My experience participating in the Orfeo Music
Festival this summer was phenomenal. I had the opportunity to focus intently on
music for over two weeks, fully immersed with my peers in a daily routine of
attending each other’s workshops and concerts, eating meals together, and
attending the nightly faculty recitals, all the while in the beautiful setting
of the small village of Vipiteno in the Italian Alps. This environment of constant
immersion in music nearly 24 hours a day was an essential aspect of the
experience.
View of the
school courtyard from the recital hall. All lessons, performances, and practice
rooms were located in this school.
View of the school from the front gate (recital hall on the right)
View of two castles visible from a practice room.
I had six performance
opportunities during the course of the festival, each of which provided me with
a very different learning experience. On the very first day of the festival I
had my first two performances – a master class and an afternoon recital. For
both of these I performed a piece from Robert Schumann’s Fantasiestuck Op. 12
titled “Aufschwung.” The master class was one of the most rewarding experiences
of the festival – after getting an initial chance to play the piece in front of
an audience of mostly fellow pianists (and work out a few nerves in the
process), I then had a public half-hour lesson on the piece with Natsuki
Fukasawa, professor of piano at California State University, Sacramento.
Working with her gave me many new insights and added a new layer of depth to
explore in the piece.
Immediately after the master
class was the afternoon student concert, when I had my “official” performance
of the piece. It went extremely well, and performing on the first day was a
good way to dive headfirst into the festival.
Performing in the recital hall.
My next performance, at the
end of the first week, was of the first movement of Franz Joseph Haydn’s Sonata
No. 23, Hob. XVI.
Throughout the first week, in
addition to the many lessons I was able to have with my instructor Nina
Scolnik, I also had many coaching sessions with a violinist and a cellist in
preparation of our performance of Clara Schumann’s Trio in G Minor, 2nd
movement. This performance was special because we had the opportunity to give
the performance in one of the beautiful medieval churches in Vipiteno –
performing in such a venue was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience to give a
concert in a setting that simply does not exist in America.
Recital Performance of Clara Schumann Trio – video (7:01)
Performing with my trio in the gothic Holy Spirit church.
Performing with my trio in the gothic Holy Spirit church.
L-R: Nina
Scolnik (my private instructor and chamber coach, both at Orfeo and home at UC
Irvine), Michelle Bessemer (violin), Luis Zepeda (cello), and myself (piano).
My trio with two other great friends and pianist participants at the festival, David and Quentin.
This year, the festival put together
a choir with many of the festival participants, instrumentalists in addition to
the vocal students. I was able to participate in this as well, and gained
valuable experience learning how to be a member of a choir; because singing
requires such a different skill set than playing the piano, it truly helps
pianists and other instrumentalists to sharpen their musicianship skills and
listen in a new way. In addition, my ultimate career goal is to work with
singers as an accompanist and coach, and any experience I can gather singing
will help me be successful in that field. Our performance was in another of the
beautiful churches in Vipiteno.
Performing
with the Orfeo Festival Choir.
I also had a chance to get
first-hand experience of what working with singers – particularly, student
singers – will be like. I was paired with a soprano for one song, and through
working with her in her lessons as well as accompanying her performance I
gained valuable insight on how to handle difficult situations that may arise
when working with new or inexperienced musicians. Though the performance was
rough for her, it taught me how to handle myself and do my best to support the
singer no matter what goes wrong on stage and help her find her place in the
music. In many ways, I believe this was a better experience then merely having
an easy performance.
Accompanying a very young singer in one of her first-ever public performances.
As mentioned before, the location of the festival was
incredible. The town of Vipiteno, Italy is located in the far north of the
Italian Alps – so far north, in fact, that the primary language spoken in the
town is German, and the closest large city is not in Italy but Innsbruck in
Austria. As a small town, there was little distraction from the constant
immersion of the festival, and the beauty of the old city and the surrounding
mountain landscapes made for a very inspirational location. Though every week
day we were kept extremely busy with our lessons, master classes, performances,
and faculty recitals, the weekends were left open for us to practice and
explore, both of which I took full advantage of. I have included a few pictures
of the town, as well as the mountains surrounding it (one of which I climbed to
the summit!).
The main street of the old city of
Vipiteno/Sterzing.
Car show
driving through Vipiteno.
Dancers at a
street festival one evening in Vipiteno.
Double rainbow after a hard rain.
Beautiful
waterfall on a nearby hike.
View across the valley while climbing Rosskopf mountain.
Climbing Rosskopf mountain.
Climbing Rosskopf mountain.
My roommate playing Mahler on top of an Alp.
Me clinging to the cross at the top of Rosskopf mountain for dear life - super windy with an impending hailstorm!
