Week 1: Status check! (also pick your piece!)
Hello and welcome to the WEEK ONE 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 January 23 - 30 I hope to be reading your daily updates in this very thread right here!
Here is this week's assignment!
1. Pick your piece!
2. If a new piece, post your sight-reading of it (never hurts to practice this valuable skill!) If it is an old piece, let's try and dust it off, and play through what we can, to evaluate its current condition. Let us know what your "piece status" is!
3. Optional: Tell us WHY you picked this piece that you love so much!
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Hi all!
Originally, I was planning on playing something by Prokofiev (either a piano transcription of a movement from Cinderella Suites, or the 2nd Piano Sonata) since I love Prokofiev, but after hearing everyone's choices I decided to opt for something different and perhaps more on theme.
For those of you who don't know, Rachmaninoff made a transcription of violin piece by Kreisler "Liebesleid" (Liebesleid translates to "Love's Sorrow"). I remember hearing Liebesleid performed by one of my violinist friends when I was younger and I really enjoyed. It seemed like such a joy to play. I have a soft spot for "salon music" -- something you can imagine being enjoyed casually in a small living room as background music in a social setting. All these years later, I discovered Rachmaninoff transcribed this piece and was excited since that meant I could learn this piece (or at least something like it)!
I started this awhile back but never quite got it to a place where I could play through the entire thing at least somewhat fluidly. This seems like the perfect opportunity to try to get it to some state of "completion". Posted in my "dust off".
PS- This is my first community challenge. All of your posts have been really inspirational to me. I was sort of in a piano rut and now I'm excited again!
-L
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Leslie Chong What a gorgeous sense of phrasing you possess. Your performance defines all the best things about this piece! You inspire me!
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Leslie Chong
so beautiful… thanks for sharing.
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Piece chosen: Cecile Chaminade op. 76 no. 6, Meditation (from Romances sans paroles)
Chaminade is one of my favorite composers and this piece seems to fit the month’s theme well. I’ve posted my second run-through.
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Thurmond R that’s gorgeous, Thurmond!
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Thurmond R that sounds lovely!
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Thurmond R Bravo Thurmond, you play it with great expressiveness.
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Thurmond R I love your sound concept and production.
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Thurmond R Very strong and full of delicacy and expression too! Great job.
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Thurmond R I, too, am quite impressed with Thurmond - but I'm extraordinarily biased...AND I get to hear him play several hours each day. I'm spoiled, hearing live concerts on a daily basis!
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Thurmond R a composer we don't hear often enough. Thanks for sharing.
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Thurmond R Beautiful playing! Expressive indeed.
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Thurmond R that's a beautiful piece. Sounding great already
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Michelle R You can send him down to Orlando anytime! We'd love to listen to him all day.
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Thurmond R As you know, I am a big Chaminade fan as well and you are doing a great job on this piece already!
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Gail Starr Next time we visit family, we might take you up on that! Thurmond would love to play your beautiful piano - and my husband has a thing for Disney World/Universal Studios, so popping over to Orlando would make him happy, too.
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Thurmond R Well done Thurmond! Such lovely harmonies from the early twentieth century French music: a second golden period for the flute after the Baroque.
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Michelle R please stop by when you are in the area!
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Andrea Buckland Natalie Peh Juan Carlos Olite Michael Vidhya Bashyam Ching Lee Goh Sindre Skarelven Derek McConville Gail Starr Roy James-Pike Thank you all for your kind comments!
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My plan, when I started TB eighteen months' ago, was to record a piece every six months to monitor my progress, so this challenge prompts me to upload recordings that are well overdue, as I have only uploaded once before.
My Youtube refresher course is also well overdue. They may be a greater challenge.
I have chosen three pieces to work on for this challenge: each of which is around the theme of 'love', two of which are not 'classical' in a strict understanding of the genre, although I disagree with the term, from a woke perspective. They are:
(1) Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 10: II. Andante cantabile;
(2) Nature Boy, composed by George Alexander Aberle [also known as Ahbez]. Ahbez faced legal action from a Yiddish musci composer, Herman Yablokoff, who claimed that the melody to "Nature Boy" came from one of his songs, "Shvayg mayn harts" ("Be Still My Heart"). There was an out-of-court settlement;
(3) "Wild Is the Wind", a song written by Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington for the 1957 film "Wild is the Wind".
I'll make three separate posts about each piece.
However, the two 20th century pieces may raise issues of copyright. I am not all clear about whether we are permitted legally to use these works, including recording and sharing for this challenge, for tuition purposes. Any thoughts?
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Roy James-Pike Can't wait to hear you! I don't know either of the 20th century works.
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Gail Starr OH...of course I know "Nature Boy"! I didn't realize it was the same song made famous by Nat King Cole.
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Gail Starr Thank you Gail. My plan is to revise tomorow how to record and upload to Youtube.
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Gail Starr It's a beatiful tune, but I forgot to say I am playing an accompaniement to it, which prompted me today to play the melody too on the piano, and then on the flute. I have now started to imagine recording each in the future and then combining then on video. Thank you.
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Mozart was once asked to define music. His response was 'love'. Please forgive me if I am misrepresenting Mozart.
Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 10: II. Andante cantabile
The Piano Sonata No. 10 in C Major, K. 330, is one of the three works in the cycle, K330, K331, and K332. The sonata was composed in 1783, when Mozart was 27 years old.
It was published, with the other two sonatas in 1784.
The work is one of Mozart's most popular piano sonatas and has been featured in classical music-related films.
Mozart's autograph of the sonata is held in the Jagiellonian Library in Krakov, Poland.
The very end of the movement which Mozart wrote, an F major coda, was misplaced in the autograph but appears in the 1784 publication.
The key is F major, the subdominant of C major. After the exposition is heard twice, the music then modulates to the development in the parallel key of F Minor, and its relative major, A flat.
The movement then modulates to the tonic, for the recapitulation, followed by a short coda.
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Roy James-Pike I love this sonata! Good luck with the practice of all your pieces for this challenge :)
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