Hello everyone! Take a listen if you're interested. It's not a perfect recording by any means, but I'm proud of it generally speaking, and it represents a few important milestones: my first whole concerto (first learned and first performance), biggest and fanciest hall I've ever played in, first final round of anything, and a performance after several weeks of travel and not always much practice. And I was (and still am) sick. I felt great up there, and I hope that comes across on the recording!

PS - There are cuts, so don't be alarmed if I stop in the middle of a musical sentence

Mozart K. 488

I will be working on it again once I let my ears have a break (two other competitions), so comments welcome. I know that there are issues with uneven and flubbed passagework, as well as dragging tempo in the outer movements. I was told by the judges that my choice of tempi were to slow in the fast movements, but my teacher told me that if I hadn't dragged it would have been fine at the slower tempi. Another issue raised was that I didn't have enough characterization in general, that I was a bit sedate - that may have been because I had very low energy on stage. I had hardly any adrenalin to help me along, but at least I wasn't anxious or overcome by nerves.

BRAVO!

Tails?!? Way to go, man! Babes love tails!!! (Don't they?)

Whoever recorded this knew what he/she was doing, too!

It doesn't need to be perfect, Alden. Very, very nice performance. I was not bothered by the tempo AT ALL! In fact, I liked it quite a lot.

I wish the tuner had done some touch-up to the pianos between performances, though. Eeek. The excellent job of your sound engineer shows off the tuner's work, too. (Or, at least the organization's work, which might, or might not, have demanded a tech on hand for touch ups between performances.) (blechhh!)

--Andy

As an unqualified congratulations from someone with more contact with great music-making than almost anyone I know, that means quite a lot. Thanks, pianoloverus!




Oh yes, I am very familiar with the magnetic draw of tails although I may be mistaking my own attraction to them for general magnetism They help bring me into the zone and lend some weight to my upper body. The distinguished looks are just a fringe benefit

I pulled a switcheroo - the video is from my Zoom Q3HD and the audio (recorded professionally - booth and hanging mike) was given as a consolation prize to all performers, and I just sewed the two together. The Zoom is good when it's close to the piano, but as you can see, that wasn't the case here and I had to cut the track entirely. It also picked up some audience noise that I thought I would spare you from!

Thank you for reminding me that not everything has to be perfect. I truly appreciate your words, and thanks for your thoughts on the tempo. My teacher agrees that the music stands up to the moderato very well. It's not exactly Saint-Saensian fluff at half-tempo!!

Yes, that would have been nice - although I found my instrument just fine (and very nice in fact), there are some gripes to be made about the second piano (and given the directness of attack generally preferred by my accompanist - he accompanied more than half of the competitors - it's no wonder it went out of tune). I'm friends with the managers of the competition, so I'll be sure to mention touch-ups as a must for next year.

Anyone else? Mark_C, I know you were planning to add your voice to the (admittedly small) choir.

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