MUSINGS

A Call for Pedagogical Responsibility in Repertoire Selection.A reflection on formative forces, artistic becoming, and the duty of the teacher

There is something corrupt in the kingdom(?) of piano competitions. It begins with vanity disguised as ambition and ends with applause hollowed out by politics. The spectacle of an already celebrated pianist, contract in hand and engagements with the world’s top orchestras, returning to a stage meant for those still clawing toward daylight is parasitic. The Chopin Competition, once a sanctuary of discovery, has become another theatre of ego where fame circles back to feed upo

There is no straight road back from illness. Recovery moves like an old river, circling, stalling, and sometimes doubling back on itself....

Pandora’s Box: The International Piano Competition Deluxe Edition

There are musical encounters that never happened yet remain strangely inevitable in the minds of those who dream in sound. As if the ether had whispered them into being, as if the stars aligned once on some higher plane, where truth and beauty are the only currencies. One such phantom collaboration is the imagined but resoundingly genuine partnership of Carlos Kleiber  and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli , two of the most elusive and uncompromising artists the 20th century ever

There exists a music we do not hear with the ears. It is the quiet arrangement of space, the dialogue between emptiness and fullness, the whisper of energy as it curls through a room. In the world of piano pedagogy, where hours are spent wrestling with sound, gesture, and spirit, it is no longer sufficient to think only of chairs, scores, and keys. The studio itself must become an instrument tuned not merely for sound, but for flow, harmony, and presence. Enter the art of Fen

A recital is not a lecture, not a display case of technique, not a private confession disguised as a performance. A recital, when truly conceived, is a meeting. A space opened between performer and listener, between intention and reception, between silence and sound. It is in this sense, and only in this sense, that programming a recital becomes an art in itself. Not the mere assemblage of pieces but the silent construction of a path, a sequence of human experience traced in

There is a ladder within the child, not one made of rungs or rails, but one composed of ever-changing forms of awareness, subtle inner moods, and shifting balances of will, feeling, and thought. Each phase in the child's becoming, from the tender age of six to the threshold of adulthood at eighteen, presents a unique gesture of soul life. To ignore these metamorphoses is to teach blindly. To recognise them and guide them wisely is to teach in harmony with human nature itself.

There is an old story, perhaps more poetry than documented fact, that Michelangelo, standing before an unhewn block of marble, already...