This is my contribution to the Hive Open Mic, Week 53.
A few weeks ago, I played my first contribution to the Hive Open Mic on the piano. Long ago, as a kid, I first learned to play the piano, before I made the transition to playing church organ. As much as I like the piano, I like playing the organ more, and so it was at least 10, maybe 15 years since I last touched the piano.
Since that first recording for the Hive Open Mic, I've been exploring some of my old favorites from my early years in playing the piano. I guess that every piano student, before he takes on the more ambitious Sonatas of Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven, plays the preparatory Sonatines by Kuhlau and Clementi. Especially Clementi's opus 36 is ideal for the early stages of playing a classical sonata. Of these sonatines, the third one was one of my favorites. I especially like the segment of repeated chord in the first half of the first movement of this sonata, a segment that gets expended in the second half of the movement. That segment is a nice reason to play forte and really hit the piano.
As a youngster I did just that in those segments: hit the piano and play fortefortefortefortissimo. It is probably not a coincident that in most languages I am familiar with, the verb for using your music instrument is the same as for a kid using his or her toys: to play. The piano was in those days perhaps more my toy than my instrument.
And when I play the music I playd then, I become for a part that same kid again, playing with his toy, with exuberance and joy.
In this performance I tried to play it a bit more musically. But I can't help myself, and when that passage of chords comes in the second half of the movement, I just go like "hit them keys!!".
Great toy, a piano!
