Cadenza

Both this weekend and last weekend, I went down to Stanford to see some of my friends' senior recitals, performances organized by Stanford's music department for graduating seniors. Last week, Tracy played a number of beautiful waltzes on the piano. Next year, Tracy will be in the UCSF dental class of 2011. With selections from older composers like Chopin and Debussy to contemporary pieces from The Waltz Project, it was a fantastic selection of music. This week, Doris (piano) and her friend Claire (violin) had a joint performance. In particular, I loved the Beethoven Sonata in A-flat Major, Op. 110 (Doris) - it has this amazingly dynamic range of sounds, moods, and themes. She also played an absolutely wonderful Transcendental Etude No. 9 ("Ricordanza") by Liszt. I really love the airy, graceful feel of that piece; the word transcendental really fits. My favorite violin pieces were a Tchaikovsky Concerto in D and a Sarasate ("Navarra"). The Tchaikovsky has a gorgeous theme, and the Sarasate is really fun since it's a violin duet. In any case, it was good to support friends who have spent so much time preparing. I miss classical music and wish I had more time to practice.

In other news, I spent a few hours in the neurosurgery operating rooms yesterday. During BMB, they have an awesome shadowing program for us to see different neurosurgeries. Yesterday, we saw a temporal lobectomy because of intractable seizures. It's amazing to see the precision and poise of the surgeons as they expose part of the brain, identify by EEG abnormal areas, and carefully cut it out before sewing the tissue and plating the bone back together. The surgeons, anesthesiologists, and residents were all very good at answering our questions and showing us interesting things.

I'm going to have to concede to studying for the rest of the weekend. Every time a test comes up, it feels like I'm playing chicken with the exam. How far dare I go before picking up the syllabus? Except in this kind of game of chicken, I'm always going to lose. So I tell myself soon, I'll start reading soon.