Monica is hungry again.

Scott

You are right! I'm always hungry!! Unfortunately, that's why I look the way I do...(okay, I'll step up my time at XSport )

I have made an onion tart before, but I've never had Federweisser. There's a German restaurant I go to often and they have about a thousand different kinds of beers and such. I'll look for Federwisser next time I am there. And when I'm drinking it, I will be humming this Bach prelude & fugue.....(back on topic )

Pianolady wrote:


Wow, a german restaurant in the USA. I wished I could also get thousand of different kinds of beers here.



O.k., record that and post it here, please. Like this we will stay on topic and we would like to help you with our critical comments!

We are the melting pot - where I live we have many Italian restaurants, but also German, Mexican, Chinese, Irish, Spanish, and Greek. Okay, maybe I exaggerated a little with 1,000 beers. It's probably more like 200 beers. Many good German beers, of course .

Funny!

If your German restaurant had ghe Federwisser and the onion tart (I've never had one of those but sounds wonderful) I want to know where it is. I need to take a trek to Chi-town sometime soon, it has been so long.

Scott

Hi Andreas,

I listened to both the Prelude and Fugue. I cannot possibly critique the playing of Bach's works, but I very much enjoyed listening to your renditions here. You make the prelude sound very tranquil and restful--a very gentle piece indeed. In this fugue, you bring out the voices with clarity and have a fine control of touch that is ever present. The evenness of your playing is remarkable as usual. Altogether, your playing is artistic in every sense in my opinion.

And very importantly, congratulations on passing the halfway point in Book II!

P.S. I just figured out that the last time I played Bach's music was 48 years ago, almost half a century. It would be impossible for me to do justice to this music as you and the other Bach devotees here do so admirably.

David

I have no real musical insight to offer you, but I can say that you have certainly earned your glass of Federweißer! (Although I should prefer a nice Dunkel or Schwarzbier, I think.) Excellent playing, and I wish you the best of luck for continuing the project.

Hi David,
your words are thoroughly encouraging coming from an experienced artist like you, thank you for that. Though you are not a Bach-interpret (as you say yourself), your force is in the romantic piano music. The main thing is that we have a style or direction we feel familiar with, I think. 48 years is a long time you haven´t played a Bach-piece. Was it your intention to make a career as a concert pianist then?

Thank you for your appreciated comment!

jim_24601 wrote:


Nothing against that, I also like a nice glass of Köstritzer from time to time, BTW!



Thank you for that and your interest to listen here!

Perfect timing to start a traversal of 'the 48'

[Techneut wrote:


I have difficulties to translate that. Does "traversal" mean something like "transition"?

Pick your choice:

tra·verse (tr-vûrs, trvrs)
v. tra·versed, tra·vers·ing, tra·vers·es
v.tr.
1. To travel or pass across, over, or through.
2. To move to and fro over; cross and recross.
3. To go up, down, or across (a slope) diagonally, as in skiing.
4. To cause to move laterally on a pivot; swivel: traverse an artillery piece.
5. To extend across; cross: a bridge that traverses a river.
6. To look over carefully; examine.
7. To go counter to; thwart.
8. Law
a. To deny formally (an allegation of fact by the opposing party) in a suit. See Synonyms at deny.
b. To join issue upon (an indictment).
9. To survey by traverse.
10. Nautical To brace (a yard) fore and aft.

Thanks, Chris. No. 6 would be a quite funny choice, isn´t it?!

Or 7

Hi Andreas,

Yes, I think that later in life most of us eventually gravitate to what in the repertoire most appeals to us in terms of our respective musical strengths and our personal sense of aesthetics. It's a kind of pianistic specialization. As time gets shorter, the focus becomes narrower.

And yes, when I was studying piano as a kid and would leave Symphony Hall in Boston, I admit sometimes I'd dream of becoming a concert pianist. It was just so inspiring. At 18 I was at the crossroads when most of us head to college or university to prepare for our futures. I well recall agonizing over whether to go to a liberal arts university or to the New England Conservatory of Music, as I certainly had the credentials for admission. So I had good reason to ponder. My parents were supportive, but were not musicians. My piano teacher who then considered me her top student, mentioned the cons as well as the pros of going into either performance or pedagogy, and was deliberate in not influencing me one way or the other. Thus, the decision was solely mine to make. In the end I lacked confidence in myself (no big technique) and felt the musical path to be too risky. So that was the end of dreaming to make a life with the piano. Off to university I went. In retrospect now, I think I made a wise decision which gave me a huge advantage over concert artists--that is to say, business could be my stable vocation, while piano could be my main avocation. Unlike the performing artist I could have both. Later on in life that fateful decision made music always enjoyable to me, not a source of tensions and frustrations. Anyway, that's my short answer.

David