Juilliard

The Juilliard School is one of the most well-known performing arts academies in the world, and it happens to be about 15 minutes (by subway) away from where I live. Going to see a performance there was another thing on my to do list before I left; I wish I would have had the time to see more than one. They put on some great plays and dramas, from what I understand, would have liked to taken in one of those too. A friend of mine from church was putting on a piano recital, so I went to join her for that. The school itself is undergoing some remodeling, so you can’t see much of it from the outside. But once Qing (pronounced “ching”) started playing, I could see why the school has the reputation that it does. She performed selections from Haydn, Brahms, and Schumann, none of which I was previously familiar with but all of which were extraordinary. One of the great parts about going to see a live recital is watching the performer. Being able to listen to a recording is nice, but watching the performer and the way that they play the music, the way they move their body, move their hands, the expressions on their face, gives you a greater sense of the feeling they put into their music. Being Chinese, Qing is a tiny girl, but she plays her music with an extraordinary amount of feeling. She shifted back and forth from playing softly, gently, with an almost featherlight touch to a furious intensity in other sections. I don’t play piano myself, but it was clear her technical skills are exceptional. Perhaps the most remarkable thing was that as far as I could tell from where I was sitting, she played the entire hour long set from memory, from her head. She didn’t have sheet music in front of her. Even the performer at Carnegie Hall had sheets, but Qing didn’t. A superior performance from an outstanding performer. I was glad to have the chance to see the performance there, and I wish Qing the best in her career going forward.