Amazingly, it's actually super easy now for me to appreciate music like this. All it took was some open-mindedness, patience, adept ear training, and repetition for the absolutely brilliantly nuanced harmonies to come out. The trick is to not miss a single note when reciting this music in your head, and associate each and every note with an underlying harmonic colour and degree of tension. Every note can be lyricized. Then, with this clairvoyance, this composer's music becomes rich in emotion and supernaturally human sounding, counterintuitively. If you want a piece of this, check out the description of this video where I go in much more detail: https://youtu.be/CjZe5I2dJKc This excerpt is from Kaikhosru Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum: "II. Preludio-Corale": https://youtu.be/4NlIpzHiJgw ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wCWDSJtOh0

Recorded on August 28th, 2023. Learned and refined in approximately 14 hours. (?? damn it felt like being a titan playing 10:20 to the end. legit felt like I drained my entire life force) This movement should probably not be one's first exposure to this piece. There's a high chance that the person reading and listening to this will need some context. Opus Clavicembalisticum is a 4.5-hour solo piano work written by Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji in 1930. You can probably count on 1 hand the number of people who have seriously recorded/performed this particular movement, and the other recordings by John Ogdon and Geoffrey Madge are disappointingly subpar. All the score annotations are done by me and published on IMSLP for public access for the first time ever (afaik). It's pretty infeasible to adequately demonstrate the densely contrapuntal nature of this fugue without having sat down and analyzed it. And that's where previous recordings fell far far short. I try my best to bring out and express almost every fugal element of significance like I would with traditional fugues by Bach, Beethoven, Szymanowski, Shostakovich, Carter, etc. Opus Clavicembalisticum is split into 12 movements. There are 4 named fugal movements which are sandwiched in-between more dynamic and less constrained movements. They are "III. Fuga I", "V. Fuga II", VIII. Fuga III", and "IX. Fuga IV". Each movement, subdivided, has 1, 2, 3, and 4 fugues respectively which accumulate in fugal subject material (e.g. "IX. Fuga IV" starts with a single fugue and features a quadruple fugue at the end). In all the fugues, Sorabji chooses to follow a general progression of fugal content, this fugue being: [0:00] Subject and countersubject introduction [N.A.] Integration of subjects from previous fugues [N.A.] Reversed subject introduction [4:27] Inverted subject introduction [7:18] Reversed and inverted subject introduction [10:20] Stretto of subject I find this particular fugue a bit disappointing and dull compared to "VIII. Fuga III [Dux Primus]" (which I've also recorded in full). The subject, although being the backbone for many motifs and significant moments of the entire piece, is relatively unvolatile and inexpressive. It makes it really hard to show phrasing of the subject besides playing everything at a fast speed and pushing the music along. Along with the dull reversed and inverted subject, it's difficult for the ears to pinpoint what's going on a lot of the time, however much I try to bring the subject out. The supporting two countersubjects are also quite dull as well, especially the 2nd countersubject, which simply as a background filler of sound a lot of the time. Unlike "VIII. Fuga III [Dux Primus]", the vertical alignment of tones isn't pleasant a lot of the time (e.g. 7:28, 8:45) which makes the melodic quality of the subject even more imperative. However, my recommendation for adjusting your ears to this music (if needed) is not to focus on the vertical alignment of intervals, but to listen horizontally to the inflections of each fugal element. Pay attention to the way I phrased the opening subject and listen for similar phrasing for all other instances. Same for the countersubject. At first, the music might sound insurmountably dense, but know that it's because I'm actually bring out every fugal element I can, and when each voice (after a few listens) gets ironed into your mind, then you might hear the full extent of what I'm doing. Also note that it would have been rudimentary and incoherent if I had simply copy-and-pasted the inflections of the fugal elements to every instance naïvely. I also manage the interactions between the voices, almost like actual human voices communicating with each other. That's what brings this music to life and gives things personality. Technique alone is already tough as heck for this, but it's really the musicality that transforms this music from nonsense to some sense and maybe marvel. With my stringent standards, this was definitely much harder than recording "VII. Cadenza I" or "IX. Interludium B [Toccata]". Oh ya, the music I enjoy listening to now the most is Sorabji's fugues from OC, particular my recordings of this, "VIII. Fuga III [Dux Primus]", "XI. Fuga IV [Dux Primus]", and "XI. Fuga IV [Dux Quartus]" lol [DISCLAIMER] If you're unfamiliar with this style of music, it is suggested that you go through the description of this previous video for the necessary background: https://youtu.be/CjZe5I2dJKc. All movements from Opus Clavicembalisticum I've recorded: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIDZcmE0XODCfwXtlHvJ3-fZSYVOf5MMR All works by Sorabji I've recorded: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIDZcmE0XODBZjc2ISVcJB9--pTWaWRME At time of recording, Eric is a full-time software engineer working in Big Tech, graduated from the University of Waterloo, Computer Science major. @musicforever60_official on IG: https://www.instagram.com/musicforever60_official/ #piano #music #sorabji ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW9CZMUHDP0

Credit to: https://youtu.be/BzhasvHiQ_U Eric Xi Xin Liang was interviewed right after the OSM(Orchestre Symphonique De Montreal) Manulife Competition Finals (Piano Class B) Nov.21, 2015 at Maison Symphonique De Montreal ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKdu_az3vTo

Recorded on May 3rd, 2020 at home. Learned and refined in about 9 hours. This is a strange piece... yet tonal, provocative, meticulously created, tame, and very original at every phrase -- which makes just more of a treat to listen to. I. Un poco animato [0:00] Second Movement: https://youtu.be/mWoJ-qG6aUk At time of recording, Eric is a 3rd year Computer Science student at the University of Waterloo. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM9myEXCu6g