Happy Second Pianoversary

Today marks the second anniversary of the delivery of my piano. I can't even imagine life without it. In two years it has starred in 18 videos and audio recordings, it's shown itself in two recitals to 100 people, it's learned about 25 pieces, and it practices almost every day (I assume it doesn't play when I'm out of town).

It's been tuned 10 times, voiced twice, had its shanks fired, been tweaked, lubricated and adjusted. It's been covered on three occasions and wiped down 700 times. It has been played by two people.

It has never had a cat inside of it, although this is not thanks to any great self-restraint on the part of the cats. I've never touched its case with my bare hands, but I think today I will.

Happy Birthday, piano!

So That's What It Sounds Like

I've had my piano for two full years now. But believe it or not, I've never heard it played (I'm always the one playing it). I've invited others to play it, but have never had any takers until last weekend.

My neighbor's father is a fairly advanced pianist, and we talk about repertoire pretty regularly, but he's never taken me up on offers to play my piano. Last Saturday after dinner Johanne and I were out throwing a football in the street when he came out with his grandson to see the football. After chatting for a few minutes Johanne invited him to try the piano again and this time he took us up on it.

He played parts of Schumann's Carnavale and Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, and even the first page of Liszt's arrangement of Schumann's Widmung, which was really fun because that's a piece I play too. I couldn't stop smiling, hearing my piano for the first time. And it's amazing how rich and full it sounds from "out front", even though its unisons are horribly out right now. I can't wait to have him back when it's tuned so I can hear it at its best.

Video: Ginastera--Danzas argentinas (HD)

The pieces I posted in the last three blog entries are often (usually?) performed together as one big work: the Danzas argentinas. I wanted to do the same with my video: have one continuous performance/video of the three dances together. (The individual videos posted last month were actually edited down from the full-length video). So this week I'm posting the complete video.

Ginastera: Danzas argentinas from Ken Barker on Vimeo.