Julliard Head Pianist Masterclass

On Saturday, I performed in a piano masterclass with Dr. Yoheved Kaplinsky.  Now, you probably are wondering who the heck that is.  Many people in the world don't know who she is, but in the music world, she is so famous.  She is the head of the piano department of Julliard.  Julliard is a prestigious music school located in New York.

Dr. Yoheved Kaplinsky 

Yoheved Kapllinsky is a renown pianist and teacher.  People are willing to pay lots of money for her to give them a lesson.  The Gifted Music School payed to bring her out to Salt Lake City form New York.  Gifted Music School held auditions to see who would play in the Masterclass.  All of the pianists auditioned, but only two of us got picked to play. 

I was really scared for this masterclass.  She is a top teacher and pianist.  I was really hoping to impress her.I was only supposed to play 30 minutes, but I ended up having a 45 minute masterclass.  When I first played through my piece, I played it my absolute best.  Dr. Kaplinsky mainly gave me comments about putting emotion into my piece.  

Let me explain my piece.  It is called Liszt Paraphrase on Verdi’s Rigoletto.  Rigoletto is an opera by the composer Verdi.  It is a fairly well known opera. The composer Liszt loved the opera so much that he decided to make a paraphrase of it.  A paraphrase and a transcription are two different things, although they are very similar.  A transcript is taking the piece and having it be almost exact, but for different instruments.  A paraphrase has a little more freedom for the person who is making the paraphrase.  It takes all of the important themes and melodies, but then adds some of their own flairs to it.  

The themes in my piece are mainly based off of four of the characters in the opera.  Rigoletto is one of them.  He is a hunchback clown that performs for the Duke.  His daughter is Gilda.  She falls in love with the Duke.  The duke flirts with every woman he meets and "says" that he loves them.  Then he moves on.  The Duke meets Gilda and tells her that he loves her.  The next moment, he is off with another woman named Magdelena.  These four people sing the main themes of the opera so they are in the paraphrase.  

When Dr. Kaplinsky gave me the comments on putting emotions into my playing, she used the word capricious to describe the duke.  I didn't know that capricious meant.  Then she used the synonym whimsical.  I didn't know what that meant either.  We were both at a loss of what to say.  She asked me if I spoke Chinese, but I said I spoke Korean.  When she asked the audience if anybody knew the word capricious in Korean, I was thinking that that wouldn't help me.  Korean is my second language.  We eventually said fickle.  Then I understood what she wanted me to think about.   

After the whole masterclass was over, both my piano teacher (Dr. Vera Ousestsskia Watanabe) and her husband (Eugene Watanabe) told me I had played my personal best.  I was so happy that I played really impressively.  If my piano teacher tells you that you played well, then you really played well.  She will tell you the truth about how to played and makes sure that whenever you perform, you play perfectly.  

I had a lot of fun during the masterclass.  It was really scary, but it was so fun and it was cool to work with someone so famous in the music world.  This was really a great experience for me.