The Word of the Week

The word for this year’s music is adagio. Both pieces I am playing are slow and incredibly beautiful without the challenges of vivace or even allegro. Adagio fits so well with my current mindset.

This year instead of playing in a quartet as I have the past two years, I am playing two duets – one with Deborah and the other with Ros, a flautist from Philadelphia who has been here the past two years.

There was some doubt as to whether Deborah would even come, since she had serious abdominal surgery at the end of June. But she is here and her kind husband is hauling her bass around for her. She announced that hitting high notes on the bass requires stomach muscles, so as we looked for a piece to play we kept to the lower registers. As we searched our “repertoire”, The Faure Sicilienne seemed just about perfect. Our fingers and minds began to remember it this morning as we practiced.

On my Sunday bike ride I ran into Ros, who said she had brought some music for flute and piano that we could look at. Ironically a piece called “Piece” by Faure caught my eye because it seemed relatively easy. I haven’t yet heard the flute part, but if it is anywhere as beautiful as the piano part, it will be lovely.

With all the music out there, it would seems unlikely that I would be playing two pieces by the same composer. But there is something about Faure that endears me to anything written by him. I think it is his brilliant use of chord progressions and the surprise of going from major to minor and back again.

It’s so nice to have two slow beautiful pieces that will be relaxing to practice with two of my favorite musicians this week. At some point we will get coaching from people who know more than we do, but for now we can just luxuriate in the notes that Faure has given us.