So I still take private piano lessons and consider myself half a pianist (I've got some technique, some musical intuition, no sight reading skills, no repertoire). My current teacher, EJ, is crazy. Crazy good, that is. I have no idea why she's not a famous performer since everytime I've heard her she's been near flawless. She's also a lot of fun as a teacher though I've yet to get fully used to her style.

During my lesson this morning, I asked her about when I could tackle the Liszt B Minor Sonata. As in how many more years of traning do I need. She said I could play it now (yeah right) but I couldn't get it performance ready. So instead she told me to look up "Mazeppa" by Liszt and try that out if I like it. Mazeppa is one of Liszt's transcendental etudes. These etudes, like Chopin's famous etudes, are beautifully musical and hard as sh*t. Rubinstein once asserted there are no techincal difficulties greater in all of piano repertoire than those found in the Chopin Etudes, except for perhaps Liszt's transcendental etudes. I took out the score and listened to Mazeppa.

F*CK.

I'm supposed to be able to play this, even not well? I can't figure out if my piano teacher thinks I'm a good player (as would be implied by her giving me this piece) or has just given up on my becoming a good pianist and is giving me whatever flashy funky piece I happen to bring up during a lesson. Perhaps when you listen to Mazeppa, you'll understand what I mean when I say my piano teacher is crazy. Good crazy, of course.

Rant done. Sound snippet of the day: Liszt - Mazeppa (published as a single performance piece but also as No. 4 of the Transcendental Etudes). Played by Claudio Arrau. This is an amazon snippet so it's all legal and stuff, though the quality sucks.