La Pianiste

The Piano Teacher is a french movie about "a young man [who] romantically pursues his masochistic piano teacher." The character Erika is disturbing and I was a little squeamish during a lot of the parts (obviously since she's a masochist and it is a french movie), however I stuck through the movie for the music and especially when the antagonist is a handsome pianist. I have a thing for guys who can play the piano well. I'm not sure if that makes my view biased, I won't be specific as to ruin the movie, but overall I think they did a dandy good job. Such a fine job that I felt inspired to practice Rachmaninoff's Prelude Op.23 No.5 in G Minor. Some serious solid effort on the first 9 bars!

 

Rachmaninoff (played by Gilels) - Prelude Op.23 No.5

Vier Minuten

It's such a treat when an interesting foreign film is showing on sbs! It must have been piano movie night because the movie after was The Beat my Heart Skipped about a french guy who goes from rent collector to pianist. Four Minutes is about Jenny, a convicted murderer who's taught by Frau Krueger for a piano competition. Both have experienced/experience painful things and use the piano as a medium of expression, however in completely different ways.  

Clair de Lune et Soleil Levant

Moonlight

Your soul is a select landscape

Where charming masqueraders and bergamaskers go

Playing the lute and dancing and almost

Sad beneath their fantastic disguises.

All sing in a minor key

Of victorious love and the opportune life,

They do not seem to believe in their happiness

And their song mingles with the moonlight,

With the still moonlight, sad and beautiful,

That sets the birds dreaming in the trees

And the fountains sobbing in ecstasy,

The tall slender fountains among marble statues.

Paul Verlaine

Debussy - Clair de Lune (played by Alexander Lubyantsev)

I was watching a television show about a pianist and the three composers he most related to: Rachmaninov, Ravel and Debussy, and found out that Clair de Lune was written inspired by a poem by Verlaine. The piece compliments it and is such a perfect translation of words into music. The main tune has such a heart ache to it and the second prominent tune with the cascading bubbling fountain in the background. Debussy was labelled an Impressionist, and I don't see why not, looking at the score and listening to the piece, it's seamless as if bar lines don't exist. And I'm going to use the analogy, that Debussy paints a picture with his music, makes a film even!



Monet - Soleil Levant



If I recall correctly from my high school art lessons, the Soleil Levant painted by Claude Monet (other famous paintings include the water lilies) was the first Impressionist painting. And it is, just an impression, not realisitic, rather capturing moreso the mood that go with the scene. I think the Arts go hand in hand together, they all serve to make an impression on the reader/viewer/listener, take you away from where you physically are at that particular moment in time. Art, music, etc, they're all intertwined. In year 5 during music, there was a particular lesson where we listened to some famous pieces and used colours and lines to describe it. I remember the Ride of the Valkyries came on, and I got my red and black pencils and just went nuts with the crazy angry lines :)

Even with food this happens, now that I'm writing about this...