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Showing posts from November, 2016

Grigory Sokolov Warsaw Sunday 27 November 2016

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This morning I try to write the account of a musical evening engraved indelibly on my heart and mind. Those of you who read my extensive notes know I can usually write quite rationally about music but this morning....I am still vibrating with what was presented to us... Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Sonata C-dur KV 545 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Fantasia c-moll KV 475 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Sonata c-moll KV 457 Robert Schumann –  Arabeske  op. 18 Robert Schumann –  Fantazja  C-dur op. 17  How can words describe the overwhelming, profound experience of this great musical soul revealing itself.... All the Mozart was played far slower and at a more meditative tempo particularly K 457. Here was a thinking and deeply introspective, even philosophical Mozart. Ornamentation and inner details revealed as never before. The  C-minor Fantasia emerged as an improvisation of thought, searching for, touching upon harmonies and shifting emotions as an opaque sun is intermittent

Edward Cahill Biography - Long -awaited and Now Published

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Click on photographs to enlarge Dust Jacket Design Amelia Walker :  www.ameliadesign.net This post is for those of you who may have been reading my blog over the last six years. In many posts I described my travails in writing this latest book, a biography of Edward Cahill, the glamorous but now forgotten Australian concert pianist. A long journey but a rewarding one. The book was published by  Australian Scholarly Publishing  in November this year. Available at:  http://scholarly.info/book/516/ I managed to obtain three excellent reviews  by eminent musicians  of the rare private recordings of Liszt and Chopin that survived his peripatetic lifestyle. They generously made time from busy international schedules to listen via the internet to his recordings. This link will be printed in the book for readers to access. It will add a remarkable extra dimension and element of discovery to the biography of a now forgotten musician. His life was one that young pianists of today co