Chopin

Now, I understand why Chopin used to be Joo Ye's favourite composer until Beethoven's works began to intrigue her.

We attended a Chopin celebration concert by the NAFA piano faculty (played by the lecturers of the faculty) It was quite an adventure getting there because we didn't know how to walk there from bugis mrt. Although we were armed with our maps, one printed out from the internet and the other printed on the book I received from their open house last time, our map-reading skills were poor. At least, mine was. Despite instructions from my mum beforehand, they didn't register in my head and we were lost. Time was ticking away-made shorter due to Joo Ye coming 30 mins later than meeting time but it was ok, the time allowance was still rather fine then. Well, to cut the story short, we managed to ask a lady whose destination happened to be (thank God) en route to nafa campus 1 (we were headed for campus 3), so she walked with us and gave us directions after she reached her destination. Thank God, we found campus 1, seeing familiar landmarks printed on the map (we were quite exhilarated actually, like, look! this is there, and that building is there! we're near!!!)
Rushing to campus 3, we plopped down into our seats after showing our tickets, in the nearly full hall. We sat at the 2nd row on the right hand corner of the hall. As it was free seating, those seats were not too bad except that we couldn't see the players' hands, only the full view of the black casing of the grand piano and the expressions of the players' faces. The sound was good.

We heard some of Chopin's nocturnes, ballads and marzukas being played and I enjoyed all of them. His works are really fine works with many details and extremely romantic. Exquisite. The players brought out the tone and shape of the music well at the same time, conveying the feelings of each piece. Chopin's pieces are of great depth and beautiful; melodious. I've never played his pieces before, maybe I should try... the challenging part is the romanticism in the piece.

Aside from Chopin, although I'm no fan of anime music, I happen to know of Totoro (having watched it before when I was young and also from music classmates playing the piece). I'm not addicted to it but after hearing the duet the past year quite frequently and just recently, I think I quite like it.