I composed this improvisation out of the blue one night about 30 or so years ago after a couple of glasses of wine. My hesitations in the performance were not so much the effect of the wine as the fear of screwing up while recording, and making split second decisions on where to go next with this puppy. I never bothered to go back and re-record it ... I would have screwed it up too.

'Sicilian Passion' © by Mondo Fuego™
https://voca.ro/13QDNvvVqxuI

Here's one of my favorite compositions. I borrowed a little of Grieg's Piano Concerto finale at the end.

'Portrait of a Lady' © by Mondo Fuego™
https://voca.ro/1a7BgsteZlZ5

Again, the above pieces were spur-of-the-moment improvisational sketches of what flew thru my head at the time.

I can play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata 1st movement and the 'andante cantibile' 2nd movement from Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13, a/k/a 'Pathétique' with the best of them, even in front of an audience, but I cannot record them without screwing up.

I studied under Olga Olga Radosavljevich-Gradojevich ("miss Olga") at the Cleveland Institute of Music back in the late '60s and early '70s while getting my MBA at Case Western Reserve University. I was 'Preparatory', not 'Conservatory'. Preparatory is for students who want to learn but have no ambition to become professional. Conservatory is for the virtuoso performers who are destined for greatness in performance in the concert world. No chance of that for me. I also had a full-time 'day job' with Harris Corporation, 3 kids, a family to educate, clothe and feed, and a mortgage.

I mastered a number of compositions by Chopin and Beethoven, but I was limited in what I could reasonably expect to accomplish by starting in my late 20's. The pros like Rubenstein, Horowitz, Schnabel, Argerich, Brendel, Barenboim, Ashkenazy, Pollini, Grimaud, Lang Lang, Kissin, and Wang all started well before age 5, 6, 7 or 8. If you don't start early enough and practice long enough, you will never develop the fine physical motor skills required to play the 'vivace ... presto ... prestissimo' stuff, so to avoid frustration and failure, I opted for the 'Grave ... Largo ... Lento ... Adagio ... Andante ... Moderato ... Allegretto' Stuff.

Here's what they would sound like if I played them for you:

Moonlight Sonata, 1st Movement




Pathetique Sonata, 2nd mvt.