Sleepless. . .

Damnit.  I just woke up out of a dead sleep, heart pounding, blood racing and now having trouble getting back to sleep.  Maybe a glass of milk will help.

But in the meantime while I have it on my mind, when I was a child I was exposed to classical music like many my age via Bugs Bunny cartoons and some of those songs have stuck with me for over thirty years.  A personal favorite is the cartoon called "Rhapsody Rabbit" in which Bugs, the piano virtuoso, takes on the incredible composition Hungarian Rhapsody #2 by composer Franz Liszt.  This is the most famous of the 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies Liszt wrote and in my opinion is one of the greatest piano compositions ever created.  Take that all you Brahms fans!

Anyway, I couldn't find the Bugs Bunny version in which he is tormented by a mouse who lives in the piano, but here is Taiwanese piano phenomenon Jung Lin performing the ultra-complex and moving piece minus the chicanery of a pesky piano-dwelling rodent.

And here is another wonderful bravura by Ms. Lin of another classic arrangement, Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp Minor Op. posth. 66.  I like how this song's tempo changes from the blistering allegro agitado to largo and later two more tempo changes including a key change to D-flat major.  Nobody writes music like this anymore and nothing will ever master these great and old compositions.