Korea!

Yes I've posted it on facebook, but I need to be fair to my non-fb followers as well!

Admittedly I could be doing better things on the flight back to KL than typing out this note. Still I've decided to ditch watching Red Riding Hood, for the past five days in Korea has been absolutely fantastic. And if you're reading this expecting an interesting read, you'd better scurry if you're not particularly used to the wonderful world of musical jargon.

Arriving at KLIA with no clue about what's to come next was only one of my worries. Having to be the only boy in our travel group of six was starting to bother me quite a bit. Yes I'm usually more comfortable being around the opposite sex, but it dawned on me that I would be staying with them for a couple of days, which ultimately meant adhering to the unwritten rules of window shopping and hair blowing. Still it was my first time travelling to foreign soil without my parents, and what could be more exciting than that?

For Ms Fan however it was just another of her kazillion events. Having rushed back from a recital in Bangkok to be our 'guardian' for the next few days, it's her sixth time at the Ewon Cultural Centre in Cheonan, approximately 1.5 hours away from Incheon, Seoul, where they have their annual international meet involving masterclasses, performances and recitals, with groups from Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Phillipines. More cultural variety came however from the professors who came as well, notably Israel, Hong Kong and Poland. And you never mess with the Polish when playing some of their beloved Fryderyk Franciszek.

Issa like Narnia in summer!

We landed at Incheon, and were ushered to the bus, which took us straight to the town of Cheonan. What was interesting was the ruralness of it all, which seemed like a trip from Kuala Lumpur to Pahang. Course there was no time to admire all of that, glancing quite often at Professor Sunico, a tall burly man from the Phillipines, Professor Yeo, apparently 'a name synonymous to the classical music in Indonesia' due to her expertise in guiding 14 year old students to glide through Liszt etudes with ease, and Professor Sudarno, who seemed...pretty nice.

Turns out all the other profs were 'pretty nice' as well, having dealt with prospective young children for ages. Prof Reichart from Israel knows how to make up a story for almost every piano piece, and prof Benjamin Loh (Benji as I'd like to call him from now on seeing as he calls everyone by nicknames anyway) from Singapore can really crack jokes, just to name a few. But I was yet to find that out, as I went to my room with ze roommate, Risang Daharna Giri. Race is obvious.

Each room comes with an upright, which is pretty darn sweet. However the moment he played La Campanella was when I (you would too) nearly defecated in my pants. Here I am with a Bach prelude and fugue, a hopeless ballade and a half-boiled Chopin nocturne (as Ms Fan likes to call it), while I managed to make out a few pieces the others were playing:

- Liszt/Paganini Etudes 2, 3 and 6, Hungarian Rhapsody no 6

- Rach Piano Concerto no 2, all mvts, Piano Sonata no 2, mvt 1

- Chopin Scherzo no 2, Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise Brilliante, some etudes

- Beethoven Sonatas all mvts: Pathetique, Tempest, Les Adieux, Waldstein

Piece those together (no pun intended) and you get WW3 in second floor.

Finally I can annoy the heck out of my parents

Still, could be worse. Our group wasn't that shoddy either, with captivating pieces such as Widmung and Liebestraum 3. That ultimately made jay jay one of the least achieving pianist of the entire camp. Also another Korean guy joined us shortly afterwards, but that was all. Which accounts to only three males in a nearly all-girl festival of 40. Joy.

Just to give you an idea of the whole thing, there's an orientation session on the first day, where they invite some profs to perform some music for the newcomers. It sort of defeats the whole purpose of an orientation, because instead of making us more comfortable, you get hit hard by the subtle complexity of Jeux d'eau, the epicness of Rhapsody in Blue as well as the length and boredom of the Polonaise-Fantasy and some Moszkodlwsgskfski whatever his name is. You sort of get demotivated cause you've heard that apparently some people in the crowd know how to play those stuff. Or maybe that's the way the Koreans say hello.

Anyways the next two days would be full of masterclasses and performances, where each person would be allocated two masterclass sessions, and will have to perform at the end of the day. Still on the bright side you're not graded no matter how crappy your playing is. The real fear comes from the masterclasses, which I shall blabber on about later. On the second last day the competition begins, and that's where everybody starts to do whatever I almost did when I heard Risang play. And finally we were free to do whatever we liked on the last day before we departed for Malaysia. I think you know where this is going.

Having no masterclasses on Saturday meant that I could laze around doing nothing, well apart from following the group around for the whole day to take notes based on the profs' advice for them. Before that however we went to the handsome Prof Reichart (Ms Fan's yummy 007), teaching some stuff to a Hongkie. Arguably that was one of the best masterclasses ever, however I'm subject to bias cause of the fact that she plays the ballade no 1, and that he told a story. What more could you ask for?

I'll try and resurrect the 'story' of the ballade:

'...think of the first five measures of the piece as the grandfather of the village calling out to his men, with thousands of children flocking over to hear whatever he has to say. The booming forte and pesante octaves represents his voice, and you can imagine the children asking him 'what story are you going to tell us grandfather?' in the sixth and seventh measure. Only one child remains asking him the question, as shown by the tie into the Moderato section. That is where grampa says 'Once upon a time...'

Then he starts talking about heroes, war and ceasefire, like any wise grandfather should. And if you piano ignoramuses think that bedtime stories have absolutely no link whatsoever to music, you're dead wrong. At least it helped me get a pretty decent looking girl knocking at my door asking who the heck was making such a noise. But in all seriousness, it was my first time ever experiencing a masterclass session, and it was an amazing experience. Still, not as bonkers as Professor Ma Cong's one. (shall skip the others to actually incentively make you guys read on)

We already had quite a bad impression of Ma Cong before Petrina's masterclass, simply because Ms Fan just casually told us about a student's horrible experience with him, not telling us that that was the worst case scenario of course. It also didn't help when the girl before her was playing the 1st mvt of the Pathetique sonata (and being bashed severly for it), while Petrina was getting ready to play the third, along with her Liebestraum. And it definitely didn't help when he asked her to play Beethoven first.

Turns out that he was quite the eccentric funny type, and due to us being on the same wavelength (he's a Honkie), his esoteric jokes became all the funnier. Imagine a Hong Kong soap opera, with a crazy guy screaming 我要杀死你 (meaning I want to kill you for all you ang mohs out there) at his fifth wife who unusually went out of the kitchen to do some grocery shopping. Then bring that into bars of five-note running passages galore, and it should make a little sense. Though when I see them do it they usually say 我要 and breathe heavily for a long time to build up dramatic tension before the 杀死你, but that's not the point. The most hilarious part was when he said that char siew fan is not char siew fan without either of the rice or the char siew, basically emphasizing that both the melody and the accompaniment cannot survive without one another. 'Also, pedalling is like gravy, there cannot be too little on your fan, nor can there be too much'. Just some words of wisdom to make you crack up each time you perform.

They serve some random food over there (prepared by the locals presumably), and if you're interested in trying out kimchi for the first time, it's seriously not for those who hate pepper in their soup. In fact when the Malaysian team walked 15 minutes to town for something different, it was kimchi veggies as well. And the exact 'sushi' of sorts which they served in the restaurant was exactly the same as the one served in the centre the next morning!

Wrong country mate

The night of the second day was when I decided to move up to stay with the girls for reasons forbidden and ignorant to be unveiled (Note: it gets slightly awkward, so if you're under 13, go back to playing Pet Society). The thing is that the toilets are being shared with both Venus and Mars, so if there's a door malfunction while you're doing your thing, you'd be best off being relatives with the ostrich family. Oh and for all the boys out there, it's also important to note that girls can bully you gao gao, especially when it comes to asking about your love life. Haiya indeed...

(I'll really skip the competition because it's too long winded to talk about, so here's what happened after that)

Professor Sunico was very interested to give masterclasses free of charge to all of us, so we were more than happy to forgo the Cheonan trip (which apparently brings you to the Samsung building, just to tell you that it's there, and immediately bringing you to see a Buddhist temple). He's the type who's very intricate with every detail, which in my case knew which bass note I should play for my nocturne at any given point, and which fingering is best for the running notes of the ballade, both without looking at the score. We learned a lot from him, such as the fact that tempos should be based on Andante, for it is universally known as the 'walking pace'. Anything faster than Andante would be faster than how we walk, and the same theory applies for the slower speeds. Fingerings suggested in any edition should be followed as closely as possible, for they are usually the best ones. It literally made me think of how much I've missed for the past decade since I started the piano, and the amount of wrong beliefs I've had of the classical world.

At night we were treated to some Korean music from the Korean Arts School or something like that, and you could literally compare their vocal range to Freddy Mercury. The really disturbing thing was the fact that the lead singer confessed the fact that he loved me (is that normal in Korea??) due to my singing voice I think? cause we had to represent Malaysia earlier on by singing Sejahtera Malaysia. Ah well.

'빠르게! Send this to my ex!'

Our flight was scheduled to be at approximately 4:30 pm, which meant that we had to wake up bright and early if we were to have a remote chance of shopping in Seoul. So we slept for 3 hours, woke up at 4 and got ready to take the bus at 5:30. Unfortunately we had to wait for the Indonesians to come along, and being the slower bunch we finally set off at around 6:30. Korea's a charming place, whether at the countryside or in the city. You get cute doggies in Cheonan which the girls go wild about, and guys with makeup on in Seoul, which ironically garners quite the opposite reaction. Underground shopping isn't as interesting as it should be though, and the only thing which seemed worth looking were SNSD posters pasted everywhere in shops. The food is worthy of a shoutout, especially the yummy yummy bibim naengmyeon, with loads of chilli paste :3

Not to mention green tea and vanilla in perfect harmony

So that's basically it, and a big shoutout to Ms Fan for being such a wonderful organizer, Le Shea for being sweet, Wan San for smiling during awkward occasions, Amanda for making the absolute lamest jokes ever and Petrina for proving that branded luggages can still stand some serious check-in abuse. Thank you guys for making this trip one to remember :)