After a glorious triumph for my piano performance in 2017, I set out to smash new horizons. Now that the myth of undergraduate level impenetrability was destroyed, it was time to aim higher: secure LTCL, Licentiate of Trinity College London, last-year undergraduate level performance².

For me, the increase in difficulty was primarily technical. I could imagine and create stories fluently, and register emotional and stylistic nuances, but the technical facility and ability to keep a steady tempo, reach the notes, and secure consistency would be the main issue. Now, pieces would exhaust the range of possible hand maneuvers, and the large number of possible combinations of the maneuvers would make phrasing challenging. Unifying sections and phrases would require a subtle underlying essence. Conceptualizing the piece as one piece amidst all the technical metamorphoses would be the big maturity jump from ATCL to LTCL².

The program was to last between 37 and 43 minutes. I started with Scarlatti's "Sonata in G Minor, K 426"³, a nice, tempered introduction to the program, establishing a clear presence, a short proclamation of bells ringing. It bears the light Italian style, but the intensity of the whole program would be loudly established with Schumann's long "Sonata in G Minor, Op. 22".

This piece, in its 4-movement monstrosity, exercises and frustrates technical facility to the maximum. The introduction, demanding heavy pace, serves as a rollercoaster, with a necessity for a melody established through high right-hand notes or low bass somewhat reminiscent of "The Lark". It would work well as a piece by itself. The liberties Schumann takes in deviation from a strict G minor theme is indicative of his Romantic style, and the acceleration towards the end resembles a growing intensity and near-frustration of the composer.

The middle, which I call "the eye of the storm", is the only calm place, not with the same piety as Schubert's 2nd movement of his A-major sonata, but with a breath of relief; it must be sufficiently relaxed so that the listener has no indication of the coming storm in Schumann's 3rd movement, which, while certainly in double-voice, stormy G minor, is more a strong shower than the hurricane of the introduction.

The ending, offering octave jumps and many passages of steady drizzles of a mysterious B-flat major usually expressed through wishes in the F dominant, appears to taper off into a graceful realization, but then the imagined character of the sonata suddenly goes insane and scrambles around, faster and faster, until all sanity is lost and the piece crashes to its end. Personally, I am disappointed by the lack of the 3rd and 4th movements' ability to match the intensity and sheer emotional weight of the 1st. In my opinion, it is almost as if Schumann composed the first parts of his sonata, then decided to tack on some movements.

After a hurricane comes the sun…well, after quite a bit of time, so after Schumann came a longer pause than usual, before the light tunes of Scarlatti picked back up in the neighboring "Sonata in G Major, K 427"^{3, 4}. These are gently and strongly happy, gentle in the delicate 16th-note phrases in alternating melodies in right and left hand, and strong with the proclamation chords, the same bells that range in the G minor sonata.

The next dimension of my recital moved into Chopin's "Polonaise op. 44 in F# Minor 'Tragic'", a piece I had practiced since fall of 2016 nearly two years ago, a piece I exhibited on Jan. 22, 2017 in front of a large crowd for a scholarship concert. Its intensity is emotional and grave, while Schumann's is sharp and tumultuous. Naturally, the Polonaise maintains a dance or waltz feel, but this one feels substantially more burdened, as if a heavy weight has landed on the pianist's shoulders. The starting allegro moderato is well-structured: a theme manifested three times, with two beautiful B-flat scale and dance sections separating them, the respite of full chord intensity. The main complexity here is maintaining the same momentum through and creating enough difference between the return of the theme. Each iteration grows in strength, until at last the wave crashes upon the shore to the scene of a marching band. It slowly marches to the city, maintains its peak, and then gently recedes. Care is taken to vary the repeating motif in not just dynamics, but also subtleties of timing and legato/staccato.

The middle section, with Tempo di Mazurka, is indeed a true mazurka; it is delicate and tender, and cannot afford the intense nature of the first movement. One imagines a character crying 'Why?' and 'Look how beautiful this all is!' But as the zenith of the theme is reached, the polonaise swerves back to the creepy and soft undertones of the introduction of the 1st movement. The third movement is a repeat of several sections of the 1st movement is performed, followed by a swing to a conclusion requiring both intensity and grace in a technically and emotionally difficult final phrase. To me, this was the most satisfying piece, as I had practiced it for the longest, and it offered a smooth, continuous fabric; one cannot puncture it in the same way as one does Schumann.

No performance is complete without a piece by my favorite composer, Beethoven. So the conclusion is his "Fantasia in B", which upon listening does not resemble Beethoven much, as it takes a large (unforgivable) number of sudden switches in tempo and dynamics, scrambling the mind more than it fascinates the mind. But some elements that made "Rage Over the Lost Penny" great are present here: the pounces in the bass, a similar narrative of having found stability at the end. A theme presented in the middle of the piece is modified several times, from a rolling recurrent wave in 6/8 time to bouncy fragments in 2/4. The technical challenge arrives in the presence of large jumps, trills and loudness balance, solo scales that cannot afford mistakes, and a mix of triplets in one hand with 16th notes in the other. One also considers how the entire piece should be unified, which I do by keeping Beethoven's energetic, vibrant spirit throughout.

(The title comes from the fact that this program is dominated by Romantic selections.)

The performance proceeded with the same attitude as ATCL: Express music vigorously and joyfully, and the rest will follow. The result was the same: an LTCL diploma with Distinction. It was May 2018, the sun was shining, those were excellent times. I would continue my piano investigations for two years, learning thrilling pieces like Medtner's "Sonata Tragica" and Balakirev's "Islamey", but that's a story for another time.

Footnotes

¹ Yet another article borrowing the title of Folliott Pierpoint's hymn "For the Beauty of the World"! Can you find the other two?

² You'll notice that, in the ATCL article, I stress piano performance and its beauty as the ends, and ATCL as the means. In this article, I will emphasize that distinction less, because whenever I say LTCL or reference an exam, it is assumed to be subservient to musical inherently.

³ Paradoxically, there are many pieces much longer than this one called sonatinas!

⁴ Scarlatti's two sonatas are considered part of the same piece by Trinity College London's program standards, and both must be played, but nothing prevented me from splitting when I performed them.