I had some real good work on Beethoven this week, I have:

1) practiced the Hammarklavier Sonata a lot
2) edited the recordings of two of the sonatas of the coming Volume 4
3) continued to cut the filming of one of those sonatas
4) written some of the texts for the booklets

Now, I just have to keep doing this for some more weeks, and voilà! there is the Volume 4 to send to the factory.

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Speaking about Volume 4, and those recordings: I recorded the whole CD 8 months ago. I started to edit it, and…deleted it all. I could feel that I had “korvstoppat” as they say in Sweden, trying to cram in things without taking the time necessary and having the patience needed. Then I took a long break from recording. Now I am on my third (!) version of some of the sonatas but I am so happy I re-did them. I dare to say they are pretty good by now…

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One thing I’m also doing is to create the silhouette for the cover. As you have noticed, Beethoven is getting older on each volume. For Volume 4, I started with this:

which is now (not finished yet) this:

In the next blog entries on the sonatas, I’m going to play the movements on film, so you can get a better idea of the piece. It won’t be possible to do on every sonata, but at least some of them. Here is how it looks like to edit (click on picture to make it bigger):

Fancy, huh?

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I have started a concert series in New York City, at Victor Borge Hall at Scandinavia House. It will be mainly chamber music. My marketing will be that the concerts will be awesome. Weird thing today to use as marketing, there are so many gimmicks that are built on anything but quality. But with players like David Chan and Caroline Stinson that can hear in this little excerpt from the concert, it just can’t fail. There will be more of this!

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Weather here in the New York area has been very warm the last days. Clearly better than the rain, rain and rain we had a week ago. And oh, today we will get a new roof. That.Will.Be.Loud.

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Next week will be more work with Beethoven Volume 4, more practicing; I have to prepare for the recording of Tobias Broström’s Piano Concerto which is coming up, and the Hammarklavier sonata is coming to Stockholm on June 14th.

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It’s Friday after all, so we should end on a light note. What is better than a Parisian scene from my favorite show Family Guy:

Au revoir! See you vendredi prochain!