The concert was performance by Katelyn Bouska, a doctoral student at Temple University, who is an active solo and collaborative performer on both historical and modern keyboard instruments. She played keyboard pieces from 20th century for this concert. The first one piece was 1.X. 1905, a two-movement piano sonata composed by Leoš Janáček. The two movements in this sonata are: Foreboding (Předtucha) – Con moto and Death (Smrt) – Adagio. The music's plain melody is typical 20th, with echoes of the impressionists colored with a certain amount of Slavic broodiness.
The next piece was Puppets (Loutky), Book I H.137 composed by Bohuslav Martinu. The performer talked about the wordplay in the titling of this piece, which I did not quite get due to my lack of foreign language knowledge. The distinct contrast of rhythm between different parts are the most impressive to me.
To be honest, after the performer finished all five parts of the second piece, I left the concert. I am never a big fan of classic music, I can still appreciate the beauty of the music form Baroque era. However, though I tried to be fully attentive to each note, the music still didn't have much impression on me, it just drifted through my mind without leaving a trace. Which made it dawn on me that different pieces from different could be so divided though they belongs to the same genre. Which made me remember my experience of jazz music. I am totally fine with swing, big band, or Ragtime, however, when it comes down to bop or hard bop I would be completely lost. Problems like this haunts me from time to time, is the continuing exploration with rhythm and melody would lead to the making of inaccessible pieces? .
The second concert I went to was Korean Percussion Ensembles, performed by Korean music group from our campus. I've taken a brief glance of the pint-sized version of such form, however, the one held as a concert made a huge difference.
