Oh geez, I thought this was over. This is getting quite exhausting. If you want me out of here please just say so. You're the admin so I'm sure you'll get the last word ultimately...

The old reliable "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen" argument. This is what's called a "straw man", at least as applied to my acceptance of the feedback. I suppose based on your experience, you think everyone who expresses dismay is just upset because they suck and can't take the truth. Convenient argument, and certainly very easy to win, especially from the bully pulpit.

Sigh. I'm not upset about any of the candid feedback. Not sure how many times I have to say that. It's the feedback I was looking for. Perhaps you should look back at my posts in context. I'm upset about the personal attacks by ONE of your artists who chose to jump in and attack me related to my posts to you. If you were so inclined, you could check out my initial responses to your artist's "feedback", his stated desire to "stir up a little trouble" with me, and the various and curious names/insults he threw. If you don't think this sort of thing has any correlation to your decreasing posts and users, then that's OK with me. Feel free to just ignore my complaint about the "personal attack" if you like - I promise I won't lose sleep over it. It's your site.

But I get it - you feel I asked for it and deserve it. Again, I'm VERY SORRY I ranted to you about the "overplayed" comment - boy was that a big mistake. Can we just erase my account and start over?

But PLEASE PLEASE can we end all of this and just move on? I give up.

That's a very good idea

Man-oh-man, things did not go very well with your initial time up to bat, Matthew. Sure, it's not easy to swallow a bitter pill, but clearly you have a passion for playing classical piano, as we all do, and if you give it a chance, Piano Society can be a real great resource for learning about and improving your own piano playing. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten some comments that I felt were pretty irksome! and then I'd storm off and pout for awhile. But the advice, help, encouragement, knowledge, and friendship that I've received far outweighs the unpleasant stuff and so that keeps me plodding on. You claim to be wide open for constructive criticism so maybe you can submit different recordings when you have some ready. My main complaint about these first three recordings is the sound of your piano. I really don't like it at all. You will have to tinker around and get a better sound on your next submissions if you have hopes of them going up onto the main site.

Still testy, I see. Ah well, maybe you'll grow out of it.
Sure let's move on. No point in beating a dead horse.

As for Joe, we've had some interesting times with him. But we get on alright now, he's quite ok when you get to know him better. And his feedback, while sometimes uncompromising, is usually spot-on. But to answer your question, in your profile you can define Friends and Foes, so you can ignore people you don't like (not the admins, unfortunately, they can't be ignored )

Whatever you say chief. You da man. Bet you still think the disputed feedback was about the Beethoven, huh? Ah well, literacy is overrated I suppose. Maybe you'll grow into it.

I only have time to listen to the Beethoven just now, and Eddy has expressed very adequately what I feel about it. To what he advises at the end, I would add WITHOUT PEDAL during preparatory work. Someone once said to me "the pedal is to the pianist as the bottle is to an alcoholic" and the pedal is a wonderful way of disguising woes and problems. The rubati which you employ sound very odd and stylistically out of character. To be fair to you, there is a nice overall sound, but it is a bit same-ish throughout. I'm guessing a bit here, but I assume you aren't currently seeing a teacher - I think some of the faults mentioned above fall into the category of problems which would be noticed straightaway and not allowed to persist if you were. I think you can play the piece, but it needs work, especially on evenness. Good luck with it.

Thanks Andrew - Yes, after listening back to my Beethoven I do think the feedback regarding evenness and rubati has been spot on. I've been working at it (within my limited practice times that is) the past few weeks. Good suggestion about the pedal - I like that saying as well! No teacher for me for quite some time now, although my kids have one.

Best Regards.