PianoTell Recital #2 Is Now Live!

Nightowl WieWaldi — Quick Five Blues
I enjoyed listening to this selection from your Blues lesson pieces, you play in a very relaxed and confident manner. Ironically, this music made me feel far from blue - it's more like a cure for the blues.

Thank you for your kind words , Nightowl. It is interesting that someone like you, never getting tired to claim that Blues isn't the genre of favour, quite often likes a Blues. I could consider this as a compliment (thank you again), or state the following:

Nightowl — What A Wonderful World

This is indeed a very nice song - love it. And it contains:
(drum roll)
A Blues Scale!
Actually I heard besides the Blues scale a lot of Blues elements in your piece. And I had to look up in wikipedia about its genre: It says "pop". Ok, we can forget about pop, because you can basically consider every song as pop, when it was popular at its time. Same is true for Mozart - back in his days his music was pop music.
The second mentioned genre is:
(drum roll again)
Rhythm & Blues . A progression of the Blues genre! Blues itself is IMO the easiest genre of all - except of nursery rhymes maybe. But the children of Blues (Boogie, Rock, Jazz, R&B) aren't that easy anymore. You played a quite long piece from a not so easy genre, I mean over 2¹/₂ minutes. Here and there, you hesitated a bit and some notes came a bit late. Still, you hit the essence of this piece. With less than 1 year of self-teaching, I call this really impressive. Give yourself a big hug and then some taps on your shoulder, you can be proud of your progress.

One thing I can not tell for sure is your sitting position in front of the piano. I can't tell for sure because I see only your hands, but I have the impression you are sitting quite low. This makes playing a lot harder, especially for beginners. I don't want to step into this deeper, but if you need help, there is a wonderful piano forum with a lot of amazing players, willing to help you, if you ask...

rogerch — Slow Steps

Roger You know you are my living example to get to improvisation, right? But every time you set that bar higher because you are improving in strides Very nice and you are right, the chord is beautiful and fits well into the piece. Very impressive!

rogerch — Slow Steps
One can really tell, you are enjoying to improvise. It looks like a fish in the water. I've heard this style of impro already from you, last time it was good, this time it is good again. Just different, but still with your own signature.
I enjoyed to listen to the beautiful sound, the warmth, the harmony, you did very well changing between Major and minor, here and there (at least I believe, you did). You made a good mix between repeating the known melodies to please the listener and introducing new themes to keep in interesting. I'd call this well rounded improvisation again.
Well done, Roger, I bow to you in respect!

thepianoplayer416 — When You Wish Upon a Star

Such a lovely melody (one of my favourites) and well played! And you did that robot voice thingie again It was also nice that you provided the lyrics. Very enjoyable performance, thank you!

Sam — The Never Finished Piece

It sounds very familiar and yet it isn't... because it came straight from your brain And even though you called it "Never finished piece", it finished all too soon ^_^ I half expected you'd just stop mid bar, but no, you did give it a proper ending, haha. Very nice and gentle piece!

MarieJ — Waltz in F minor

That was truly gorgeous! From the lovely imagery, the gentle yet powerful playing, and such a very, very pretty melody. It just gently moves along and leaves you with nothing but pleasant thoughts and a great feeling. The quality was very good too, so obviously your digital coming of age worked really well

iternabe — O mio babbino caro - It’s a beautiful aria, and you really make your piano sing it!

plop_symphony There was some percussion throughout starting in the middle section - was that your foot or something? I thought it actually fit really well and now I'm wondering what this sonata would sound like with a full percussion section.

I think that was my nails, I believe they were just slightly too long and were hitting the keys when I did that recording

rsl12 I think this is my favorite recording of yours so far. Good arrangement--simple and varied. Your singing voice is also really good on this! It sounds relaxed and confident.

You are too kind. No, really! I appreciate my kind words, but I think I have more work to do, especially on my singing. There are still some phrases that come out a little pitchy or strained. I know it'll get better once I have it all under my belt more confidently and I don't have to think about it as much. Thanks for listening!

Rubens I hereby declare TC3 and rsl12 as the twin peaks of piano+singing entertainment here.

High praise indeed! On an unrelated note, I should start learning the soundtrack to Twin Peaks ...

keff — Over the Rainbow - A very interesting and spirited arrangement of an old standard. I like it!

plop_symphony — The Midnight Ball – A playful, funny piece. I like the way you bring out the interplay between its two natures - the naughty, grating, dissonant one and the well-behaved, pleasant, harmonious other. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Very well played!

thepianoplayer416 — When You Wish Upon a Star
I know Pinocchio since I was a little child. The 1976 TV series was broadcasted a lot in Germany, but this was a Japanese/German co-production and the soundtrack was something very different. Not bad - I was a kid, I liked it back then! And today I have very positive memories about it, especially if I hear the soundtrack, again.

But I must admit, until now, I didn't know When You Wish Upon a Star at all. I guess the 1940 Disney version never made the way to Germany, at least not when I was young.
I liked how you played it. This is indeed a very nice piece, and you got the essence of it perfectly. Now I have listened to the Disney version with the big orchestra, and it sounds likes yours, just with a bigger ensemble. Well played!

Sophia Edit: now I simply must know the story with the saddle

It's a saddle I had custom made a few decades ago when I was actively riding in the mountains. I have a couple of English saddles (dressage & hunt seat) in another room, along with the breeches/boots/and all that other jazz packed away in totes. I haven't ridden in over 20 years because I got old and so did the horses. Now I just keep the saddles and tack for the memories and home decor. The horses are long gone to that big green pasture in the sky. My last horse was a thoroughbred whose pedigree traced back to War Admiral. We lost him at 20.

I thought it would be a good backdrop for the piece. All I had to do was move the camera to get it into the shot since that's where it normally sits under a saddle cover. That particular closet is used for storage so the saddle rarely has to be moved.

Schubertian2 — Ballade 4

Wow - this one was really impressive. One can literally hear, you invested a lot of time getting this Ballada to this level. The really nice about this is to know, you did everything from the sheet music, and nothing else. Basically this is stepping back in time, when there were no audio recordings existing.
Music was always live played, and every artist made it sound differently, unless one had been teached and could copy his teacher. But for all others, there was some paper, hard work to make it sound and then it was very unique piece of music.

I still wonder how it is possible, to play something difficult like this for 13 minutes, without mistakes. Excellent work!

iternabe Very nicely played！And I love how you have the video set up!

plop_symphony What a fun piece, I loved that! And you played it very well!