She's played this tune millions of times before. Too many times in front of an audience as large as this, but many more alone in the living room, where the danger for criticism is much worse than when playing for stuffy old codgers in their black ties. Piano Sonata # 14 in C Sharp Minor, the Moonlight Sonata, Beethoven's love letter to his indifferent Countess. Almost a fantasy. How right of Ludwig to include those words in the title of this magical movement. It was almost a fantasy for him, those aching melodies coming off her fingers like the most potent of spells. The notes filled his ears, hypnotizing him much more than any ticking watch ever could.
He's heard the same tinkling ivories coming from his stereo millions of times before. The new, the old, the downright amateur, he has every single one. Nothing less than completion for his favorite composition. In the sweeping highs and the seething lows, he felt the human emotion that had, for so long, evaded him: love. He saw Beethoven slaving over his piano to perfectly sum up the planes of his love's face: the freckle below her left eye, the valley of her lips, the point of her nose. And watching this angel pouring her own soul into the brilliant composer's notes, he felt the closest to human as he'd been since 1918.