November 22, 2004 at 12:55 PM

So, here I am. In a Kinko's in Seoul. My last couple days in korea have been absolutely phenomenal. On Saturday the winners and about half of the jury moved to another town: Jinju. Here BoKyeoung was going to play Sibelius with orchestra again, Yue Lin the solo piece from Yun, Erin the Schumann first sonata and I played Franck. It was a very big hall for sonatas, roughly I would say at least 1500 people, but it looked definetly bigger then the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam (main hall). On top of that also this concert was televised (just like the finals - there is also going to be a double CD and a DVD...)
And I finally played for my own taste acceptable. In fact, I think I played quite well. Ofcourse it was almost impossible to get that rough sounding French color i nit. I had to use all the lessons from Mr. Perlman on projecting and I played big, very big, especially for Franck, But within that sound range, I think I did a lot of nice things. So, I walked of stage and both my pianist and I were very happy. She played by the way also very good!

The next morning I left for Seoul. Erin and I had booked a room in the Ritz (no, we are not immediately spending all our money, it came up as one of the cheaper hotels at expedia!)
But we did not spend much time in the hotel, we left immediately for sightseeing. First we went to one of the palaces with the beautiful "Secret Garden". After that we had some original Korean Barbecue and we strolled some at the Naedemun Market. It is something I had never in my life had seen. So many peope, so many things being sold. You name it, it was there: from squid to dried herbs to christmas ornaments to clothes, cutlery, anything!
After that incredible experience Erin and I were invited for dinner by James Busswell. We went to a fancy Italian Restaurant (no more bibimbap for me!) and heard all about the editorial efforts of Igor Ozim and Mr. Buswell on the Ysaye sonatas. I got a copy of all the errata and I am looking forward to studying it better myself.
Today Erin left for the airport and I spend the day in different Buddhist Temples, in the hills around Seoul. I visited another Palace and I did the buy of a lifetime. Seven CD's with recordings of Kreisler, Menuhin and Heifetz plus a DVD of Oistrach and all of this for less than 50 dollars! I am one happy girl. So I will soon return to my hotelroom. Fill the bath with some soothing oil, put some of the CD's in the stereo provided in the room and relax!

These past two weeks have been enormous range of emotions and I am very tired. At the same time it has been an incredible experience. I got to experience an entire different culture, got to play and perform 4 times in one week, learned a lot about violin, found new inspiration and motivation for music and most important learned a lot about myself and have been growing.

I am looking forward to going home. It is goin to be a while. Tomorrow first a 13 hour flight to London and then I am spending the night there and then on wednesday I will be flying to Amsterdam.
It have been two incredible weeks. Thanks for all your support and sweet emails!

Back to "reality" and practicing!
Carla

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November 22, 2004 at 12:55 PM

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