Personal Life Sharing

I am a regular audience of classical music concerts, which stimulates my self-taught piano skills. Shared below are some collections of fabulous recordings, selected in personal taste. Meanwhile, there will be some random updates on my own recordings, thoughts on influential artists and recent concerts.

Aspire to be a multipotentialite. Always keep an eye on traditional Chinese culture, e.g. history, crosstalk (a traditional comedy), medicine. Passionate explorer of western art (ancient instruments, impressionism paintings). Amateur player of table tennis and badminton.

Recommendation of Classical Music

I collect my personal favorites of compositions in classical music literature, with the preferred versions of recorded performances. Shared as a public playlist on Spotfiy.

Instrument Concertos (Spotify Link)

Instrument concerto performances, especially the live ones, are so astounding to me even after thousands hours of listening. Go check out these fabulous recordings. Perhaps you are not that strange to them when the melody flows, e.g. Vivaldi four seasons.

Personal Advice: Beethoven Piano 5, Tchaikovsky Violin, Rachmaninoff Piano 2, Glass Violin

Instrument Sonatas (Spotify Link)

How to demonstrate the elegant texture of music and virtuosity of solo performers? Sonatas might provide essential answers to that. You will indeed enjoy elegance from Mozart, "instability" from Schumann or the deep self-reflection by Brahms'.

Personal Advice: Beethoven Piano 21, Schumann Piano 2, Liszt Piano, Prokofiev Violin 2

Selected Self-Taught Recordings

As a self-taught player, it is beyond words to express the joy of playing music out. I am well-benefited from my friends in a professional music career and concerts that I have been attended to. I hope you enjoy my playing too (bear with my techniques and recording quality though...)

Beethoven
Chopin
- Ballade 1 (Excerpt 1) (Excerpt 2)
- Nocturene 13 (Excerpt)
Mozart
- Piano Sonata 16, Movement I
Joe Hisaishi
- Summer (theme from Kikujiro, movie by Takeshi Kitano)
- One Summer's Day (theme from Sprited Away, movie by Hayao Miyazaki)
Others
- Mad Rush, by Philip Glass (a good start to know about minimal music)
- Paul de Senneville - Ballade Pour Adeline (possibly most popular pure music in China)
- 彩云追月, 王建中作曲 (Silver Clouds Chasing the Moon, by Jianzhong Wang)
- 纪录片 <航拍中国> 主题曲 (Theme from Documentary Aerial China)

Celebration for Martha Argerich's 80th Birthday

Scroll down for memories of me following Martha these years.

Check out Martha's LIVE performance of Ravel Piano Concerto in 2021 (Link)

Well, a person in 80s, perform with memory, effortless and even hustle the speed of younger orchestra fellows for 25 min straight. That is another way to define "savage".

Who is Martha Argerich? Maybe a question much tougher than "How do you thinks of her live performance?". She is too legendary to be defined over a few lines. By Wikipedia, you will get an all-time top pianist (not just female), champion of 1965 Chopin competition, 3-time Grammy winner. To me, she is a multilingual genius, a last-minute concert canceller, a warrior to fight over and defeat the cancer, and of course, best performer with extremely high quality spanned over 5 decades. Finally, an ultimate representative of romantic love story.

To be honest, I just knew Martha in 2016. That was in a class on review of classical piano. Her performance of D. Scarlatti's sonata K.141 was played to audience. This piece is so elegant and subtle in techniques and I never found myself satisfied to any interpretation before Martha's version. (Check out here!) Above that, it seems so easy for her to do that (and a little bit boring for her, from my view then). In video, she was at her 40s or so and you can feel that power of mastering and energy brought to music. Not surprisingly, she is a BIG BEAUTY! Put these together, I know that she will definitely be my lifetime idol in music world.

(to be continued...)

Scenery by Footprint

"Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet."

- Franz Kafka, Czech novelist

The map embedded here provides some personal favorites during years of traveling. Blended with hot destinations and chilled towns, with foods you never want to be blind to.