Heidelberg Piano

  Dear friends of piano music,   a dear old friend is trying to write a book. I don't write “tried” because I have doubts that she will make it. I think she is an excellent writer. But she is also a working mother of two small children, so that the usual balancing act between family and work for her becomes a kind of Bermuda triangle through the third component of writing. But she will do it, even if it takes an incredible amount of strength. In Germany, a very low single-digit percentage of all professional writers can actually make a living from it. Everyone else has to leave the artist's ivory tower for many hours every day in order to prove themselves in real life. Maybe that's not so bad after all. I recently read about the famous violinist dynasty of the Oistrakh - David Oistrach was known to be one of the great world class violinists. His son Igor could not come close to his role model. His grandson, however, was called the "violin-playing head waiter"

 Dear friends of piano music, the “inner child” seems to be particularly well preserved with musicians, it is probably not for nothing that it is called “playing” the piano. This fact was brought to my mind once again when I discovered that other parents could not imagine doing puppet theater for their children. I can hardly imagine anything more beautiful, but I have when I'm not "playing" the piano. professionally and privately almost exclusively to do with children. The fate of the “sick doll” does not leave me indifferent either. Unfortunately Tchaikovsky doesn't end well, in his children's pieces this piece is followed by the “doll funeral”, then a waltz, and then, in fact, the “new doll”! At first I was a little shocked that the loss of the beloved doll was overcome so quickly. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say. But then I thought it was good that children are so resilient. And they have to be, the little ones already have a lot to take. Losses, disappo

Dear friends of piano music, it is said to have got on Chopin's nerves quite a bit - the notorious association of flowing water, which probably mainly the young women around him repeatedly uttered. Higher daughters loved Chopin and his music, and it mainly reminded them of water. I have to admit that I am not much more original with my association with this mazurka, only that I have changed the physical state. Snow, I had snow in mind when I played this piece for the first time, the freezing cold, the clear air and the glittering magic of a snowy landscape. It's a completely fantastic idea because I can't remember the last time I saw something like this. As a child, of course, I built huge snowmen or made “angels” in the snow. That was in kindergarten or elementary school age, when all the children plopped backwards in the snow as if on command, rowing arms and legs and actually leaving prints that were reminiscent of angels with spreading wings. Our cat was completely euph

Saint Anne and Saint Roch Not only large, magnificent churches and organs fascinate me, smaller churches with their smaller instruments also have their charm. In Heidelberg's old town there is St. Anna's Church, completed in 1717, which was originally a stipal church, i.e. it belonged to a poor hospital and hospital. The small baroque church has a splendid but modest-looking interior. The organ sounds almost fragile, the pipes look a bit shabby. The next to the cross above the altar are an angel and Saint Roch, a patron saint against the plague and other infectious diseases. That fits into a hospital church and also into the present day, unfortunately.

Dear friends of piano music, of course, every child is a miracle, so the term “child prodigy” is a bit nonsensical and old-fashioned. However, I have not come up with a better term for the fact that a child, in this case Chopin, achieves something that hardly an adult can. Even if the musical language that is so characteristic of him is not yet so pronounced here and you think you can hear the great role model Mozart. Without a doubt a brilliant sound poet, even if his personality is still growing. The development from child to adult is a difficult and for me highly puzzling process, especially when it comes to your own children, whom you want to encourage and support. Often enough, however, you don't even know what's helpful and you only notice your mistakes afterwards. For example, there is the matter of the Easter Bunny and the Christ Child. My son is six, he is learning to read, write and arithmetic, and he firmly believes that he heard the Easter Bunny in April. There were

  Dear friends of piano music, "Meta-level" is one of the amazing words I learned during my teacher training. When practicing the piano, there is always at least one Meta level, it reminds me a little of the giant Argos from the Greek myth, whose one hundred eyes could always observe several things at the same time, and this without a break, as they alternately rested closed in order to sleep in a kind of shift work. There is the level of consciousness that controls whether the wrist octaves are finally running, the shoulders are not hunched or any other part of the body is doing mischief. Then there is the control instance for wrong tones or dynamics, furthermore for inappropriate timbres etc. There is the imagination that suddenly realizes that a piece is reminiscent of snowstorms or something similar, or that believes to find a certain feeling or memory in a piece. And if this happens more or less in parallel, there is sometimes also a kind of thought flow that becomes