Will you be one of my 100 True Fans?

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In 2008, Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of Wired Magazine, wrote a watershed essay called “1,000 True Fans” (True Fans), which was an expression of the simple idea that in the age of the Internet, any creative person could get support for their work with the help of 1,000 true fans, or some version thereof. This has been debated and discussed in every which way, but the idea has been one of the Internet’s most important, leading to the many variations of crowdfunding, including Kickstarter, Indiegogo, GoFundMe, Patreon, Substack, etc. 

Amanda Palmer, the punk cabaret, Dresden Dolls band star, gave a great TED talk (Amanda Palmer: The art of asking | TED Talk) and then wrote a book expanding on the idea of “The Art of Asking.” She made it clear that musicians, artists, could and should seek the direct support of their audiences. This was in 2013. 

Today, it is even more relevant than ever, especially in the music world, where despite millions of streams of our music, 99% of musicians don’t make a living from their albums. I do hope this will change, and there are various ideas being developed to help minimize this problem. Nothing has changed yet, though. 

Many of you know me for my piano playing and for leading the International Beethoven Project Not-for-Profit in its many iterations and projects. However, there is one aspect that most of you don’t know that much about, and yet one that means a lot to me: writing, telling stories and sharing my perspective on issues that matter to me.

Some of you may remember the period in time when I published the Journal of a Musician, between 2007 and 2010. It was very satisfying, exciting work, and allowed me to work with a number of brilliant writers who shared lesser known stories of music, culture, along with interviews with fascinating people from these fields. I am working to bring back a version of a magazine as part of the International Beethoven Project. But that will be a non-profit project separate from my very own, personal writing projects.

Across all my work, however, the constant has been story-telling in one form or another. I tell stories in everything I do, whether it’s obvious or not: music making, for me, is a form of story-telling; programming a festival is a type of story-telling; making an album and documentaries are forms of story-telling. It is a way to engage audiences consciously and emotionally.

Writing and story-telling have accompanied me throughout my life. In fact, my love of stories motivated me to major in English in college (as well as in History, which is also a reading and writing degree). It was not music… although I did get my Masters of Music afterward. While in college, I honed my writing skills, along with my research skills. I can tell you that I knew every nook and cranny of my university’s library, my second home.

I always wanted to write. Articles, short stories, maybe a book. Writing helps put thoughts together, it helps organize one’s vision of self and of the world. Perhaps this is why doing it well is so hard! Most of our thinking is jumbled, unlinnear, illogical. Writing allows one to refine one’s thinking, and to turn it into communicable expression. 

And now, I am hoping to gather enough material for a book. This is partly a personal challenge, but it also is a reflection of where I think I am in life, of what I have learned and what I believe I can contribute to the discourse. For me, this is like making an album. It is a long-lasting statement, a part of me that I bequeath to the world at large, and for the work to have its own life outside of me. Unlike a concert, which is an experience lived in the moment, the album is something that is slowly crafted, put together piece by piece, over a long period, reviewed until it is “perfect”. 

A book, to me, is also something that must come out of a long process of preparation, the more so probably today when it is so easy to put out a book (or an album). We end up being flooded with content that isn’t necessarily as good as it should be. But I am an advocate of slowness and ripening, of taking the right amount of time to prepare, to consider, and to work. Yet I do not idle! Just like giving countless concerts can only help make a good album, writing a good book can be helped by practicing writing. I do this by writing stories, opinion pieces, and research articles about topics dear to my heart.

Right now I am sorting out material, practicing my writing, and taking plenty of notes, not all of which make it out! In fact, I estimate that 90 percent of what I write never gets published in any form. 

Oh, and you may wonder, what do I write about?

I have several topics of predilection which I come back to regularly:

1. Lessons learned from being a musician, intended for other musicians and aspiring musicians, as well as humans in general who like to understand how music making functions

2. Lesser known aspects of music history: forgotten composers and forgotten stories of famous composers

3. The state of the arts, and how to make classical music relevant in our times

I have also been researching the history of Ukrainian classical music this past year, and have found some really interesting things I have begun sharing.

I have also been doing lots of research on music in France between 1730 and 1830, which is a period of music history that is barely known despite having been very exciting. I will be sharing my discoveries soon.

And sometimes I write about other things entirely, primarily related to culture in some form.

I share my personal writing on two platforms: Ghost (which is like Substack), and Patreon. 

On Ghost, I publish polished pieces (that’s my intent, anyway!) that are mostly open to all to read.

On Patreon, I publish more, both polished pieces as well as work diary entries, work-in-progress, occasional videos and recordings. Patreon is more the inner sanctum of all my art work-in-progress.

Ghost is free, with a paid option for those who want to support, but don’t have to in order to access my work.

Patreon is paid-only, with a choice of tiers, which is more an opportunity for people to choose their monthly support level based on their capacity.

Many amongst you have supported my work through the International Beethoven Project. It is a non-profit, and that support is absolutely essential to the production of big, ambitious projects. I am and have been wholly dedicated to our projects since 2008, giving my all to them. But those funds don’t support me directly.

In fact, I rarely ask anyone to support me personally. As Amanda Palmer says, there is no shame in asking, and she is right. In fact, your support is a driving force in my work, as it allows me to do more, do it better, and to get closer to my goals.  

I have therefore resolved this year to aim for my version of 1000 true fans, which is, for now, a reasonable 100 true fans! I am lucky to have a few of you who have been loyally supporting me on Patreon or Ghost already.

I hope to get about 88 more true fans over the course of this campaign. 

Can I count you in?

Supporting me can be nominal, as every bit counts, especially if I gather my 100 True Fans.

If you are wondering if you have to choose between supporting me and supporting the projects I work on with the IBP non-profit, stick to IBP! If you can support me directly AND continue to support IBP, even better. 

Most people only see the final products, the albums I release every couple of years or so, or the events and concerts I organize or perform in. By supporting me through Patreon, or Ghost, you get to witness a lot more of the process, and to support me as an independent artist.

Support can be the equivalent of “buying” me a monthly cup of coffee, a sandwich, maybe even a nice dinner! It’s one way to look at this. In the life of an artist, the regularity of this kind of support is truly helpful. 

But, even if you are unable to support me financially, you can still sign up on Ghost for free and read most of my articles. Please do so. I love and need readers!

And if you join my inner sanctum, you get to interact more directly with me throughout my process. Your thoughts and opinions are always an added plus to me.

To sign up, follow these links:

PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/georgelepauw

GHOST: https://georgelepauw.ghost.io/

The Shoebox Files: The story of my much-delayed debut album

THE SHOEBOX FILES

The story of my much-delayed debut album

By George Lepauw
October 14, 2022

I am extremely excited to announce the release of my debut album, the complete Préludes for piano by Claude Debussy, on Orchid Classics, Friday, October 21, 2022! It has been a long time coming.

The labyrinthine story of this recording is what I wanted to share with you here.

While a student at Northwestern University, I had fallen in love with Debussy’s magnificent, mind-altering preludes, partly revealed to me by my friend Adam Swayne, a passionate British performer and teacher, who brilliantly played them in our class when we were both studying with Ursula Oppens. After learning them myself, I made them a core of my recital programs in the U.S.A., France and Finland. After some time, my father Didier Lepauw, a former first violinist with the Orchestre de Paris, thought it a good idea to organise a professionally filmed recording of these works, in the beautiful Nichols Hall at the Music Institute of Chicago.

My father hired a top crew to film the sessions, which even involved a camera on a crane that was to swing above my head and hands, while I had asked my friend and talented audio engineer Maxim Anisimov to record the music. It took a few hours to set up all the sessions’ technical elements and, after the obligatory sound and camera checks, it was time to roll. Just like concert time, it was by then 8pm.

I performed both books of twelve preludes (Debussy published Book I in 1909 and Book II in 1913), one after the other in their set order, as I would have for a public performance. Around 10pm, I ran the whole program one more time, from start to finish. At midnight, I touched up a few spots to make sure I had all the correct notes, a normal recording technique that the sound engineer helps to pinpoint, as he follows the score carefully to identify anything that may be imperfect or unclear. By 2 in the morning, it was a wrap. We packed up and called it a night.

The date was August 1, 2007.

Over the following weeks, I regularly met with Max the engineer, to listen attentively to my takes and make my selection of favourites from the two run-throughs, from which we built the recording. Some occasional noises could be heard, inadvertently made by the crew as they moved with the cameras on the old stage’s floor board. While we got rid of most squeaks and cracks, what remains actually makes the recording sound even more like an authentic historical, live performance, which is in essence what this is!

As for editing the film, it turned out to be more complicated and costly than I or my father had anticipated, and we weren’t ready to jump into that process. Being in no rush, the project was temporarily put on hold.

Little did I know that Ludwig van Beethoven would shortly after come knocking on my door to present me with a piano trio which had never received its world premiere! This led to a major endeavour to reveal this “new” work to the world with a wonderful group I founded for the occasion with my colleagues, cellist Wendy Warner and violinist Sang Mee Lee. Shortly after the much-anticipated world premiere of this forgotten work in early 2009, Chicago-based Cedille Records offered to produce and release an album of this and other lesser known Beethoven trios, which we quickly recorded. Its release was a success, just as we gave our New York City premiere at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, in front of an excitedly curious audience which included Maestro Kurt Masur, actor Viggo Mortensen, and the New York Times! This recording, known as the Beethoven Project Trio, turned out to be my first formal album release.

This whole Beethoven adventure then led me to establish the International Beethoven Project, a Chicago-based non-profit whose mission was (and still is) to promote classical music in our modern world inspired by Beethoven’s creative and humanist spirit. Thinking about making more recordings, even while continuing to perform recitals, chamber music and concertos, was far from my mind in the first half of the previous decade as I managed the non-profit’s ambitious productions and festivals.

As time went on, my Debussy album began to slip from my mind. Only a tiny handful of people even knew it existed. I also began to tell myself that this recording wouldn’t stand up to my evolving standards and that I could perhaps make a new, “better” version of these works some day, the result of self-doubt more than anything. Plus, by 2016 I was really into Bach, and decided to record his complete Well-Tempered Clavier, which somehow seemed appropriate in the new age brought about by Brexit and Trump: Bach was a strong grounding force, a necessary counterweight in these vociferously volatile times. By the end of 2017, with the Bach project in the bag, searching for a record label to release it, I was introduced to Matthew Trusler of Orchid Classics who felt that this Bach would make a great addition to the label’s catalogue. Loving the way Matthew thought about recordings in the current era, I accepted his offer. The Bach48 Album, my first formal solo record, was released in February 2020, just in time for the arrival of Covid and the space for all to dive into Bach’s 5-hour masterpiece!

The centenary of Debussy’s death in 2018 gave me an opportunity to resurrect and perform the Debussy preludes again in concert. During one of my conversations with Matthew about the Bach project, I mentioned that I had recorded Debussy before but was thinking of rerecording the Préludes. Matthew seemed curious and thought it might be nice to make an album of this new recording after the Bach. But he also asked me if he could listen to the old recording. I had to dig out the master, a “300-year gold compact disc” (the best quality CD to keep an audio file safe) carefully packed away in a shoebox which luckily hadn’t been thrown away. I made a copy and sent it over, not having the courage to listen to it myself, for fear of hating what I heard. But Matthew did listen to it and thought it was perfect as it was, wondering why I would ever want to rerecord an album which was so good to begin with. He even teased me for having so many doubts, yet I knew that he fully understood me, as a musician himself: we have a tendency to torture ourselves over what we think is our musical worth!

So now, here we have it, with Matthew’s support and on Orchid, my actual debut album, much delayed, recorded in my twenties, is finally coming out as an unintended time capsule.

Fifteen years older, ever so slightly wiser, I have finally gathered the courage to release these preludes, which, after daring to listen to them again, I admit quite liking what I did. Having had multiple phases of a performance, recording and teaching career, of nonprofit leadership and festival organising in the time it took me to release this album, I am joyfully taking this opportunity to reset all of it and start anew (is it allowed?) in a more conscious and accepting approach to life, art and career.

I have also made Paris my primary homebase again after many years spent in the United States. I am ready to (re)introduce myself to European audiences, where it all started for me as a child, but on my now grown-up terms. More importantly, my next recordings will not wait fifteen years for their release! I do have several projects in the works: Beethoven Sonatas and Variation sets, 18th century French music, more Debussy… I am passionate about having so much great music to explore, and hope to be able to continue sharing it with fans of classical music over the coming years.

What about the film version? Yes, it will also be released, track by track over time. The Girl with the Flaxen Hair and Fireworks are already available, elegantly edited by Martin Mirabel, who also co-directed the Bach Well-Tempered Clavier film and documentary along with Mariano Nante (visit www.bach48.com for more info). The Debussy films will be released on our dedicated website www.claudedebussy.fr and on Orchid’s site as they are ready. Let me add that the success of the Debussy album can only help speed up the editing process of the films! So do consider purchasing the album and encouraging your music-loving friends to do the same.

I hope you will continue to visit this site and www.claudedebussy.fr to learn more about my approach to Debussy’s music, and general information about the composer and his preludes.

The Diabelli Variations release!

Dear friends,

I am very pleased and excited to be announcing my next album release, scheduled for December 11, 2020 on Orchid Creative, distributed by Naxos worldwide! It’s a recording of the Diabelli Variations, op. 120 by Beethoven, one of his greatest masterworks, written at the same time as his Missa Solemnis and 9th Symphony. Recorded in Bonn, Germany at the Beethoven Haus auditorium just next to the house where Beethoven was born 250 years ago, and with the support of the Beethoven Haus museum and archives, which hold the original Diabelli Variations manuscript (which I had the honor to consult). Over the next few weeks I will share more about this amazing adventure. Thank you to all who have made it possible! Audio produced by Sebastian Kienel. Photo of the album cover overlooking the mighty Rhein River by Céline Oms to whom this album is lovingly dedicated. It is produced by the International Beethoven Project in celebration of the composer’s 250th birthday.

A film of the album was made by filmmaker and author Martin Mirabel, and will have its worldwide streaming premiere on December 10th, 2020 at 8pm Bonn time (7pm London time, 2pm New York, etc.). Find out more here: https://fb.me/e/1KZZUcnqn

.

Je suis très heureux d’annoncer la sortie prochaine de mon nouvel album, Les Variations Diabelli opus 120 de Beethoven, le 11 décembre 2020 sur Orchid Creative, distribué mondialement par Naxos ! Composés à la même époque que la Missa Solemnis et la 9ème Symphonie, ce chef-d’œuvre résume tout le génie inventif du compositeur. Enregistré à Bonn, en Allemagne dans l’auditorium côtoyant la maison natale de Beethoven et à quelques mètres seulement du manuscrit de ces variations, j’ai hâte que vous puissiez écouter ces morceaux ! Entre temps je partagerai avec vous quelques détails de cette aventure, qui a été rendu possible grâce à plusieurs groupes et personnes, dont l’équipe de la Beethoven-Haus Bonn, qui m’ont entre autre montré le fameux manuscrit de cette œuvre. Cet album a été enregistré par l’ingénieur du son Sebastian Kienel, et produit par l’International Beethoven Project pour le 250ème anniversaire de la naissance de Beethoven. La photo de couverture, prise au dessus du Rhin, a été faite par Céline Oms, a qui je dédie cet album avec amour.

Le film de l’album réalisé par le cinéaste et écrivain Martin Mirabel sera diffusé en streaming le 10 décember 2020 à 20h (heure de Paris). Les détails se trouvent ici : https://fb.me/e/1KZZUcnqn

Diving into Debussy's Soundscape

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) is a revolutionary composer close to my heart and with whose music I have spent countless hours.

I am pleased to formally announce a deep dive into Debussy’s soundscape on the newly launched Orchid Creative division of Orchid Classics, the London-based, Naxos-distributed label I was happy to release my Bach48 Album with.

To begin this adventure and on the occasion of Debussy’s 158th birthday in August, my never-before-released 2007 recording of Book I of the Debussy Preludes will be digitally released on all major streaming platforms on August 21, 2020, while Book II will be released on October 21, 2020.

Debussy’s Préludes is a collection of 24 short-form pieces published between 1910 and 1913 and divided into two books of 12 preludes each. Book I includes such classics as “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair” and “The Sunken Cathedral”, amongst all of the other fantastic and absolutely extraordinary works in this collection.

New recordings of Debussy’s works will follow in 2022 for the composer’s 160th birthday.

I will also occasionally add other material to this collection, including writings, photos and films. A dedicated website (www.claudedebussy.fr) is in the process of being designed for this purpose. Stay tuned!

Debussy Préludes, Book I and II

Audio producer: Max Anisimov

Album cover photo: Albert J. Kim

Label: Orchid Creative distributed by Naxos

Release date: August 21, 2020 and October 21, 2020

Recorded in July 2007 at the Music Institute of Chicago’s Nichols Hall in Evanston, Illinois, USA.

Dedicated with love to David (in memoriam) and Shirley Toomim

Black Lives Matter

The brutal killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis on May 25th, 2020 sent shockwaves throughout the world never seen before on such a scale. Could anyone truly remain unmoved by the cruelty exhibited by the person whose knee stood on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes? Sadly, it seems more than a few lost souls consider this a legitimate police response to a man whose crime was to pass off a fake twenty dollar bill for a pack of cigarettes. George Floyd’s brother Philonise Floyd rightly asked Congress, “what is a black life worth?”

The answer should be obvious to all: the same as anyone’s life. In a constitutional democracy, which the United States is meant to be, we are all supposed to be equal under the law! Or so we were taught. However, the killing of George Floyd is, sadly, a cruel reminder that the United States of America has never risen up to its own ideals nor applied its rules equally across the country and especially across racial lines. We knew this was true ever since Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue (to pillage and to rape), we knew it to be true since we learned of the founding fathers’ permissiveness to slavery despite their “enlightenment”, about the Civil War whose peace was always uneasy as exemplified by the assassination of the great Lincoln, the years of Jim Crow, regular lynchings, “Whites Only” and gratuitous beatings to death without condemnation (Emmett Till), the much-delayed Civil Rights movement and subsequent legislative reforms, the assassinations of civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcom X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. We understood the issue was not truly resolved when the 1991 videotaped beating by cops of Rodney King was passed on a nonstop loop on CNN, and when the 1994 Crime Bill caused the greatest mass incarceration of black America ever witnessed (and that’s saying a lot). And since Apple came out with the first iPhone in 2007, we have seen countless beatings and murders live on camera (but what have we missed?). The devastating list of lives lost and families damaged due to police brutality and systemic racism in our laws and their applications is mind boggling in the 21st century alone.

Can America be proud, and hold its head high? Can America be the human rights advocate it claims to be in the world? Can America claim any moral compass and any right to pontificate?

George Floyd’s killing is bringing about reckonings the likes of which we have never seen before. This is good news, and this despite the pain of this moment, of the accumulation of grievances and of the highest crimes against humanity (because that is precisely what this is about) which America has accepted for far too long. And America is not the only guilty party: the entire world is rocked by this event. Europe too is feeling its consequences, even if its part in the American system is more distant.

It is time to consider the systemic structural, economic and psychological impacts that remain from centuries of world domination, of colonialism, and of a modern-day economic system which is designed to benefit from these unjust foundations. And this concerns everyone, of every race, of every social and financial standing, for we cannot build a safe, strong, healthy society without coming to terms with our histories. This is not about erasing any facts of the past, but about telling ALL the stories of history, of understanding the significance of decisions, of assuming responsibility where we as a people bear responsibility. We must do this in order to find greater understanding, empathy, and learn to appreciate what justice truly is. We have been taught official history in school. Let us question what we have learned, and put it to the test of truth and of humanity without fear.

Yes, black lives do matter! And it is time to reconsider how we all participate, willingly or unwillingly, in a racist and unequal system which we were all born into and which is wholly unacceptable.

In my world of classical music, there is indeed much essential work to be done to recognize the extraordinary contributions of musicians of color over the last centuries (not to mention women) and to be drastically more inclusive today. The idea that there is not enough talent out there is false and is a nonstarter. In my work directing the International Beethoven Project and its many events and festivals, I have been able to see and hear first-hand many world-class musicians of color. And while I have always been happy to find and hire musicians and artists of color, I know that we in this industry need to make a more concerted effort to do so and to promote inclusive environments. The future of classical music itself depends on it, and it is time to make sure that music reflects in every way the universalism it claims to express.

I plan to continue addressing this topic in the coming months and years as we learn about what we can do better. We must be part of the solution rather than be included in unfair mechanisms we have accepted for the entirety of our lives. I especially commend all of those people who have been on the frontlines of peaceful protests around the country and the world in the face of extreme resistance and much too much police brutality.

I also wish to mention that, while extremely difficult, painful even for all people, no matter what place they come from in life and in their hearts, this Great Reckoning is necessary, and will take us to look deep within ourselves and in our societies. We will have to address all forms of systemic oppression, from the place of Black Lives but also of indigenous lives, immigrant lives, and women’s lives, as we have sidelined them for far too long as well.

When looking into systemic forms of oppression and unjust applications of ‘law and order’ (with all of its underlying racist connotations), the time is ripe to sow the seeds of an entirely new society that will be just, humanist, ecological, and kind. We can fashion an economic and a legal system to function within the bounds of our ideals of peace and equal justice and opportunity for all. This will take work, much patience, much empathy, and no small amount of humility.

The goal is to build a just and harmonious world.

As a musician, I will play my part.

Whatever your skill or talent, you are also called to play your part.

Let us begin rebuilding our world, for this generation and future generations. Let us work all together so that there are no more George Floyds, for as long as people of color are choked, I don’t see how any of us can breathe easy.

Thank you for reading.

George

On Patronage - The Podcast Edition

In Fall of 2016 I wrote an article on the topic of patronage, published here and on Medium a few months ago. Here, for those of you who don't like to read, is the audio version of that essay! Enjoy.

On Patronage

JSB48: The Well-Tempered Clavier Project

I am embarking on the monumental task of exploring, performing, and recording the complete Well-Tempered Clavier of Johann Sebastian Bach. The Well-Tempered Clavier consists of a Prelude and Fugue in each major and minor key of the western scale, of which there are twenty-four. Because Bach tried this experiment twice, twenty years apart, there are two books of twenty-four Preludes and Fugues, each one brilliant in its own way, like the two testaments of the Bible. Performing or even recording these is not part of the typical piano player's path, because of their technical difficulty and length (an average complete performance takes nearly five hours). But predictably for me, I’m not interested in doing things the usual way: I am exploring this work in both traditional ways (a straight-up piano recording) and untraditional ways (remixing some of the music with electronic sounds; adding dancers, actors, performance artists, and set designs to live performances; turning parts and the entirety of the work into films and video art; and generally exploring the intellectual, philosophical, and poetic elements of the piece and its parallels to other works of art, literature, and music. 

This is a project I have been very slowly maturing for at least ten years. I have recently launched a Patreon page to help grow the support I now need to bring this concept into the world over the next few years. Each element of the project will be released to supporters of the Patreon first before the wider public gets access, so get on board! Because Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier represents, in so many ways, the alpha and omega of all music, Bach will not be the only composer I will be exploring, performing, and recording, but will be the soil from which all other music I play during this time will grow. 

Stay tuned.

Beethoven in my life

For me, Beethoven is the composer who most fully represents all aspects of human life in his music. I think in that way Bach and Beethoven have a lot in common. But Beethoven is more colorful, as witty as he is dramatic, and as bawdy as he is godly. Beethoven, even more than Bach, takes detours and takes time, analyses himself, the people and circumstances around him, and reaches for the heavens as much as he partakes in the good and the bad of existence. It could be said that Beethoven relishes the human condition, as much as he seeks to commune with higher powers. And there is an unabashed sexuality to Beethoven's music that, unlike that of Mozart's, is not coy, and is not hidden behind fans, lace and powdered wigs. Sex is woven into his music as a life force, but so is humanity's drive to overcome its own animalistic urges. 

Beethoven has permeated my life as a musician from my very first years studying piano, more deeply than even the music of Bach. Not only did I study Beethoven's music (sonatinas and bagatelles first, then sonatas and concertos) from the moment I could read music and without interruption since, but I connected with the story of his life, which seemed so vivid, in a way no other composer, as I could tell, was. It helped that his personal story was well known, that his portraits really gave a good idea of what he looked like, and that his music was plentiful and so evocative. It was easy for me to imagine stories for each of his pieces. My love of Beethoven led me to launch my career with his music, performing two of his sonatas for my first public recital in Paris when I was ten. 

I have performed more than half of his 32 Sonatas for Piano, his Diabelli and Eroica Variations, and most of his great chamber music for piano and strings. I have performed his 4th and 5th Piano Concertos many times and know his other three well. I have performed his Triple Concerto. I have dedicated many beautiful hours of my life listening, live and in recordings, to his string quartets and symphonies, to his opera and ballet, to his masses, to his lieder, and to all the other great and even insignificant pieces he wrote. I even had the honor of performing a world premiere of a piano trio that resurfaced nearly ten years ago (a recording of which is available here). 

Besides the above-mentioned recording, and despite my lifelong passion and frequent performance of Beethoven's music, I have not yet launched any recording projects of his solo piano music, but that is about to change. Interestingly, it is through my Bach Well-Tempered Clavier Project that this is made possible. Beethoven was an ardent "believer" in Bach and spent his childhood studying the Well-Tempered Clavier, which had a tremendous influence on his writing. For me, it is as if, without first digging deeper into Bach, I could not find the clarity of thinking I was looking for in order to address Beethoven the way I knew I wanted. Spending so much time with Bach recently has somehow unlocked a magic door into Beethoven's world that, as I crack it open, is revealing sounds and rhythms I had not noticed before. I therefore look forward to working on and recording Beethoven's Sonatas while I continue to explore Bach. It is a pairing I am really excited about.