6) August 12, 2012 Williamstown, MA Private home for 2 longtime friends and music lovers.  Drove down from Bennington where I have been performing and teaching at the Chamber Music Conference for the past 2 weeks …packed up my things, got in the car, arrived and played. There were a few funny concentration issues: I was smelling the beautiful lunch my Hostess prepared and the smells distracted me, made me lose the thread – I had to remember to listen and not smell!  Not having worked the piece much at all during Bennington, the performance was a little better than so-so, from…

July 29, 2012 Lake Oneida, NY  – Weekend Chamber Music party.   Balance of rhythmic discipline and rhythmic freedom felt a bit awry, but then, it *was* first thing in the morning.  Also noticed that some passages need some technical cleaning…new ones that used to be settled…

July 25, 2012 NY NY private apartment at Lincoln Center for Russian friends and colleagues.  Played all four dance movements as part of performance …spieled  as well about Why 100?.  Deep concentration a bit of an issue.  Was confused about the balance of freedom and form, freedom and rhythmic pulse between the dance movements and the Chaconne….4 dance movements definitely set up questions and the Chaconne answers them.  Host reserved performance #97! July 28 – comment: I had this sense that one of my Russian friends was trying to tell me something during the performance: and I think I just realized what…

July 17, 2012 I have started to hear the first four movements linked to the Chaconne…as one spirit….a sense of urgency within the music, within the lines…an urgency to travel ahead…to go, to move towards a destination distant and magnetic…Have never heard or felt these phrases in this way….

Performance for colleague Hastings-on-Hudson, NY June 22, 2012 8:30 P.M. He loved the purity of pitch and sound…his comment was that I used vibrato in some places but not others, and because he found the purity of my sound so persuasive,  it made him wonder if I might consider not using any vibrato.    Personally I have not even considered this and have to think it through. Non-vibrato as an 18th century norm, or as an 18th century aesthetic never appealed to me, and I believe that the notion is flawed to begin with.

The Players, NY …May 22 2012 7:30 pm Program Dvorak Romance, Prokofiev Vocalise, Messaien Vocalise-Étude, Brahms G Major Sonata, Enescu Impressions D’Enfance, with photographic images by Peter Laytin. Colleagues present.  In this performance and the previous one at Lincoln Center, I felt free to allow fancy to direct my timing and dynamics in many of the variations, and colleagues with whom I spoke approved.    The opening statement and the two dotted rhythm variations seem to function as an Introduction, the dotted rhythms recalling to my mind French Overture.

May 19, 2012 2:30 pm   Lincoln Center, NY Bruno Walter Auditorium  Recital with Robert Merfeld Many colleagues present!  Went really well, wonderful reception…great to have a resonant hall that allowed me to really push the envelope with the soft dynamics…Program Dvorak Romance, Prokofiev Vocalise, Messaien Vocalise-Étude, Brahms G Major Sonata, Enescu Impressions D’Enfance, with photographic images by Peter Laytin<