Frank Corcoran

irish composer

TOTALLY ALERT STORY-TELL IS BEST :

1967 in Dublin I began “studying” piano with Miss Elizabeth Huban – yes, check back to Cortot and Schnabel and she in her electric Paris before the War.
Wow! She then said : ” Now press that four part C major chord down. Again. Softly. That tenor voice isn´t singing . More tone. Now pianissimo. You hear? You listen? Listen!”
I was shocked, whocked – up till then nobody had ever told me thus to listen to that acoustic arc between my left ear , the right shoulder, fore-arm, finger and -tip pressure.
We ” did” Beethoven. SING! We touched Schoenberg´s Opus 11, we re-touched ( listening haptically ) his 6 Little Piano Pieces: I hear Miss Huban´s – to me- ” Don´t you HEAR Mahler in this chord ? ” “Listen to yourself playing that unison, descending phrase in that last, poised miniature In Memoriam eg. as performed by all the violins ( – violas, too ? – Celli ? ) of the Berlin Philharmonic…. ”
Did I practise piano ? Enough ? Enough for Miss Elizabeth Huban ? No. – I skimped, I sweated endesslessly onto and over my worried young composer´s note-paper a few bars of my own compositional concoction. My self-challenge. But she´d unlocked in me LISTENING. My trumpets salute !

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