Aug. 18th, 2007

nishatalitha: slightly crumpled white sheets, small text= "sleep now" (Sleep now)
At the end of Confusion 5, I randomly picked up a leaflet titled Music Fair of Japan 2007 for the 55th Anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and New Zealand and decided to check it out. I'm very glad I did. Three concerts (the third is on Monday night) - piano, violin and soprano - with world-renowned artists Yuko Mifune, Mie Kobayashi and Satsuki Adachi respectively.

I have been to the piano and violin. Ended up draggin [livejournal.com profile] stephanie_pegg along last night, to the piano day and [livejournal.com profile] tamarillow tonight, the violin. When I say piano, violin and soprano, I mean they all played, but the focus is on one particular instrument.

Sometimes, world-renowned can mean average. Sometimes it means utterly amazing, and the last two nights were far closer to the latter than the former. They all have very glowing credentials, and Yuko Mifune even played for the Japanese Emperor in the Imperial Palace! All her solos were played without sheet music. I wasn't quite close enough to tell (perhaps [livejournal.com profile] lyraethe could fill me in), but it looked like Mie Kobayashi was sometimes playing the violin with her eyes closed. And I don't know much about opera or operattas or about understanding the words when they sing, but Satsuki Adachi has a lovely voice.

There were a couple of pieces (piano, soprano) by Japanese composers, but other than that it was all classical and all absolutely wonderful. They recorded the concerts, so I asked about obtaining a copy of the recording and was told to call the Japanese Embassy on Monday morning. Which I will do. I couldn't afford the artist's CDs but having one of the concerts I went to would be lovely.

I'm not very good at describing music. I tend to think of good music (and I'm mainly referring to live performances here) as music that I can't think through. Live performances don't tend to have the same amount of things to watch and my mind wanders even as I enjoy the music. But these last couple of nights, several of the pieces my mind didn't wander. I was completely focussed on the music for pretty much all of Mifune's performance of Chopin's Ballade No. 1 and Liszt's La Campanella and for most of Musorgsky's Pictures and an Exhibition (twenty minutes long and no sheet music) and the encore of Ave Maria, as well as some of the other performance pieces. Those ones stand out, though.

Other than that, have been very tired. Didn't wake until nearly eleven this morning and considering how long it took me to get moving, I could have probably done with another hour or so of sleep. Won't set my alarm for the morning but will see when I wake. I might get to church, I might not.

Can feel the annoying start of a cold tight in the back of my throat. Feels like it'll hit by the end of the week, so I'm going to try and ward it off, seeing as my parents are down next weekend and I have a test on Monday and being sick for both of those would absolutely suck.

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