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!
-
To keep up momentum (with the added benefit of challenging my feelings of vulnerability) I am sharing today's progress. To frame it generously, I can now mostly read through Beethoven Son12 Op26 Andante Variation 5. (I certainly don't recommend that anyone watch this save for the morbidly curious. Even my dog abandoned me for this recording).
The melody is covertly conveyed on the weakest beats of the measures at the beginning. This is perverse. Am I supposed to "bring it out" from its concealment? It then surfaces as the first notes of Alberti-like figures in the bass--kinda sneaky. And then it ups the ante by claiming the middle voice under cover of trills above. I'm in way over my head.
-
Hi to all,
joining this really late because my piano has been getting some tender-loving care from the tuner.
I’m choosing to play Sonata in A Op 664 by Schubert.
the first time I heard the piece, I fell in love with it. Made me feel young-er again and falling in love with love and life…
I’m working through this sonata for an exam (ARSM) together with a few other pieces (Bach, Debussy and a jazz piece). Started working on it about 2 months ago. I struggle big time with recording and performance anxiety. I hope through the exposure here, I’ll learn to overcome this huge hurdle as a musician.
Thank you.
-
Determined to have read through my selection by the end of the first week, here I document (again mainly to reinforce my practicing habit) the Beethoven Son12 Op26 Andante Variation 3, my least favorite one. Sandwiched in between the much funner ones, it is in every sense minor, and its treatment of the theme so sparse as to render it virtually undetected. I feel compelled to mess with timing to create some interest. The video makes evident my dog's dislike of this variation too.
-
Rach 2 first movement recap, the excerpt I practiced today. It’s improved compared to the first video from earlier this week for sure. Next step—cleaning up the pedaling and inner lines, and more shaping.
https://youtu.be/n3Z4ybLcnzI