Once in awhile, Frank Report can offer its readers unalloyed joy.
Such is the case today, and with the exception of some of our lowbrow readers, I think we can all agree that the following audio combines high art with the best in fun music.
I am referring to a rare 1980s recording of Keith Raniere playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.
One of his girlfriends found this recording among her archives [on a cassette tape] and shared it with us.
Keith and she lived together back in the 1980s. They broke up after he told her he was dying of cancer and was being treated at Sloan Kettering in NYC.
By chance, her daughter found Keith with Toni Natalie at a food court in a mall in Clifton Park just moments after Keith told her mother that he was dying at Sloan Kettering.
She has this recording to remember him by.
https://frankreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Moonlight-sonata-by-Raniere.m4a
Granted, the recording is a little scratchy but it is Raniere at his best musically.
Just to compare, there is a version available on YouTube. The pianist is not nearly as great as Raniere himself claimed to be but somehow the YouTube performance, posted by Andrea Romano, has gotten 141 million views/listens.
I can only hope Raniere’s version, now released on Frank Report for the first time, will get just as many.
As for Raniere playing piano, we need only to look at his bio for his estimation of his own talent.
This bio was found on his now-defunct website, www.keithraniere.com in March 2006.
He says he mastered piano at the concert level at age 12.
Keith Raniere
Executive Success Programs – Keith Raniere, co-founder of Executive Success Programs, Inc. (ESP), is a scientist, mathematician, philosopher, and entrepreneur. An unusually gifted individual, Mr. Raniere’s unique abilities were evident at a very early age. Among them:
He spoke in full sentences by the age of one was reading by the age of two
At the age of eleven, he was an Eastern Coast Judo Champion.
At age 12, he taught himself high school mathematics in less than a day and taught himself three years of college mathematics by age 13.
He plays many musical instruments and taught himself to play piano at a concert level by age 12
He was entered in the Guinness Book of World Records for “Highest IQ” in 1989.
He has been noted as one of top three problem-solvers in the world
He was a millionaire by the age of 30 and worth $50 million by the age of 32
Mr. Raniere is perhaps best known as the creator of Rational Inquiry™ – the transformational model at the center of Executive Success Programs’ trainings. Rational Inquiry™ is a science based on the belief that the more consistent an individual’s beliefs and behavior patterns are, the more successful they will be in everything they do. The invention, which Mr. Raniere laid the groundwork for as a teenager, is considered by many to be one of most dramatic developments in the field of human potential today.
But despite his extraordinary talents and accomplishments, what often strikes people most about Mr. Raniere is how down to earth he is. He has the unique ability to relate to virtually anyone, and is known by his friends as a prankster extraordinaire.
NXIVM is a new ethical understanding that allows us to build an internal civilization and have it manifest in the external world. It allows us to explore our most fundamental nature and to begin to redirect our power of creation, a power that we all possess in a very human sense. It is a place where humanity can rise to its noble possibility.
NXIVM WebsiteExecutive Success Programs has created international coaching standards that allow for accurate, consistent measurement of human psychodynamic performance. All ESP programs maintain standards of excellence and impart a unique, patent-pending technology called Rational Inquiry™, developed by Keith Raniere, that enhances human performance in virtually every field of human endeavor.
Executive Success Programs Website
He mastered the piano at a very early age.
The Bronfman sisters bought him a Steinway Grand Piano which, sadly, the Feds, who have no appreciation for his artistry, have seized.
He played concert level perversion at the age of 57.
All kidding aside, Moonlight Sonata was very popular in Beethoven’s day, to the point of exasperating the composer himself, who remarked to Carl Czerny, “Surely, I’ve written better things.”
In modern times, most people who have heard Keith play the piano have only heard him play Moonlight Sonata and it is quite possible it is the only song he knows how to play.
He had short pudgy fingers which are not actually best suited for concert level pianists. He never played at any concert halls as far as anyone knows.
Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata actually has three movements but it appears Keith only played the first movement which requires less skill than the other two movements of the composition.
