Show 206: Listening Guide
This week’s broadcast was taped November 13, 2009 at the AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas, TX. Learn more about what the performers had to say about the music they played on the show:
Sahun Hong
Sahun Hong, 15, piano
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 11 in A minor by Franz Liszt
Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 11 shows a great variety of colors, textures, tempos, rhythms. What stays is the overall “gypsy feeling.” This piece needs panache.
Jenny Jiyeon Lee, 15, violin
Scherzo-Tarantelle, Op. 16 by Henri Wieniawski
When I play this piece, I imagine a person getting chased by a gross insect and finally crushing the bug at the end of the piece. This piece can express a lot of your technical abilities and your own musicality.
Isabella Markham, 14, viola
I. Allegro Moderato from Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano in A minor by Franz Schubert
This piece is unique to the other pieces I have played, because it has such a range of emotions. There are feelings of love, hope, and optimism, then you feel sadness and conflict. It is challenging to portray these feelings in one piece of music.
John-Henry Crawford, 16, cello
III. Allegro commodo from Sonata No. 2 by Bohuslav Martinu
It’s very jazzy. It’s got a dance-like rhythm to it. I think my favorite part is the cadenza, because you get to let loose. Everything up until then is a huge build up and then you get an open “C” string and that’s where the craziness starts.
Percussion Scholarhip Group
Marimba Spiritual by Minoru Miki
Andre Battles, Jr.
What’s unique about this piece is that you get the freedom of moving and around and yelling. My favorite part is the end, because that is when all of the energy and emotions are all let loose.
Shuya Gong
I love this piece of music. It’s joke during rehearsals that we’re going to engage in aerobics every time we play, and that the percussion aerobics is going to be the next big thing. This piece has a lot of components to it that include more than just playing music alone. In reality, it’s a choreographed dance–sort of like a tribal fertility dance, and at the same time, you need to concentrate on playing the music right.
Eric Goldberg
This piece is the most physical and the most intense piece I have ever played. And because of this, we have sometimes gotten a bit accidentally destructive. We break sticks left and right. When you play a piece that is emotionally and physically intense, be careful.
The Percussion Scholarship Group
Joshua Jones
My favorite part of this piece is its intensity. The strong accents, high jumps, and loud screams create an image of a very violent ritual of some sort. My least favorite thing about this piece is its broken stick record. I’ve broken at least two mallets while rehearsing this piece.
Lucia León
I remember the first time we rehearsed this piece with all the movement. It took us a while to get over the yelling section without laughing. At first everyone felt a little self-conscience but after all the rehearsals, everyone put their own personality into it. My favorite part is the end when everyone goes crazy and my hair is flying everywhere. The first time I did that, I had a sore neck the next day.
John Ringor
When I perform, I try to get the audience to see the rawness and wildness and intensity of the music by jumping and performing exaggerated actions. My favorite part of the piece is the very end where everyone goes insane and is jumping all over the place, because I get to just let loose! Unfortunately, because the piece is so wild, I’ve broken six pairs of sticks.
Marcelina Suchoka
I always think of a story when I’m playing music. I envision ancient warriors battling on fields, on mountains, in water. It’s a story of skilled assassins trying to outsmart each other, but no one loses at the end.
Zuri Wells
The movement [of the piece] is the most unique part. The interaction is different, too. We, as percussionists and artists, have to portray to the audience that there’s an argument going on, and our words are spoken through music.
