The Horowitz Steinway Experience

Thursday afternoon was my last piano lesson for the season as we go into summer recess right after next Friday’s big recital and will not resume until the end of June.   I will have a whole month off from lessons which I will spend memorizing and recording the pieces I performed at Guild last week, starting work again on the very lovely Beethoven sonata (my first sonata!) that I abandoned in January due to its severe difficulty, and learning Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” another gorgeous piece I had started last fall and then abandoned in order to concentrate on Guild. 

                 This last lesson is always my favorite of the year for it is the lesson at which I receive the report card the judge made out for me at Guild.  I suspected, due to all of her effervescent praise, that I had done really well.  I mean either I had gotten an A or the lady was bipolar.  Then it turned out that neither was the case.  I did not get an A and she was not bipolar.  I got an A+, the first time this has happened in seven years!  But I will go into much more detail about that when I post my 2015 recital video next month. 

                Meanwhile, as today is the final lesson of my 8^th year at piano (unless you count summer session, which technically we do not), and since next Friday I will have a whole new video of my spring recital with my 2015 piano pieces, now at 3^rd level Intermediate (there are 6 levels of Intermediate so I am about half way to becoming an advanced student), I thought it appropriate to share a recent accomplishment with all my musical friends.  You may recall in last year’s recital blog that I mentioned that I had been invited by Steinway Gallery of Detroit last June to participate in their event honoring the memory of the late great legendary pianist Vladimir Horowitz.  I was not only allowed to play my entire 2^nd level Intermediate Piano Guild repertoire that I had completed just weeks before, I was also allowed to videotape it.  I have spent the last ten months editing all this video into a very special one-hour documentary about the life and career of Horowitz, with me playing at this event.  I finished it last month and finally got it up on YouTube a couple weeks ago. 

                I have already sent DVDs to my family members, but for the rest of my good friends and relatives, I now announce that this documentary is ready for viewing, link below.  I know the one-hour length may be a bit intimidating but I am a professional filmmaker and I have labored very hard on this edit to make it compelling.  It is my hope that if you can just give this video the benefit of the doubt for the first ten minutes, that you will find that ten minutes sufficiently interesting to keep watching the entire program.  So please give me ten minutes of your time and then let me know if my hopes were justified … or merely delusional. 

                I hope you all enjoy, and if so there will be more video coming in maybe another month or so.  Happy Memorial Day everyone!  

MikeStein14 - YouTube