DANGEROUS MOONLIGHT

Dangerous? Moonlight??

Yea. Sometimes it is. Especially when musically speaking. I'll explain later.

It's way after midnight, unusually chilly. In fact, I'm drinking hot tea and was forced to put an extra blanket on the bed. 

Despite the unseasonably cool weather, mockingbirds are making a racket in some nearby trees tonight. I occasionally go out on the back porch and whistle to them. They immediately whistle back - and often imitate the sounds that I make. It's highly entertaining.

Speaking of entertaining.....
that's my smooth transition to another subject

I'm still in the (tedious) process of transferring my old piano recordings to 3mp files. Tonight I found a recording that I really like (for a rare change).

It's my performance of the C# minor piano sonata, op.27 no.2, by Beethoven - - popularly known as the Moonlight Sonata.
Beethoven never called it the Moonlight.
His title was Sonata quasi una fantasia.

The sonata was dubbed "Moonlight" because of the slow, beautifully haunting first movement.

I recorded the entire sonata, but it's well over fifteen minutes long - so I'm only the posting the final (third) movement - which is a fiery presto agitato. It's extremely difficult and (in retrospect) I like my performance and am amazed at my virtuosity.

Beethoven wrote this sonata in 1801 and - pianistically speaking - he was way ahead of his time.

I first performed this sonata publicly in Riverside, California when I was twenty years old. 
This particular recording was made about a decade later when I was thirty. 

It is kind of dangerous to play the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata.

As I was recording this my only goal was not to make a mistake. One false move and you're dead.

PATHETIQUE

Run for your lives!
You're going to be inflicted with another piano tape.

Whenever I'm depressed and burdened with a myriad of seemingly unresolvable problems - - whenever I don't feel like writing a cutesy, upbeat blog post - - I resort to posting my piano music. 

I'm sure it bores the hell out of some people, but it inevitably lifts my spirits by reminding me of the person I used to be. 

Yesterday, while sorting through the hopeless pile of junk that's in the garage, I found - among my mother's possessions - one of my old piano tapes. This surprised me because I didn't remember the tape. I must have given it to my Mom long ago and then forgot about it.

According to the label on the tape, I recorded it in Anaheim, CA, 1983. 
It's the complete piano sonata #8 in C minor, op. 13 by Ludwig van Beethoven - known as the "Pathetique".

Beethoven never called it "Pathetique", but his music publisher added the word on the title for dramatic effect.

Beethoven wrote this sonata in 1798 when he was 27. Upon listening to it last night, I was struck by how vastly ahead of his time Beethoven was.
The intense passion and technical difficulty of this work was previously unheard of in the 1700's. It's completely astounding (not to mention the fact that he was already going deaf at that time).

Okay, I'll admit it -
I'm also impressed at how well I performed it, considering that it's one of my very early recordings. Through the years I've recorded the Pathetique Sonata at least six times, but this is my earliest known recording of it.

Last night I transferred my tape to an Mp3 file (via Audacity) and today I uploaded it to my SoundCloud account (took me twenty minutes to figure out what my password was for SoundCloud).

Since the sonata is very long, I've only posted the first movement here:
Grave - Allegro di molto e Con Brio.

FROM BEETHOVEN TO YOU

 Ludwig van Beethoven

(1770-1827)

I recorded at least a dozen of Beethoven's piano sonatas and I still (fortunately) have most of the tapes.

This is the Sonata in F sharp major, op. 78 (the first movement). Although it's one of his lesser known sonatas (and one of the shortest) it was among his personal favorites. It was written in 1809, when Beethoven was already completely deaf.

This has always been one of my favorite Beethoven sonatas. It is not only technically brilliant, it's also extremely satisfying to perform.

I recorded this in Los Angeles when I was in my early 20's. I remember that, at the time, I had bronchitis and a strep throat. 
(in my flaming youth I could work when I was sick. Nowadays I have trouble navigating when I'm well)

I recently transferred the old original tape to a WAVE file. Unfortunately there are a few annoying "skips" and "jumps" that weren't in the original recording, but I don't think it sounds too bad.
(I posted this on SoundCloud)