It’s the beginning of September. For many – including Orli Shaham’s family – it’s time to go back to school and back to work. For Orli herself, with just two weeks to go til the premiere of Steve Mackey’s piano concerto, Stumbling to Grace, with the St. Louis Symphony, it’s time for some intense “nose-to-the-keyboard” work.
It’s not as if Orli took the summer off. On top of all the performances she gave over the summer, she was at the keyboard for hours every day, getting Steve’s work under her fingers, and going over the tougher passages until she is able to execute them flawlessly.
And now the real push begins. “I know all the notes, and I feel I understand Steve’s concept for the piece; how he came to this music as a metaphor for the evolution of a person’s intellectual maturity,” says Orli. “Now it’s my job to communicate that message in my interpretation.”
“I’m working at it now so that every moment is second nature, and I can pull it off under any condition, even once we bring the orchestra in for the first time. For me this is the most intense phase of learning a piece, and the most rewarding,” she says, adding, “It’s very different to put a concerto together when you can’t actually go to a recording and listen to it. That’s the challenge of giving the world premiere performance of a piece.”
Steve’s reaction to Orli’s long hours and laborious efforts on behalf of the new piece: “I’m glad you are sweating a little bit … it is a concerto after all! … and fortune favors the bold.”
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