Eine Kleine YouTube

I just can't help myself. I have to post this.

This past week I got my computer back (with most of the expensive, movable parts replaced--ugh) and had to wait several days before I got home to put my backed-up music files on the new hard drive. So I contented myself with listening to / watching things on YouTube. It's really astounding what one can find there.

This piece is not a stretch for classical music lovers--we might expect to find several versions of Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit here. This one I've picked not because its my favorite interpretation--he seems to rush thru the climaxes without making a musical case for what he's playing--but because there's no production bullshit about it: just a camera pointed so that you can see what the pianist is doing.

Well, more or less. The suite of three pieces is renowned for being among the most difficult pieces to play in the entire piano repertoire, and Scarbo (the final and most difficult of the three) strikes me as being unplayable for practical purposes--or would, if I hadn't seen someone actually pull it off. I have ranked Gaspard de la nuit among my five favorite pieces of music of all time for 20 years--it's really magical, inspired music--but this is the first time I've actually seen someone play it. If I were a pianist, it would make me take up the ukulele.

The pianist here is Marco Francini, and I've not heard of him. Proof, I guess, that there are gods wandering among us. Enjoy.