Saturday, November 7, 2009

Granados: Laments or The Maiden and the Nightingale

Yesterday my father underwent (successful) coronary artery bypass graft surgery. In preparation for the tedium of convalescence, he bought himself an MP3 player. Among the 50 albums he loaded, he included the Piano 101 recordings. But he noted that some of the pieces that I made videos for aren't available as audio recordings. So I went back to the original audio files for those videos and encoded .wma files for downloading. Listening to them without the visual distraction of video, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the recording. And they capture the tone of my piano nicely. So I decided to post some of them here.

I've mentioned before that Enrique Granados' Goyescas suite is pretty much the pinnacle of piano music for me. The fourth piece in the suite is Quejas ó la Maja y el Ruiseñor (Laments or the Maiden and the Nightingale). And if you were wondering why people learn to play the piano, Maiden is a pretty good answer.

It's been a little under a year since I recorded this and I find the performance a little dry and plodding. But is it good enough to post to a blog with three readers? Most probably!

Quejas ó la Maja y el Ruiseñor (Enrique Granados)

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