God, I love this city. I know I reiterate, but I am sitting here with a Master’s Dream beer, looking at Tokyo’s skyline of Azabu, Omotesando, Hiroo, and I can’t help but smile.
東京本当に大好き…
Absolutely shaken by today’s first Noh (能) experience.
Even understanding very little of Japanese, it was a very edifying experience. And the pace of the play(s) was so slow that I finally could enjoy every action, shaved off and perfected until the last move.
It is funny to see everyone in Japan using the same adjectives to describe my performances:
“Latin”, “cheerful”, “bright”, or even “clown”.
I believe that all should just forget about the performer, or the situation in which music is being shared. And focus on the music itself.
Concert stage etiquette is very stuck nowadays, but I was thinking yesterday that we should always invite the piano technician on stage at the end of a concert.
That person is always crucial in the outcome of a concert and deserves recognition.
"The Emperor" with the Brazos Valley Symphony Orchestra in Texas on October 15th was great.
Texans, you truly are the friendliest folks I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Your warmth and kindness made this experience even more special! 😉
The first ever built
@Fazioli_Pianos
F308. Do you notice something strange? (It is in 🇹🇼 Taipei’s Fazioli center, by the way)
一番最初に製造されたファツィオリ308、なにか奇妙なことに気づいた?📍台北 🇹🇼
These guys never get the attention they deserve.
The people taking responsibility of the piano on stage are always key to the success and outcome of the concert…
Today,
@Fazioli_Pianos
@FazioliJapan
, Alec Weil, and our favorite black-gloved technician, 黒さん.
@operacity_hall
Finding Ginza Kagari (銀座篝) is actually a very nice moment. Very uneasy back alley, understated (as always), and full of surprises inside.
Chicken Paitan Ramen is, as well, a surprisingly light version of the reigning master, born in Fukuoka (福岡): The Tonkotsu Ramen.
With the magnificent people of
@tpo1911
all music is wonderful.
Thank you to EVERYONE.
Especially here, with the Konzertmeister and the first Cello.
ありがとうございます🙇🏽♂️
The atmosphere that Haruki Murakami describes in Norwegian Wood, as Toru Watanabe enters countless bars in Tokyo is perfectly represented by “INC” in Shibuya.
Perfectly dimmed lights, wonderful manners and a very understated entry door.
#tokyo
#Murakami
#whiskey
When you forget that the piano can produce sounds, you think you’ve become crazy, and it is just that the jack suddenly decided to be lazy.
(The piano was fine, of course. Just a small mishap)
Within a month I will have the immense pleasure of playing Edvard Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor with
@tpo1911
.
Back then in August, 2009 - playing with
@OSPAcom
and Maximiliano Valdés -, I was 12. Of course, at that time, I never thought I’d play this magnificent concert
This dressing room TV definitely helped me feel a bit anachronistic.
One of the best experiences performing a recital…
どうもありがとうございます!!
📍 北見芸術文化ホール(きた・アート21)
My first home in Gijón, Asturias. 🇪🇸
As I child, I learnt here to bike, I started to study piano, and it was my home until I was 16 years old, when I moved to Madrid.
And the name of the street is:
Japan street.
😂
I have to agree with the Japanese, again.
Apparently, medicine is related to music. And both are related to comfort. We may have lost that fundamental part of music for so many dozens of years…
#japanese
#japaneselanguage
#LANGUAGE
#music
#medicine
Spain’s idea of good Japanese nigiris.
Definitely superb, but definitely not Japanese.
Tataki of aged beef’s lower loin, topped with Macha sauce (mexican Macha, which reminds me a bit of ラー油, and not matcha 抹茶), peanuts and dome drops of Hibiki Harmony whisky.
I found a passenger in ANA today that was confused about whether he was in a plane or a dental clinic.
The effect of the visual placebo anesthesia was so heavy that food did not wake him up.
(Bravo to ANA for a wonderful service.)
Many of you have asked me ... and yes, indeed:
Before yesterday at Suntory Hall, it was 'Navarra', by Isaac Albéniz.
Today it was, IMO, one of the greatest piano transcriptions of all time: Franz Liszt’s arrangement of Robert Schumann’s love song Widmung (‘Dedication’). Myrthen
The lightest piano in the world.
After the concert, you just take it, turn it on its side and put it on the Piano Lift.
You can even put it on the truck without a machine if you are feeling high after a concert!
@Fazioli_Pianos
One of the very few places in the world with working gas lamps. What an ethereal light they seem to ooze!
You can find them all around the Cathedral Square in Wrocław, and everyday the lamplighter does his runarounds filling the gas on each of the lamps.
Happy birthday to one of the most beloved composers in the history of music:
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Imagine the wonderful music he could have composed beyond his early thirties… He claimed that he needed to study further about composition 😂
Really excited to open these new scores…
Particularly the Variations… Probably some of the most inspired pages of music by Mompou are in that piece.
And you can tell Mompou’s love for Chopin through his gentle treatment for the Prelude in A major.
@FundacioMompou
As Richter said (paraphrasing here):
I don’t want people looking at my face while I am performing. It feels like they are scrutinizing something very private while I play.
Reflecting on an incredible 2023! 🎶✈️
From my unforgettable debut in Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Luxembourg, and Belgium, to sharing the stage with prestigious orchestras like NHK Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic, Hamburg Symphoniker, and Warsaw Philharmonic – each concert was a dream
Given that we are in these New Year days, I want to finally take some time to respond to any questions that you may have. I am very happy to answer anything that may come to your mind 😁😊 and probably make me think for a while, too.
One of my biggest joys is always to experience the food that the locals all around the world like and have on a regular basis, and not the premade packages for the tourists. Those, I hate.
Here, the menu was only in Mandarin. No photos either, thank God.
Missing from the photo
Just interesting:
Haneda (羽田) is written はねだ in Hiroshige’s 72nd print from his famous “One Hundred Famous views from Edo” (名所江戸百景).
Where the Haneda airport is, there used to be Benten Shrine (弁天の社), right after Benten Bridge (弁天橋), on the airport’s side.
The Prelude No. 7 in A major by Chopin was used in a quite famous TV commercial in Japan a while back.
The ad is for digestive medication.
Now I cannot play Mompou’s Variations on a Chopin theme without thinking how many stomachs I will fix that day…
Murakami’s arrival soon.
I am so happy to be playing Le Mal du Pays by Liszt, the piece that Shiro plays several times in Murakami’s Tsukuru Tazaki.
And I’ve definitely never seen a piano facing the opposite side.
It is very interesting that the next edition of Chopin Competition has a new requirement that stands out:
The Polonaise-Fantasie Op. 61 side by side with one of the two concerti in the Final Stage.
#chopin
#ショパン
One of the biggest joys of life is reading words in Katakana adopted from English or French by the Japanese…
パンツ (“pantsu”, which should be “pants”, and for some reason it means underwear)
プチ (“puchi”, which should be “petit”…)
Etcetera 😂
Orgulloso y muy feliz de ser partícipe en la semana de los Premios Princesa de Asturias y homenajear a mi admiradísimo
@_harukimurakami
. ¡Además, desde mi tierra! Gracias,
@fpa
💙💛
Tokyo-Bilbao is not a trip you do everyday… 😂
The person at the counter in Haneda, Tokyo, had to check twice what was the destination with the airport code BIO.
Exactly 24 hours and a half of trip (airport to airport).
Tokyo?
Gijón?
Thank you,
@fpa
for making this extremely interesting artistic space (Tabacalera de Gijon) so thrilling after more than 20 years of closed doors. I do not know if I am in Tokyo or in Spain.
Haruki Murakami would be thrilled to see it.
I was just in Kiyomizudera Shrine, Kyoto (清水寺), and I am shocked by what Pope Pius XIII perfectly describes in “The Young Pope”:
Pope: “I will never shed my aversion to tourists.”
Monsignor Gutierrez: “Why, Holy Father?”
Pope: “Because they are just passing through.”
I am in the middle of the ocean right now. Off 250km of Portugal’s Cabo San Vicente and exactly 250km off, too, from Casablanca, Morocco.
Playing on a boat is definitely worthy of a few words about it…
@EmbEspBrasil
e a Orquestra Sinfônica do Teatro Nacional Cláudio Santoro apresentam em
#Brasilia
o Concerto Espanhol, com o maestro
@MarcMoncusi
e o piano de Martin García. Gratuito e classificação livre.
🗓12/9
🕧20h
🏠Teatro Plínio Marcos - Eixo cultural ibero-americano.