I can just hear my friend, John Kim, who can play both of these pieces, laughing at me. But this is one of the benefits of youth: you really think you can do anything. Unfortunately, for some reason, I turned out to be quite inept. I did learn all the major scales in both hand, but I couldn't quite memorize the notes. It was as if I was back in 6th grade all over again trying to figure out something that didn't make any sense to me. It would be easy to blame it on the teacher, trying to learn in a group, or the basic instruction book we used, which contained pretty uninspired pieces.

Deep down, I suspect it was just because I set such unrealistic expectations for myself and the class. I remember, shortly after starting the class, sitting down with my copy of Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C Sharp Minor, and just staring at the music. I could figure out how to translate what we had gone over in class to what was on the page. It was even more frustrating trying the Satie, since that piece is slow and sounds so simple. What I didn't understand is that it might take years training one's mind to keep track of every finger and two feet. Think about what happens when you play the piano. In any one time slice, you could have every finger on a different key. A fraction of a second, those ten digits have to rearrange themselves to form the next chord. At the same time, your mind has vary the time each one hits, the downward pressure and the upward release. Try tapping out one rhythm with one hand. Then add a different rhythm in the second. Multiply that by 5 and you get an idea of how complex. It's almost like you have to have ten separate consciousnesses. You must train yourself to do that (through hours and hours of practice) so that it becomes automatic, so that you don't have to think about it for thinking about it would make you trip up. Since I wasn't polydextrous, I gave it up after that semester.

This is why like languages, it's important to learn music starting at a early age. Children are born with the capability to learn any human language. They can recognized every phoneme in all known languages. During a genetically predetermined window, there mind works out which sounds are part of the language that surrounds them. After a certain age, that ability atrophies, and that it why it is so hard for adults to learn a language and speak it without an accent. So if you grow up thinking that each finger should be able to play a tune independent of another, then your mind will accommodate.

As I said, I could blame the book, but it did contain one classical piece, which was fun to play. That was an excerpt from today's piece, Tchaikowski's Marche Slave. As the name suggests, it is a wonderfully Slavic sounding piece. You could imagine yourself on the Neva River watching a troop of Cossacks ride by. It shares that wonderfully ponderous and lumbering feeling with other Russian music.

It wasn't until some twenty years later, however, that I actually heard the full orchestral version. It is a kind of pastiche of various melodies. The first part is based on that single Russian theme, which in a not very creative way, Tchaikowsky repeats and varies about 14 times. A second section reminds you a bit of parts out of the 1812 Overture and fortunately he switches to a different tune-this time based on the Russian national anthem. The feeling of that section is at times more pensive and begins to hint at some of the beauty of his later works. Unfortunately, he slips back to the opening melody once or twice. In the final session, he does pick up the tempo a bit, repeating the national anthem and then launching into a brisk march, sounding, at times, a bit like a patriotic parade.

Nowadays, I tend to eschew such propagandistic pieces. Still, Tchaikowsky was fairly young and so was I when I learned to play it in Eijnar Krantz' piano class 25 years ago.

Tchaikowsky Bio

Midi Files

Recording on a cheap compilation

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