Same

Definitely! Same here, the opening is devastating...

When I play this I get visualizations in my mind. I hear sheep and I hear echoes. When I learned A Rose in the Garden, it is just completely repeated, so it was a very good exercise in thinking about *why* I want to repeat and what the function is in the piece. Contrast that to something like HVL Etude #1, where I think the only purpose of the repetition is to warm up the fingers and muscles... Haha In my mind, in Koyunbaba, the repetitions are a device to shift between the protagonist awake, listening to sheep milling about and asleep, dreaming of another time, both of joy and of some indeterminate tragedy. I love experimenting with this by adding some harmonics as well since they can add a dreamy feel. I think that as the piece progresses, the dream turns dark and he relives some tragedy and when he wakes up, it sticks with him, like when you wake up from an intense dream and it hangs about your mind, bothering you even though it was just a dream poking into reality.

The first time i heard this masterpiece i could imagine what scene each movement described which without any exception would be the same for anyone. This show how powerful and well composed rhis piece is.

My favorite too. For me, I see it as an ABAB poetic structure. First and third are the idyllic, beautiful pieces that lead into tragedy. Second and fourth are the releases of the built up intensity, leading right back to the calm and tranquility of the beginning of the first, albeit slightly tainted with whatever it was that the subject of the piece was experiencing that tortured him so beautifully for these fifteen minutes or so.