Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) originally composed this work for orchestra during 1919-1920 after his return from World War I. The transcription for solo piano is one of the most challenging pieces in piano literature, and retains the ostentatious and chaotic exhilaration of the orchestral version. Although it takes a lot of effort to keep it under my repertoire, this work has been one of my favorite performance pieces since I learned it.


Ravel  La Valse

This sonata is one of my most favorite performance repertoires. It was also the composer's favorite performance pieces when he traveled around the courts of Europe. This sonata is comparatively lesser known than his other late sonatas but filled with youthful brilliance and warmth. 

Mozart  Sonata in B flat Major, K.281

When I first heard this piece, I fell in love with its naively solemn theme, a theme which is not in fact by Corelli, but is an ancient Portuguese dance melody called La Folia . Yet the composer’s imaginative treatment of this theme throughout twenty variations and a coda was even more remarkable. It is the last composition for solo piano by Rachmaninoff, and the only solo piano work that was written outside Russia. It was composed in the summer of 1931 after the comparative lack of success of the Fourth Concerto, and shows a new, subtler expressiveness that overcomes his earlier style. 



Rachmaninoff  Corelli Variations

An American composer and pianist, William Bolcom, has received the Pulitzer Prize with these piano etudes. All twelve piano etudes, titled in either English or French, are grouped into four books, each book containing three etudes. Each of them shows very different character and atmosphere, and proves that the composer's imaginative maneuver of the idiom deserves the prize after all. What I played was no. 1, 2, &amp; 3 in Book I. The title for each is 1. Fast, furious, 2. Récitatif, 3. Mirrors. They involve unconventional playing methods such as playing with elbows, or plucking the strings inside the piano. 


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