The first is a fairly recent one that I should have posted on February 12. I saw on the This Day in History site that February 12 was the anniversary of the first performance of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. It's a beautiful piece and it's also an important piece. The article about its first performance is here. It's important to me, too, because of what it meant to me as a piano student.
I started taking piano lessons when I was about six years old. I was pretty good at it and I enjoyed it. But as I got older, I started to enjoy other things, too, and didn't spend the time I should practicing. But one day, when I was home sick from school, I was watching TV and the movie Rhapsody in Blue was on. I watched it because there was nothing else to do but I really enjoyed it. It was the biography of George Gershwin and the highlight was the preparation and performance of the Rhapsody. It got me very excited to see the background (as fictionalized as it was in the movie) of the piece and how Gershwin was driven to play the piano. Unfortunately, the station showing the movie was going to play it in two parts. My mother, seeing how moved I was by the movie, let me stay home the next day to see the end of the movie. After that, I was much more interested in working at the piano. I saw what could happen if you practiced. It was a good lesson for everything you do in life but it had the biggest impact on my music. Seeing that movie definitely changed my life.
1 comment:
If only I had stuck with it.
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