{"id":1691,"date":"2016-03-04T21:47:14","date_gmt":"2016-03-04T21:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/?p=1691"},"modified":"2016-03-04T21:47:22","modified_gmt":"2016-03-04T21:47:22","slug":"another-week-another-piano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/2016\/03\/04\/another-week-another-piano\/","title":{"rendered":"Another week, another piano"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Professor David Owen Norris reports on another interesting week!<\/em><\/p>\n

Since I appeared on Radio 3\u2019s special folk-music\u00a0In Tune<\/i>\u00a0from the Ralph Vaughan Williams Memorial Library last month, I\u2019ve been inundated with RVW-related things, from articles with confidential theories concerning which I must not breathe a word, to happy anecdotes. Most interesting, however, is the invitation to play the composer\u2019s piano, which is taking up residence at Leith Hill Place, the childhood home that Vaughan Williams gave to the National Trust. It was a media occasion –\u00a0I appeared live on national BBC television news and on Radio 3\u2019s\u00a0In Tune<\/em>, and clips were featured in news programmes all through the day, including Radio 4\u2019s\u00a0PM\u00a0<\/em>(In Tune is on iPlayer here<\/a>, the piece\u00a0is about 35 minutes in). Several of the papers sent photographers and journalists – including the Guardian (article here<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Ralph<\/a>
Ralph Vaughn Williams’ Broadwood Piano. National Trust.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We know a bit about how Vaughan Williams composed with the piano. When he studied with Ravel in Paris in 1909, Ravel was amazed to find that he hadn\u2019t got a piano in his digs. Perhaps he was trying to show off \u2013 that macho ‘I can compose away from the piano\u2019 thing. Ravel had a short way with that. \u2018How can you find new harmonies without a piano?\u2019 he asked. We can imagine Vaughan Williams giving an inward sigh of relief, for he\u2019d already been composing at this piano, a Broadwood upright, for four years, since he bought it from the Royal College of Music. And he continued to compose at it for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n

All very interesting. What I\u2019m really working on this week, however, is memorising Sterndale Bennett\u2019s Fourth Piano Concerto for a performance on Saturday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor David Owen Norris reports on another interesting week! Since I appeared on Radio 3\u2019s special folk-music\u00a0In Tune\u00a0from the Ralph Vaughan Williams Memorial Library last month, I\u2019ve been inundated with RVW-related things, from articles with confidential theories concerning which I must not breathe a word, to happy anecdotes. Most interesting, however, is the invitation to play the composer\u2019s piano, which …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57407,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","column","threecol"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3YgXZ-rh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57407"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1691"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1698,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691\/revisions\/1698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}