Musical memories

The autograph of the first page of Op. 109 I'll never forget hearing Kathy Geralds, then a senior at William & Mary, play the first movement of this sonata at a noon recital at the beginning of my freshman year. Immediately afterwards, I was telling an upperclassman about how thrilling I found the sonata and when he asked which one she had played, I said, "Beethoven's 109th Sonata." He quickly clarified the difference for me between opus number and sonata number. It's a shame, though, that Ludwig didn't write 109 of them - this 250th jubilee year would have to last two years to fit them all in, but I think we've already had enough of 2020.  There's the playful first movement that refuses to allow the casual listener to comprehend it, contrasted by the short in-your-face second movement that only the greatest masters can perform transparently, and the ethereal, heavenly last movement of variations - something for everyone! Luckily, this piece is per...

The stars aligned, the universe decided to play along and I ended up hitting a double a few weeks ago. At the Untertürkheimer Kulturtreff , a charming little venue for intimate performances, a local piano teacher was going to present music and musings from 40 years of piano lessons. That sounded like just what I wanted to hear. I figured everyone else in the hall probably knew him, so when I sat down, I asked the woman next to me if she was a pianist. "I'm the tuner of the piano," she replied. Even better, I thought! We chatted for quite a while, and I finally had the opportunity to ask a tuner the questions I had always wanted to ask about my instrument and about the way former tuners had worked on it. When someone is tuning my Blüthner grand piano, I feel they want to tune and not talk, so I let them go about their work. She admitted that she was no expert on the Blüthner mechanics, but she knew someone who is. He is retired; he did his master exam with her father! ...