Week 1: A New Hope
Starting on May 4th...
Welcome to the Unfinished Business Challenge — and the beginning of our four-week musical adventure!
Every great journey starts with a first step (and some hope!) This week is about choosing your piece: something you’ve always wanted to learn, something you started and left behind, or something unfinished that keeps calling you back.
This Week’s Mission
Choose one piece (or excerpt) to stay with throughout the challenge.
A few ideas:
- A piece you’ve always meant to finish
- Something abandoned years ago that deserves a second life
- A new piece you’ve been waiting for the right moment to begin
- A small excerpt from a larger dream piece
Big or small, all choices are welcome. What matters is that it feels like your unfinished business.
This Week, Share:
- What piece did you choose?
- Why this piece?
- Is there a musical challenge or goal you hope to work through this month?
If you’d like, post a recording of where you’re starting from — even a rough first read. We’d love to hear it.
Over the next four weeks we’ll build momentum together!
122 replies
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I would like to play Chopin Ballade 2 op 38 for this challenge. It's the one Chopin ballade I have not yet performed on Tonebase, so it will also mark a finishing of the set (Though I plan to revisit them all in not too long).
Where I'm at with this piece is that I learned the notes to it about a year ago, but it was far far away from a performance level. So the job is pretty clear - bring back the notes, and get it to speed.
Let's hope the force will guide me through the ballade, though I may have to use the dark side for some of these passages.
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I would like to learn the Bach-Brahms Chaconne for the left hand. It's not exactly "unfinished business" (well, in a way, every piece is).
Over the past few weeks, I've been playing excerpts from it, at first purely as a left-hand exercise. But very quickly I became captivated by the piece: the incredible music, the many possibilities it offers for developing aspects of left-hand technique (often overlooked), the wide range of expression it demands...
So, I've decided to embrace the challenge -which is always motivating- and study it properly. My goal is to learn and play at least 16 variations (half of the piece). Perhaps that's too ambitious; I'm not sure... But, I know I'm going to enjoy it!
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This is already a ridiculously exciting programme so far. We're on fire, friends!
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I think I'll re-visit BWV 999 (Bach's Little Prelude in c minor). I started it last fall, then life became complicated and I didn't have the mental reserves to make any progress with the piece (like so much, perhaps all, of Bach there is a great deal of intellectual energy required when playing it), so it stalled and I decided to put it to the side and come back to it later. It is now later! My goal for the month is to put all the pieces together and play it all the way through with focus and energy.
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I am resurrecting the Barber Nocturne for my Nocturne project. I played it in my Junior recital decades ago. It’s still in my ears, but my fingers…not at all! This is a great challenge.
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I’ll jump into the pool too, as it looks like it’s going to be quite a fun party!
I’ll dust off either the Chopin opus 10/1 with the modest but achievable goal of playing it consistently through at 120 bpm+, or the Chopin Barcarolle (smoothening things out, expanding the dynamic range, and playing the bogeyman passages without stuttering).
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said:
Chopin opus 10/1I apologize for not having done proper distancing nor worn a mask 😞.
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so many to pick from...Mozart Sonata in C major and will see how far I get. Put in writing here so guess I better get to it.
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I will focus on “completing” a piece I just started- Brahms 117/2. I might also use this time to work on memorization for Rachmaninoff Prelude 23/6 (worked on it a few months ago and memorized some of the harder parts, but would like it all done and solid).
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said:
I apologize for not having done proper distancing nor worn a mask 😞.Joke fail😅. Back to the piano then.
Oh no, back to work. That lifey work. And you win the best new word (for me) award.