study . live . teach
Music lessons in Slovakia are split into three stages with the first stage lasting four years, the second is also four years and the third is two or three (I’ll find out when my kids get there). Max finished the first stage this year which means he had to perform for the head of the music school and then played for a special graduation concert (Elisabeth did this last year).
For this year’s recitals, we have Elisabeth playing a duet (Mazas Rondo from Twelve Little Duets) with her teacher.
With the holiday season comes the season for winter recitals. This year Max played some very interesting duos and trios. He and two other guitarists from their music school did an experiment with “Caravan” a classic jazz piece for guitar. Along with Elisabeth they played a very nice classical piece. You can see that on Elisabeth’s recitals page as well. Along with a couple more duos and trios Max also had a voice recital for which he sang two songs. You can check out all the performances after the jump…
With Christmas coming up fast we have our winter recital and concert season. Both kids get lots of opportunities to perform. I think that’s a great experience for them, even though it can be a little stressful. It’s interesting to watch as they learn to put a little more emotion into their performances.
Elisabeth and Max play a duet
Max started off the concert and recital season a couple of weeks ago and now Elisabeth has just finished her violin recital. This year Elisabeth worked hard on technique and put out a great performance of “Kujawiak” by H. Wieniawski. Click through to watch the recital (we still have four more concerts or recitals so I’ll be adding more clips to this and Max’s post).
Max got to kick off the spring concert season playing Ferdinando Carulli’s Andante for his Music School’s Tenth Anniversary concert. He and Elisabeth will have their recitals June 10th and 12th and the school’s annual recital highlight concert is June 9th. [Read more…]
Elisabeth has had some more opportunities to play her violin for various concerts and recitals this year. In November her music school held a 100 year celebration of two Slovak and Czech composers. For that concert Elisabeth played “Songs My Mother Taught Me” by Dvořak. Click through to see that video plus another with the performance that Elisabeth considers her best so far (coming soon).
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When you’re ten years old it’s not easy to play your recital piece in front of a crowd of people but it must be even harder to play when there’s a camera three feet away capturing your every false note for posterity. So Kudos to Max and Danko. They were invited to provide the musical interludes at the Grand Opening of a new exhibit at the Central Slovakia Museum in Banská Bystrica.
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I was going to put all of Elisabeth’s concerts and recitals in one post but this was too special. Elisabeth’s teacher asked if Jana would be willing to accompany Elisabeth for her end of the year finale on the violin. So here we have Elisabeth and Jana performing Concertino in Russian Style.
