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Hey there @Gailrstarr! Thanks so much for your comment. Ooooh you're in for such a treat with this sonata, Haydn's music is so very enjoyable to play 🙂.

@@1MuddyDogThanks for the encouragement!

Hey there Bumblebee! Thanks for your comment, always much appreciated. Glad you enjoyed it, it was my first try at a piece by this composer. Parts of it also reminded me of the 2nd movement of Rachmaninov's 1st piano concerto

@@1MuddyDog Rachma, sure.

Hey there Bumblebee! Thanks for your comment, much appreciated. Haha not Spanish..... but it had the hand-crossings 😄

Hello Bumblebee 🐝!! Thanks for your comment man, much appreciated. Tharaud is a great pianist - I studied his interpretation of the Poulenc piece from earlier (Le Chemins..) to see how he shaped it. He also plays "Concerto pour la fin d'un amour" which is based on themes from the movie "Un Homme qui me plaît" (I haven't watched it though)

Hey there Bumblebee!! Thanks man, much appreciated. This was also from my final exam - in an earlier exam it was part of the prescribed repertoire (you had to perform an etude, and the choices were Chopin Op 25 No 11 or this one). I'm so glad I chose this one - it was a very nice discovery! However, I found it surprisingly hard, and counting all the beats out was quite tricky in a few places 🙂 Keep well dude, looking forward to some more tracks from you..

Hey there Bumblebee 🐝! Thanks so much for your comment, always so very very much appreciated. I was going to follow your lead and use a celesta in the opening and ending, but the one I have sounds a bit "fuzzy", so I chose a Glockenspiel instead 🙂! Looking forward to your Scriabin (I have Op 8 No 2 in my queue). Will you do some Brahms again at some point?

@@1MuddyDog Great ! I have to play some pieces, but this summer is complicated and hot (global warming is a plague)...

@@Bumblebee-999 Oh wow, are you in a concert? If so, pleeeeeeeaase record it, it would be so nice to hear your pieces! All the best..

@@1MuddyDog Arf, no concert ! Just some pieces for myself ;) But it takes time...

Hey there Bumblebee 🐝! Thanks so much for your comment, it is much appreciated - always great hearing from you. Indeed a great composer, although I don't often listen to his music. I didn't know about these piano works until quite recently, so thought I'd give this one a shot PS Have you found a new piano yet?

@@1MuddyDog Not yet (was a bit disappointed with the Bösendorfer in Pianoteq, although it has a nice dynamic). I should dive in later (struggling with Shosta and Scriabin for the moment). Sibelius piano works should have been more famous...

@@Bumblebee-999 Oooohhh which Shostakovich/Scriabin are you tackling? Hope you'll post it soon! My top 3 pianos are still (in no order) Signature Grand, Garritan CFX and the Ravenscroft 🙂. They're not perfect and have a few limitations, but the sound is really nice to work with (I'm not affiliated to those companies). The Ravenscroft seems (to me) more tailored to jazz/stage performance than classical recording. I'm about to throw a Prokofiev at the Garritan, will see how it handles..

@@1MuddyDog Struggling with some Scriabin studies (op 8) and some preludes/fugues for Shosta. No doubt you'll give a great result for Prokofiev (I have a preference for his 4th sonata, especially with Nikolaï Petrov). We have only 24 hours per day...

Hey there Bumblebee 🐝! Thanks so much man, so very glad you enjoyed it (this was another piece from my final exam, indeed a very special nocturne)! I will look up Jean Hubeau (after checking out Gigi 🙂..) - it must be a real treat to own a collection of all Fauré's piano works.

@@1MuddyDog Yes, thousands of beautiful colours with Fauré ;)

Hola Jose, como estas 🙂? Thanks for your comment man, very very glad you enjoyed it

Hello Bumblebee! Thanks so much for your kind comment, it is (as always) very much appreciated. Indeed, a bygone era..

Hello Jose!! So very lovely to hear from you again, what a wonderful surprise! Thanks so much for your comment, very glad you enjoyed it

Hey there Bumblebee 🐝! Always good hearing from you. It really is a nice arrangement/transcription by "Mr Nobody" - so many special effects, beautiful chord voicings and "heart-melting" moments, it's no wonder that it's captured the imagination of so many around the world. The melody has a quintessentially French nostalgia about it, don't you think?

@@1MuddyDog I think so. Could imagine this one in a movie called Gigi.

@@Bumblebee-999 Shew you keep giving me all this homework, I've only just started watching your other movie (with the toccata..) 😄

@@1MuddyDog At least, Gigi is not a dark movie.

Thanks BB, glad you enjoyed it 🙂

Hello Bumblebee, salut mon ami 🙂!! Thanks man, very glad you enjoyed it, always look forward to hearing from you. Haydn's music is wonderful to play - he crafts his work with the care and precise attention to detail of a jeweller. Often, it is surprisingly demanding too 😃..

Hello Bumblebee 🐝!! Thanks man, much appreciated. You're so right about the purity of his music - there's a perfection to it, with not a single superfluous note, nothing out of place and everything perfectly structured. This was also from my exam (capturing all my exam repertoire at the moment). PS have you tried the PianoTeq Bösendorfer yet?

​@@1MuddyDog Not yet ! But I've tried the Synchron CFX and was quite disappointed.

@Bumblebee-999 Oh no, sorry to hear that - the VSL Synchrons are supposed to be really good (although I've not tried them). There's also the Signature Grand (Simple Sam Samples) for roughly the same price as PTeq's Bösendorfer, not sure about the disk footprint though..

@@1MuddyDog Yes, I'm aware of this one too. For the VSL pianos, you can currently try them (30 days free demo). Maybe you know ?

@Bumblebee-999, yes I did know about the trial versions. However, for the country where I live, after currency conversion the eventual cost turns into an eye-watering amount that I can buy food with for 8 weeks or more 😂 so the trials are not even an option for me

Hi Milica 🙂! Thanks so much for your kind comment, glad you enjoyed it. You're right about the title, I have corrected it now

Hey there Bumblebee 🙂!! Thanks so much for your kind comment - your input and feedback are always much much appreciated. This was actually one of my final exam pieces. I listened to the recording of it from my exam (we are given a recording in case the examiners want a replay and your teacher needs to go through your performance with you) and I played the fugue much faster there. It sounded too fast, and many of the details and structure got lost as a result, so in this version I decided to take it a bit more slowly. I'm going to check out your movie later 😁

Hey there Bumblebee 🙂! Thanks man, glad you enjoyed it. Scriabin is great (and a classmate of Rachmaninov too!), I enjoy especially his symphonies but if I'm honest, I don't always understand his later works that well..

@@1MuddyDog Yes, it's not classical anymore. But...

Hey there Bumblebee! Thanks for your comment, much appreciated as always. Yes, finally some Poulenc 😁!

Hey there abmusicfrance 🙂! Thanks very much for your comment, it is much appreciated. Very glad you enjoyed the piece

Hey Bumblebee, salut mon ami 🙂! Comment allez vous? Thanks man, much appreciated as always. It was hard work to do this one, so your feedback - as it always is - is really helpful. Keep well buddy, looking forward to some more tracks from you

Thanks Bumblebee!

Hey there Bumblebee 🙂! Thanks for your kind comment and the comparison. Legrand was a master, it's not often anymore that you find music/theme songs as beautiful as the ones he wrote. I hope you will do more covers of his music (and maybe some by Francis Lai as well?) PS: "I will wait for you" from "Les Parapluies de Cherbourg" always makes me think of Seymour the Dog from Futurama 😄..

Salut mon ami 🙂!! "Singing" is definitely what I was after - it was helpful (to me..) to imagine a soprano singing the melody, how she might shape the lines and so on. For me, the piece has an elegiac character, which matches well with the key of B Minor, and I think some of its contemplative nature gets lost if one plays it too fast. Thanks again for your feedback Bumblebee, always much appreciated!

Hey there Bumblebee 🙂! Thanks so much for your kind comment. Always look forward to hearing from you, and your feedback is always highly appreciated. CSSS is proving quite difficult to work with (for me anyways). It's very different from CSS!

Hey there Bumblebee 🙂! Thanks so much man, very relieved that you enjoyed it. Was a bit worried about this one to be honest - that CSSS violin is still giving me some trouble, finding it quite hard to work with

Thanks Bumblebee, glad you enjoyed it. It has some impressionistic elements too 🙂

Hello Caceres, Thank you so much, and a very warm welcome - hope you will enjoy all the piano pieces to come

Salut Bumblebee 🙂! Thanks man, much appreciated. The whole concerto is planned, although I am still working out the logistics of doing it .. mostly because I don't think my poor digital piano would survive the experience 😄

Thanks Bumblebee 👍🏻! You should definitely try the Garritan, it's amazing to work with 😃!! Check out the Ravenscroft 275 as well if you can, it also has a beautiful sound

Thanks Bumblebee! The CFX is indeed proving to be a joy to work with, and you can get some beautiful tone colours and shading from it

Thanks Bumblebee, very glad you enjoyed it! And, Fauré is indeed a master of beauty 🙂

Hey there Bumblebee 🙂! Thanks for your comment and feedback, much appreciated as always. I actually ended the piece as written, but maybe it would have been more musical to fade the pedal out rather..

Thanks so much Bumblebee, very much appreciated.

Hello abm 🙂! Thanks so much for your comment, very glad you enjoyed this short piece. Yes, the Garritan CFX piano has a very nice sound, so far it has behaved exactly like a real piano would, no matter what I've thrown at it. It's really nice to work with!

Hey there Bumblebee 🙂! Thanks, always appreciate your feedback. The CFX is very versatile and really nice to work with!

Hello Jose 🙂! Thanks man, very glad you enjoyed it.

Bonjour abmusicfrance 🙂! Thanks so much for your kind comment, very glad you enjoyed it. Coincidentally, I am reworking this one at the moment with the Garritan piano and CSS strings, and hope to have that out soon, so please check back here again in a few days' time..

@@1MuddyDog I subscribed, can't wait to see this

Thanks so much! I hope you will enjoy it

Hey there Bumblebee! Thanks man, always so good to hear from you and to have your feedback. Glad you enjoyed it. This is indeed a very beautiful prelude, embodying some deep emotions, which makes it quite daunting to play!

Hello there Jose 🙂! Thanks for your comment - very glad you like the sound. This Garritan piano is full of surprises (even though it's quite dated by now), and so far it's handled just about everything I've thrown at it. It really has been great to work with thus far 👏🏻👏🏻.

Hey there Bumblebee 🙂! Thanks for your comment man. Volodos' arrangement is really nice - it's very different from Rachmaninov's own piano part for his song. Yeah..... there are all kinds of strange bugs/perplexing behaviours with TH-cam..

Hey there Bumblebee, just thinking about your thumb problem. I wonder if it's something like this: If YT runs off different CDNs (e.g. video content on one and metrics on another), then it might just be that these CDNs get slightly out of synch with each other, since I guess the info has to be replicated/coordinated between them? Maybe, because of the vast amount of information involved, YT relies on an "eventually consistent" data model, so eventually your thumb will show up on the video that you "liked"?

@@1MuddyDog It's a possibility...

Hey there Bumblebee! Thanks for your comment and feedback, glad you're happy with it 🙂. Yeah, there is one part in the piece that looks like it came straight from Rach's Cello Sonata (2nd Mvt). It's a really nice piece to play, and it's not often you get to enjoy a big bottom C as here, towards the end of the piece

Hey there Bumblebee 🙂! Thanks for your feedback, much appreciated as always. For the tempo, I listened quite a few recordings (orchestral and also piano + with solo instrument/voice), but always came back to the recording made by Rachmaninov himself - his tempo just seems to fit the music best, so I tried to match the tempo he used. How did you find the balance between the piano and cello here? I was worried the cello might be a bit soft.. Keep well!

​@@1MuddyDog The cello might be louder (sometimes), but just a bit. However, your recording is very listenable. I like the ambience, as if we were in the audience :)

Hey there Bumblebee 🙂! Thanks man, much appreciated.

It really is a nice piano to work with! Not to worry, lots more on the way 😃

Thanks man, very glad you enjoyed the piece!

Salut Bumblebee! Thanks man, much appreciated as always. That particular prelude is in the queue 😉..

Hello Mads 🙂! Glad you enjoyed the piece. It's very nostalgic! There is actually a very nice version of the piece on IMSLP: imslp.org/wiki/Evensong_(Martin%2C_Easthope) Under "Arrangements and Transcriptions" they have the full orchestral version and parts, of which the "Piano-Conductor Score" is also a nice piano reduction (much richer than what I played here, and with many nice passing notes). Hope that helps, and thank you again for listening!

Salut Bumblebee 🙂! Glad you enjoyed it. Discovered this one quite by chance in a book of piano exam pieces that I was given some years ago. Evidently the piece was intended as a training exercise for young pianists, which is surprising because with all the voices and imitations going on in the piece, it takes a surprising amount of planning to play it!

Hey there Bumblebee! Thanks for your comment. There are indeed some similarities to K466, especially at the ends of the different sections in each piece. The Divine/God aspect of Bach's music is probably what makes it so intimidating (for me) to play..