This Valentine’s morning, as I browsed through my Twitter feed, I was instantly transported back to one spring semester during my undergraduate days. The tweet went like this:

A Strauss waltz requires a slightly longer downbeat, about 1.14 longer than beats 2 & 3. Thus, you should conduct not in 3, but in pi. (@mmusing)

Suddenly I found myself back in the college practice room, discovering Ravel’s Noble and Sentimental Waltzes. I remembered the sheer joy of finding and understanding every detail of these fragments—of letting the themes waft in and out of each waltz—of crafting the ethereal epilogue.

At some point, I began to play the opening waltz in Pi. I didn’t know then and don’t know now where the inspiration came from. My teacher’s eyebrows went up, but he encouraged me to develop the interpretation. I heard a lot of “Well, I’ve never heard this played quite that way before” as a student. This was one of the first works in which I truly found my own voice in a good way.

A few years before, when I auditioned as a freshman, one of the piano professors came up afterward and told me, “Don’t do this. Go home and get married.” After I played the Ravel for my jury, that same professor wrote me a note of apology for the remark, saying that he didn’t think it was possible to have changed as I had. Perhaps he had changed a bit too.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! May you find your own voices in all your playing, with Pi or not. Here are videos of performances of the Valses Nobles & Sentimentales by Arthur Rubinstein and Martha Argerich 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

 

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