Getting Cultured

Last night I attended the senior piano recital of Tinatin Saralidze, who is part of IU South Bend's Toradze Piano Studio, which features world class piano players. Now, why would I be doing that? Actually, Tinatin (who goes by Tika) is one of my student workers. She is from Georgia, the former Soviet Republic. International students are very much restricted on how they can work when attending college here and are limited to on-campus employment, so I tend to hire quite a few of them (Tika is actually my third Georgian piano player who has worked for me).

When she asked if I could attend the recital, I asked her what she was playing. She said Beethoven's 7th. Now why did I ask that? What do I know about classical piano? What was I going to say, "Yeah, that's a good one. I'll be curious how you play the moderato section in the middle. Oh, you're playing it in D Major? That will really bring out the nuances in what I believe was one of Beethoven's best compositions."

This was her senior recital, as she will be graduating and then headed off to Chicago for graduate school. She, along with all the international student workers I've hired, are great workers and I enjoy getting to know them. As for the recital, I was only able to stay for the first of two pieces (which still ran about 20 minutes as it had 4 different movements). I thought she did a very good job. Kind of amazing that they have to play such complicated compositions totally by memory.

Fortunately, no one put a Pez dispenser on my lap.