Week 4: Post your Progress!
Hello and welcome to the WEEK FOUR Main Thread for this challenge! 
Alright everyone - this is the thread where we'll all be posting our daily updates.
Make sure you've read the rules before replying (<- click)
Twice a week between August 21 - 26th I hope to be reading your daily updates in this very thread right here!
Here is this week's assignment!
Post your progress on your pieces! If you are able to perform or play through sections of your music, share it with us! Let's celebrate your hard work during this past month!
We will have a watch party featuring your recordings that you upload down below on this thread, but if you would like to play LIVE please considering joining the "back to school" recital!
Assignments:
1. Record a run-through or performance of your piece!
2. Post it below
3. Write down the progress that you have seen in the last month and share that insight with all of us!
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Hi there!
Since the first week I haven’t post anything about my progress, so I’d like to share my results.
I think, that my understanding of this piece changed greatly since I’ve played it ~6-7 years ago but I have to work on making my thoughts come true. Anyway, it was a fabulous idea and I had wonderful time
Thank you, tonebase team
p.s. Tomorrow I can’t play in Zoom conference because I don’t have a piano at home(
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Elizabeth Bravo, Elizabeth!!
That was perfection, and I hope you get to play it all around in concerts, because this deserves many many listeners! -
Elizabeth Fabulous performance!
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Elizabeth On the watch party chat during your segment I commented that "I wish I could play runs like that!" That's still my reaction watching again just now. You seem to be getting your musical intention across very well. I will happily listen to anything you bring to future watch parties!
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Hi piano friends! I wish the challenge would have lasted more weeks (even months...). I feel totally incapable of playing this piece without a lot of mistakes, but I am very happy to have participated in the challenge and after that I would like to practice more and more this Ballade to make (in two months or os) a better video
. But, for now this is what it is 
and I want to keep my word to submit a video at the end of the challenge.One of the great difficulties I have encountered is to play without tension the most demanding fragments. It has become an obsession with this piece, but I am not able to do it yet. I feel I have to focus deeply on it. I remember a sentence about the thumb of the Zhu Xiao-Mei's book "The Secret Piano": "If it's tense, all the other fingers will be tense, too. If it's relaxed, the others will follow". This sentence, which is engraved in my memory since the moment I read it, it's absolutely true in the coda of this piece. So, it's time to work more and more on it and try to solve it for this beloved (unfinished forever...) Ballade and other pieces.
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Juan Carlos Olite Bravo, Juan Carlos! I enjoyed every minute of your truly poetic interpretation!
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Juan Carlos Olite I can feel both the intensity and gentleness in your playing. It's such an emotional piece and you have conveyed it well. The piece is coming together and looking forward to you sharing this piece again
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Juan Carlos Olite Bravo, Juan Carlos. Beautiful playing, as always. I loved the intensity you brought to it, with your trademark beautiful phrasing and voicing. Just wonderful!
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Juan Carlos Olite This is beautiful! You play it with such sensitivity! Someday I hope to be able to play this as well as you. Thank you.
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Juan Carlos Olite Bravo! Thanks for sharing this colorful yet introspective performance as well the nuggets of wisdom from “The Secret Piano.” I love pieces like this with so much depth that get better and better every time they are revisited. Looking forward to hearing this played many more times from you!
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Juan Carlos Olite what a spectacularly gorgeous piece this is - it never gets old, no matter how many times one has heard it. You obviously have achieved a lot in the short time of this challenge; most people would need months and months of hard work to get the ballade to this point. Thank you for sharing!
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Andrea Buckland Priya Viseskul Michelle R Jennifer Mehta Vidhya Bashyam Alexander Weymann Thank you so much for your kind words! It's amazing how motivating it can be to participate in a group like this, thank you!
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Juan Carlos Olite Every time I hear you play, I am moved by your lush musicality and phrasing. Ioved the quote from Zhu Xiao-Mei's book.
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Juan Carlos Olite Bravo! Loved your playing of this truly virtuoso piece. I have listened to it many times on different recordings and it always sounds fresh and dramatic. I would love to attempt it one day (I've only ever toyed with the opening bars!). Great achievement to have got it to this level in a short period!!
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Juan Carlos Olite Bravo, Juan Carlos!!
That was a pretty fantastic performance! I loved your lyrical parts in particular, but also the very hard virtuosity was really good! Congratulations! -
Juan Carlos Olite I loved this, even if you consider this to be an unfinished piece! It is a beautiful rendition of a very magnificent piece! Bravo, Juan Carlos!
Appreciate the quote from Zhu Xiao-Mei's book "The Secret Piano", which is very useful advice to keep in mind.
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Gail Starr Derek McConville Sindre Skarelven Natalie Peh Thank you so much! This gorgeous piece wasn't knew for me, I had played excerpts but I had never memorized and played it complete. Now, thanks for the challenge, I feel more confident with it and I am very motivated to practice it more and more.
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Juan Carlos Olite BRAVO MAESTRO!!!!! What a treat… I remain in awe.
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Parag Mehta Thank you so much, Parag! Always great support
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Juan Carlos Olite
Yes, I too say bravo! You've obviously done a tremendous amount of great work on this Ballade. I can only dream of playing at such a technical & musical level.
In regard to that quote about the thumb and fingers, do you find things work better when you play with an "up" feeling - a floating touch - or when you play with a "down" feeling, with a sense of pressure into the keys? And does one or the other of those seem more "relaxed" to you?
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Randall Wayne Thank you so much, Randall! It's been a big effort indeed and there is still a lot of work to be done.
Regarding your question, I think that in whatever way of playing it's absolutely necessary to relax the thumbs, specially of course if we are playing a demanding passage in which we have to stretch the hands over and over (in fortissimo, fast movements...). What I found in this quote is something like the right method to do it: the key is to focus on the thumbs and avoid their tension. Yes, I know it's easy to say and very difficult to put into practice, but at least it's a clear and concrete way to achieve it. And I'm trying to incorporate the habit to do it. It would be wonderful to play the coda in this Ballade without tension in the thumbs... It would be...
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Juan Carlos Olite OK I get what you are saying - the relaxation of the thumbs takes priority in getting everything else to work! Trying that out just now in some Schubert, it felt like I had to stop *trying* to do something with my thumb; if I let it play almost passively like a bone, the figures and runs that I was playing rolled out much more smoothly. Nice!
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Hi everyone! Here is the status of Debussy's Sunken Cathedral. I agree with Juan Carlos Olite, that I could use many more weeks to continue to refine this. It is not at performance level yet, but I have learned so much more about this piece than when I played it 5-6 years ago. I will continue working on this. I do need to memorize it to play it really well. Parts are memorized, but more to do. I thank you so much for this challenge to push me back into serious practice. I look forward to having time to listen to everyone's pieces. Thank you.
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Jennifer Mehta I do think the sound you create in this piece is quite beautiful; you capture the solemn and mysterious mood very well and set the misty and the radiant sections effectively against each other. It is an amazing Prélude, for sure.
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Jennifer Mehta Very beautiful playing, Jennifer! You bring out all the magic mystery of the piece. I love how you manage to control the dynamics, with that long and impressive crescendo. Bravo!
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Jennifer Mehta Lovely playing! I haven’t heard this piece before so thank for sharing and bringing us into the beautiful world of Debussy.
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