Though she loves to play all classical music on the piano, Elon University Professor of Music Victoria Fischer Faw’s recital Sept. 3 showed her passion for the work of Bela Bartok, a Hungarian composer whose music is not a traditional Bach concerto.
“I’ve been studying Bartok music all my life and I’ve just come back from a big research and performance project,” Fischer Faw said. “I’ve been playing and researching all over the world. So this is sort of my comeback. I wanted to bring it to Elon.”
As one of the first performance events of the year, Fischer Faw played music that had been close to her heart for many years. Her love for piano emerged at an early age simply from having one in her home and she was naturally curious to play it. Fischer Faw said it felt like she was born to love and play the piano.
“I am piano,” she said. “Piano is me.”
Fischer Faw became interested in Bartok in school when she listened to his unusual music. After digging around for answers to questions she had regarding his work, she realized Bartok had never been the subject of research before.
“There were things about it that just didn’t seem like other music and they fascinated me,” Fischer Faw said. “I started asking questions to my teachers and looking in books and I couldn’t find the answers and then finally one day it occurred to me that nobody had answered them. And maybe that was my calling.”
Fischer Faw has performed Bartok’s music in recitals like the one at Elon all over the country playing. But she said her love for his music goes beyond simply learning and playing the songs note by note. The audiences she performed in front of gave her energy to make the performance fun, Fischer Faw said.
“The audience gives back so much energy, it just makes it fun,” she said. “You could be a nervous wreck ahead of time and you get up there and the audience is interested and enthusiastic and it’s just a blast.”
Fischer Faw’s students feel the same passion for her music. Senior music major Wesley Rose has been close with Fischer Faw since his sophomore year.
“It was great to watch one of my professors put into action the skills that they teach,” Rose said. “The music was my favorite part of the night, not because it’s the music I love, but because of the story Dr. Fischer was able to tell with it.”
Fischer Faw teaches piano, music research and piano pedagogy, a program designed for college level piano students to teach children how to play. It focuses on informed piano teaching, not just hitting the correct notes on the keyboard. Many faculty and community children take advantage of this program.
In her music research teaching, Fischer Faw mentors a few scholars at a time through their senior seminars. She’s passionate about not only her own Bartok research, but her students’ findings as well.
“It’s never stopped,” Fischer said of her own research. “I keep finding things and people want to know about [Bartok]. So that’s why my thing is a mixture of research and analysis and study of the music, which forms how I play the music.”