schmonz

After scratching and banging his way through violin/viola and percussion, respectively, Amitai eventually found his way to the piano at age 10, when he sat down, improvised, and then asked to take lessons. His eagerness to play serious music, combined with strongly formed tastes, an improvisational bent, and an aversion to technical work, tested his teachers' ingenuity. For instance, cleverly inserted among several of Debussy's Images and over half the Preludes was the finger-exercise satire that is the first movement of Children's Corner. (Of course, Amitai now realizes he was outsmarted: it's a finger exercise in its own right.) He also played several pieces by Ravel -- one memorably scary high-school recital included Le Gibet from Gaspard de la Nuit -- and a handful of Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, and Rachmaninov.

A variety of minor circumstances resulted in eight strange years almost entirely away from the instrument. Discovering Medtner forced him to take action. Amitai is happy to have finally returned in 2005 to music and to his beloved piano. He has worked as a software developer and IT consultant and made the below recordings while a full-time university student in New York.

Medtner - Forgotten Melodies
Medtner - Fairy Tales
Rachmaninov - Preludes