Live in Dzintari concert hall, June 2023
This was a late night concert where cellist Matthew Barley and I performed all five Beethoven’s piano and cello sonatas as part of the annual Jūrmala Festival. We also shared a bit about the biographical context into which Beethoven was writing these works. And, unusually for me, we also introduced the sonatas with improvisations. This was the first one on that night and it was also the first time I improvised publicly together with another musician. Yup, I did feel the nerves. We had no plan for this, no script, no graphic score, no themes to build on, nothing. My iPad there is open on Beethoven’s Sonata in g, so that I can jump right into it, whenever that moment arrives. One can see quite clearly our lack of any pre-arranged plan at 4:33 where Matthew plays a trick on me with this big gesture that I read to mean - now we shall begin the Beethoven, right? So I follow with Beethoven’s opening chord, only to realise that Matthew is playing half-step lower than the opening note! For a while I was not sure if one of us is hearing wrong… maybe my absolute pitch is out?… and about a dozen other thoughts in that split second, before I know for sure that that was just a good joke to add some extra adventure to this game, and so I follow him in this, but soon we feel that it’s time to somehow prepare the real Beethoven opening, and so that’s that.
23 сен 2024
