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I don't usually do "Top 40's" pieces, but when a student came to me with Debussy's "Claire de Lune", I fell in love with it again, and decided to record it.
This is from what I posted with the video on YT:
Do you need a break, some #respite from what feels like an unending barrage of bad news – mass shootings, hyper-partisanship, weather disasters, the endemic pandemic? I know that I did, and when one of my students came to me with this “Top 40’s Classical Piano Piece”, working on it, first with him, then on my own, I gradually entered Debussy’s world and left this one behind. I got some respite, and my hope is that listening to this piece will bring you some respite as well.
I started my original #respite playlist during the depths (or was it the heights) of the pandemic. Things were really getting me down; I felt like a prisoner in the house, and we were also in a period with bad news similar to what we have today hammering at my consciousness every day. One day I went into my studio and started playing Earl Wilde's transcription of the Adagio from Marcello's Oboe Concerto, quarter note around 40bpm. There is something about music at that tempo that can be very settling and centering. Music of that sort was part of the "super learning" thing back in the 80's (or was it the late 70's), and there was even a place in Maryland called the Lozanov Institute that used it to teach foreign languages more quickly. Anyhow - there seems to be an entraining effect that happens. Pulse and breathing rates slow, something happens in the brain, and... we relax and center; we get some respite.
And that's what happened to me that day. For a little while, as I entered Debussy's world more recently, I entered Marcello's, and I completely forgot about all the crap happening in the outer world. I got some RESPITE. That's half the story. The other part is what I would call an epiphany - "if playing (and listening) to music like that brought me respite, could it also work in that way for people whom I played for? for recordings that I made?
The answer was, and remains, "yes".
And so I continue making these recordings with the hope and intention that as they have brought me some peace, some respite, they can do it for others as well.