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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Hello everyone! I picked Chopin Ballade Nr. 4. Why - I have fallen in love with Chopin since the last Chopin Competition in Oct 2021.
Last year I played a lot - some Etudes, Nocturnes, 2 Scherzos.
My absolute favorite piece is Sonata Nr 3, but this piece is too long and really difficult. 2 weeks ago my teacher told me , I should play a Ballade now. I have played the first and third already and the second one is not my favorite piece. So it leaves the fourth. But in my whole piano time, I have never thought about this piece - not to play, even can’t remember I have listen to it, except the beginning. And anyway it’s only for professional pianists …. I decided to forget all fixed ideas about it and have a look at it. And after 3-4 hours practicing I have fallen in love with this piece. Can’t get out of my mind. Maybe is a bit over my level - doesn’t matter. I have practiced it now 15-20 hours. Couldn’t make the whole piece but the half one. My challenge is to get through it in the next three weeks.
Dominic thanks for this challenge!
https://youtu.be/mZFuY5Z_Q3c-
Michael Thanks for your nice words, but the hardest part is yet to come.
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Kerstin My FAVORITE Ballade ... wonderful tone and depth here.. keep it up for sure and in three weeks you'll be ready for the Coda, which is ready for you already. You're there!!! WOW +
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Kerstin Wow! Beautiful playing. You captured the feeling of it so well. I knew right in the beginning when you played the first few notes of the haunting opening (my favorite part of my favorite ballade) that it would be great. Can’t wait to hear the rest.
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Kerstin What a beautiful playing! I love this Ballade with such a melancholic eloquence that you communicate perfectly!
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Will Green when I lived in France, there used to be an amazing radio programme that analysed different masterworks and, all these years later, I remember the host remarking on how Chopin seems to be searching for a way to start this piece with all the repeated notes.
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Ching Lee Goh Lovely ornamentation! Can’t wait to hear the rest.
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Kerstin Wow, Kerstin! This is amazing! I love this piece too very much <3
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Kerstin beautiful playing! Can't wait to hear more!
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Kerstin fantastic piece and wonderful playing
looking forward to the watch party next month. -
Kerstin wow, that is great progress! It sounds lovely already. Looking forward to hearing the rest! I’m especially interested since I’m also trying to play this one, but for me three
it is definitely going to take longer than three weeks. I actually find the beginning few pages to be rather difficult because of the repetition.
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Alice Lin Hi Alice! Yes this piece is quite demanding. The second half is more difficult than the beginning for me. But here is the video. Some mistakes - still need time. https://youtu.be/WgAMm5IOI7g
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Kerstin you are pretty much THERE. This is the kind of piece you spend a lifetime coming back to and working on but you’ve got it! Sounds GREAT!
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Alice Lin Thanks! You are absolutely right. This year I will come back to some pieces I have played last year - like Chopin Scherzo 1 and 2 and for sure some Chopin Etudes. It need time to get them more perfectly. What do you want to play this year?
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Kerstin I’m a Chopin lover as well! This year some etudes will also be getting work, along with reviewing ballades 1,3 and learning 4 and I have started running through . Bach preludes and fugues and Beethoven op. 28 sonata are in the oven also for this year.
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Alice Lin Wow, that’s a big programm. Are you a student or pianist? Beethoven is also great. I have picked up Sonata op. 31/2.
Than let’s go. Unfortunately I cut with a knife in my left thumb last Saturday. Can play, but not too much. Fortunately thumb is still working. Have a nice week.
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Hello music friends! Have practiced already the next parts. Hands separate is okay, but together…
https://youtu.be/S8OUYCPQivoWhat I am interested in is: how much you practice a day? I try to have 90 min.
Have a nice day.-
Kerstin Great progress, Kerstin!
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Kerstin Yes, great progress. You have the Ballade in your hands.
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Kerstin I can only focus 15-20 minutes at a time, and have to take breaks. In total probably around 2hours a day for all piano practice. But I'm still a beginner so a lot to learn.
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Kerstin This is wonderful progress! Such a lovely piece, and your approach is so tender.
Re: practice - I'm still a beginner, and I have some physical limitations with one of my hands, so I limit my time to 20 minutes per practice session, which I try to do twice most days. I really can't do any more than that, physically. My 14-year old son, though, is expected to practice a minimum of 60 minutes per day and almost always exceeds that - I think he averages 2 hours/day, some days more, others less. He plays at about a level 8/9 on the RCM level system.
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ALICE 2h is good. Don’t forget the technic training. It’s really important.
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Kerstin Thanks for sharing. It's really nice how you phrase the music while practising, which I should mindfully do more of! :)
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Kerstin You do a great job bringing out the singing top line. So tough to do with the millions of accompanying notes in the bass and the middle lines!
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Gail Starr Thanks Gail! Yes it’s quite a challenge. Chopin was genius! And as a contrast I have played a little easy waltz. It’s also genius- how could Chopin made such a beautiful piece out of a few notes and easy harmonics.
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Kerstin Lovely!
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