It’s a spectacular video you posted. I’m actually living down near the 音乐学院 and there are a few good CD shops around. Also a few street vendors who sell 盗版 editions classical music (”psst… Chopin!”). Will see if I can hunt down any of his stuff the next time I’m in one.

…Courtesy of an off-topic music post from Adsotrans (great Mandarin-English-pinyin technology there — more on this another day)…

… descends to technique

Exactly.
To set the record straight, though, just in case you’re ever walking through a freeway underpass and hear some unheavenly violin squeaking, see a case open on the ground, and then come face-to-face with syz trying to scratch out Arkansas Traveler or the Suzuki-method-simplified theme to Paganini’s Witch’s Dance:
Although I did have the honor to study some music theory with Karl Kohn and had a college violin teacher far better than I deserved, it was really a parttime undertaking. Like you, I had played as a kid but never developed any real skill. When I picked it up again in college it was too late to get in the long hours that might have made me good. The second fiddle that I eventually played in the orchestra was a position given to me more out of charity for my enthusiasm than recognition of any nascent talent. If you’re attempting this Bach piece, you’ve surpassed me by far. Still, I do enjoy the music and (although I hadn’t thought about it that way before) also like to attempt things that interest me rather than necessarily playing only what’s within reach of my actual skills.

Truth be told, I’m a pretty awful player. Motivation is the most important thing for me, and I like aiming for pieces way above my level that I really *want* to be able to play rather than sticking with easier pieces. Some of the raw joy I get playing is in the moment of stunned realization halfway through a difficult passage that you actually played it right that time! Also internalizing the strange rhythms and chords that shouldn’t work but somehow do (I really like Prokofiev for this).

Never had the experience you did studying formally at that level. Wish I did. Took lessons as a kid, but gave it up after a few years. Resumed playing in grad school when I started sitting in on undergraduate courses in the music department just for the fun of it. I was probably the least musical person in the class, but I enjoyed the lectures and found the people who were studying them genuinely interesting too. Enjoying life helps, eh?

The highlight of my music career (in violin, and believe me, a poor second fiddle kind of career) was when a professor of mine in college, Karl Kohn (who you might have heard of if you’re deep into piano) told me after a recital that my playing was “musical.”

I hadn’t played very well, I knew that. But I also knew what he meant from having listened to him play. “Musical” is what players, even very good ones, sometimes leave out when they have spent so much time with a piece — working through the technical intricacies, taming the tempos, coordinating with their fellow musicians — that they somehow forget that it is music and not exercise. Kohn’s compliment meant to me that I had managed to do what I set out to do: get as good as I could on the technical side but play it like it’s saying something and trying to be understood.

That’s what Sergeyenia does (albeit at a level I could only dream of). You can hear — and see — that he’s still playing music, not reciting. Beautiful.

Incidentally, probably because of my fiddle bias, I’ve never heard this piece. But it’s of course immediately recognizable — many of the same ideas are written all over the sonatas and partitas for violin. I was particularly struck by the section that begins around 2:30 that TS manages to give an ominous air. Very like one of those solo violin pieces (can’t think of which right now) and some key ideas that Paganini borrowed later for his solo violin works. Thanks again.