Here's a blast from the past. 17 years ago (when I was 17!) I lived in Germany in the gap year after finishing high school.

I had given up my piano studies in my graduating year of high school, so my chops were rusty. Luckily, in Germany I had a wonderful piano teacher (Nuri El-Ruheibany, conducting the orchestra in the video below) who gave me all sorts of amazing performance opportunities, including a chance to learn and perform one of Haydn's piano concertos for piano and orchestra.

I was recently able to salvage some of the aging VHS tapes in my collection (thanks to my lovely friend Nita *waves*) and the first thing I salvaged was this video of the concerto performance. This is the first movement of three in Haydn's piano concerto in D Major, the "Vivace". I performed all three movements of this delightful musical work.

It's not a perfect performance, and the colours on the video have faded over time, but I'm proud of what I accomplished as a young musician and sometimes wish I had the time to spare to revisit my classical roots in a more serious way. There's always so much to learn and so much room to grow, so one has to pick an area to focus on for a while. Right now, that isn't classical piano. But I still love it.