Heidelberg Piano

Dear friends of piano music, sometimes even I have to clean up. While I'm not particularly fond of doing this, my kids love messing around. A tidy room immediately puts them in the busiest hustle and bustle, as it opens up completely new opportunities for anarchist chaos. What they don't like, however, is to part with old things. Giving away baby toys is almost impossible, they are clinging to their belongings and they even want to go back to the time when they had nothing to do but play, crawl around the apartment or be driven around in the buggy. So children are already nostalgic. When my grandparents got so old that they had to spend more of their lives on the sofa, they lived almost entirely in the past. This is perfectly normal and understandable when friends and acquaintances have already passed away and you can no longer pursue your hobbies. With my grandparents, however, there was also the fact that they had fled the GDR, the communist-ruled East of Germany, when they

  Dear friends of piano music, “Life is serious, art is serene” (Schiller, Wallenstein's camp, prologue) As is well known, the so-called “seriousness of life” begins with school enrollment - a topic that concerns me a lot right now, since my son started school yesterday. This “seriousness” seems to be missing in the years before starting school, a (hopefully!) carefree and free time without any obligation comes to an end, a paradisiacal state of imagination, curiosity, and purposeless play. It is always associated with a little sadness and anxiety when a phase of life comes to an end and a new one begins. I would have wished he had a better start than this so-called “normal operation under pandemic conditions”. In my own life there have been a few episodes or sections that may be irrevocably over. For 13 years I worked (part-time) as a church musician, i.e. led a church choir and played the organ on Sundays and feast days. I must admit that it has not always been easy for me

Dear friends of piano music, Last week on a long drive in the car I heard an interview with the bestselling author Jan Weiler, whose book “Maria, ihm schmeckt’s nicht” (he doesn’t like it) I read several times with enthusiasm. His description of the typical “Krefeld terraced house” exactly matched the house of relatives that I used to visit regularly as a child. A relatively minor aspect of this book, but I laughed tears - so this is what our common cultural roots look like - the Krefeld terraced house … The radio interview touched me very much for two reasons. Jan Weiler had Corona in March and he still can't smell anything. There are worse disturbances, but the idea of ​​never again being able to perceive the odour of autumn leaves, of Christmas cookies and pine needles, of spring flowers, I find very sad, and I very much hope for him that it is not permanent damage. He said, among other very clever and personable things, that as long as it lasts, he “humbly accepts” his su

“All grown-ups were once children (but only few of them remember it).” Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince   “Where  am  I from?  I'm from my childhood like I'm  from a  country .” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,   Flight to Arras   Dear friends of piano music, I've been wondering for a while whether Mendelssohn's so-called “children's pieces” are actually only for children. In music therapy, pieces of music are sometimes used to make associated memories accessible again. Of course, this doesn't just work with music, smells can conjure up childhood, as can places, people, objects. I recently took such a trip into the past myself by visiting my parents with my children. They are very interested in everything and want to know exactly what the house and garden looked like back then, what my cat was called, which trees I climbed. In my family there were not only good times, there were also flight and displacement, there were illnesses, there were ear

One year of YouTube! Exactly one year ago I uploaded my first piano recordings to YouTube. A lot has happened since then. I got a lot of followers, a lot of emotions, also gratitude. Some listeners also had something to complain about: a musicologist didn't like the sound of my electronic piano, nor did my interpretation. I've already suppressed what the lecturer at a German music college wrote. I received praise from a former teacher at my university, which made me very happy. And a pianist from a cold country just wrote “wrong time”. I don't know what that means. So far I have chosen relatively simple pieces because I did not have time to play the piano for many years. It is my goal to play longer and more virtuoso pieces in the future. I'm looking forward to the next year! And I'm happy about every single listener! Kerstin Frédéric Chopin Préludes Opus 28, Nr 7 A major https://youtu.be/bqQuc7Jo3Dk