Monday, February 23, 2015

Then and Now

In 2008, Joan and I  went to the Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre to hear Tatiana Kolesova, the second place winner in the Sydney International Piano Competition, perform a magnificent program of Chopin, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Haydn and Stravinsky.

One of her three encores intrigued us: Joan told me it was Gluck's Dance of the Blessed Spirits, but this didn't satisfy me, because I was thinking of its opening and had forgotten its middle.


When we got home, I looked up the Dance of the Blessed Spirits and found Dominique and Valerie Kim, aged twelve and ten, playing it beautifully, and showing that the music we had heard was indeed the middle part of that work. (We later discovered that Ms Kolesova had performed Sgambati's Arrangement of a Melody from Orfeo.)


We then spent the next hour sampling some of the 68 videos Mr Kim of San Diego had put up of his talented daughters playing flute, violin and piano. There are a lot of child prodigies on Youtube, but not all of them play musically!

Joan and I kept going back to the site and listening to Valerie and Dominique's beautiful playing. 

Today Mr Kim sent out a link to part of Valerie's Juilliard recital. Wow!


Mr Kim's website has 5000 subscribers and has had 5 million views. Not because the girls wear revealing outfits or do fancy tricks, but because of their wonderful musicianship.


Here is 9 year old Valerie, playing part of the Bruch Violin Concerto.

And here she is, last week playing Kreisler's Tambourin Chinois






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