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Paul Grant

Hummel's "Schizo" Fantasy...

August 29, 2008 at 12:28 PM

Yesterday I was just thinking about how my perfomances are never as good as my practices and rehearsals. Ironically Karen Allendoerfer just wrote a blog about this very topic. It seems that no matter how much I practice and not matter how comfortable I feel with a piece, something always goes wrong come performance time. It seems the older I get the less comfortable I get performing in front of an audience. I get locked into staring at the music looking at every single bowing, every single fingerings, muscles tighte, I keep thinking to myself "focus on the music...listen to the piano...don't worry about the audience."

I was watching a video from 4 years ago. I performed Hummel's Fantasy in a viola master class with Susan DuBois. If you watch the video you can see how nervous and introverted I become. I envy those that are natural performers. Fortunately for me she was the sweetest lady and made the master class very humorous. For those that are interested, here's a video of that performance. To see me you have to fast foward to the 26 minute mark. To this day I still really love this piece. It's only 10 minutes long but in those 10 minutes the piece is very "schizo." It starts of slow and majesetic, then playful, eventually drunk, and finally virtuosic.


Hummel Fantasy from Paul Grant on Vimeo.

From Terez Mertes
Posted on August 29, 2008 at 1:28 PM
Well-put! I can very much feel what you felt.
From Karen Allendoerfer
Posted on September 3, 2008 at 11:00 AM
How DO you fast-forward? That woman at the beginning is quite good and I like her version of the Bach, but I don't have time to wait 26 minutes!
From Karen Allendoerfer
Posted on September 3, 2008 at 11:02 AM
I have gotten better about performing as I've gotten older. One activity that really helped me get over generic nerves was Toastmasters' Table Topics. I still have violin/viola-specific nerves, though. Just not the industrial-strength variety I had when I was younger :(

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