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Video Closed Captions

(music)

Paavana Kumar:
"Ondine" by Maurice Ravel is from his suite Gaspard de la Nuit, and it's based on this

Paavana Kumar:
beautiful symbolist poem about a water sprite, an ondine, who falls in love with a mortal

Paavana Kumar:
man. And she describes her palace under water to him and asks him to come be king of her

Paavana Kumar:
castle with her. But when he says, "No," she laughs at first... and then she dissolves

Paavana Kumar:
into water and streams down his window pane.

(music)

Paavana Kumar:
I've really loved playing it because not only is the poem it's based on so beautiful, but

Paavana Kumar:
the music itself just has this fluid motive that keeps on going. It's like this beautiful

Paavana Kumar:
symbol that always stays with you.

(music)

Paavana Kumar:
I started playing piano about... [laughs] 18 years ago... 18 years ago, now. And when

Paavana Kumar:
I first started to play, I soon realized that when I was hearing pitches, I would know what

Paavana Kumar:
they were without having to play them on the piano or having a point of reference.

Paavana Kumar:
And then even later I realized that the way I was doing that was to connect each pitch to

Paavana Kumar:
a color. So I would hear a pitch and I's think "green" or "pink." And that's how I would think,

Paavana Kumar:
"Oh, it's an A," or, "It's a C." And I realized that is actually a condition called "synesthesia,"

Paavana Kumar:
which is an intuitive relationship between different senses.

(music)

Paavana Kumar:
There are two main pieces on my program: One of them is Gaspard de la Nuit, of which "Ondine"

Paavana Kumar:
is a movement, and the other is Chopin's third piano sonata in B Minor.

Paavana Kumar:
And I chose these pieces partly because of their technical range, but really more than that because of their

Paavana Kumar:
emotional range. I remember the first time I heard these pieces in concert, and I was

Paavana Kumar:
really struck by the spectrum of emotions that I was experiencing in such a short period of time.

Paavana Kumar:
You know, some of them were emotions that I couldn't even name at the time or that

Paavana Kumar:
I didn't think I would feel in everyday activities, everyday life.

(music)

Paavana Kumar:
And that is something that I have been working towards bringing across to the audience when I perform at my recital.

(music)