rest should be quite okay. i hope! =)