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!

 

334 replies

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    • Kerstin
    • 11 days ago
    • Reported - view

    I want to use this challenge to finish relearning my own composition from 1987. I have started it already and can play it somehow, but I want to bring it up on a stage-performance-level. 

      • Kerstin
      • 6 days ago
      • Reported - view

       Here is the first version for the Challenge.

      https://youtube.com/shorts/HfRxZp0hKrQ?is=rOL9WW7oVSs_v9-V

      • vbashyam
      • 6 days ago
      • Reported - view

       That was amazing! Great composing and playing! 

      • Pediatrician
      • a_weymann
      • 6 days ago
      • Reported - view

       this really is an amazing piece and you play it so convincingly and professionally! What on earth are you going to do for the last three weeks? 😂

      • Kerstin
      • 6 days ago
      • Reported - view

      Fix my memory. You know I am a perfectionist. 😉 

      Could be more clear in some passages. And still more dynamics. 

      • Kerstin
      • 6 days ago
      • Reported - view

       Thank you!

      • Noel_Nguyen
      • 6 days ago
      • Reported - view

       Fantastic composition and playing! I have always considered the piano to be a percussion instrument, which is an unpopular opinion because many people think we should hide that aspect of the instrument, not knowing how beautiful it can sound. Case in point here. When I listened to this video, I couldn't help but think, now THIS is a piano sound that embraces the nature of the instrument instead of trying to copy other instruments! I would love to learn this piece.

      • Kerstin
      • 3 days ago
      • Reported - view

      Thank you so much. I can send you the score, if you want. 

      • Akzent oder Diminuendo? • Hanon/Herz student
      • Maria_F
      • 2 days ago
      • Reported - view

       I would also be interested in seeing the score.

      • Kerstin
      • 2 days ago
      • Reported - view

       Here is the score. 🙋‍♀️

      • Kerstin
      • 2 days ago
      • Reported - view

       Here is the score, if you ever want to learn it. There is not much dynamic in it. Be creative! 😊

      • Noel_Nguyen
      • Yesterday
      • Reported - view

        Thank you! And beautiful calligraphy, with no software use😁.

      • Kerstin
      • Yesterday
      • Reported - view

       I didn’t have any software at that time. I am from East Germany - no phone, no computer only a pencil and paper. 😅

      • Peter_William
      • Yesterday
      • Reported - view

       wow! you may be good in Physics/Math as well.. just paper and pencil are needed. Jokes aside your playing is really nice!.

      • Noel_Nguyen
      • Yesterday
      • Reported - view

        And this strange thing called talent.

      • Akzent oder Diminuendo? • Hanon/Herz student
      • Maria_F
      • Yesterday
      • Reported - view

       I prefer using pencil and paper but I sometimes notate using software because I have a hard time with sheet music in general. Your musical handwriting is much better than mine! 

      As you already said, that is the first Scherzo in 5/8 (and 6/8, and 11/8, and 3/8) I have seen!

      • TT2022
      • Yesterday
      • Reported - view

       oh my god! I just watched your video and it is so impressive! I can’t believe you composed that amazing piece! You’re so talented. I think my jaw just dropped open in awe starting from 5 seconds in all the way to the end! Big kudos, both on writing this fantastic piece as well as your propulsive playing. You should post a video of this piece on YouTube and we can help it rise up the rankings. 

      (Like someone here said, what else are you going to do the next three weeks?!)

      • Pianist, composer and piano teacher
      • Sindre_Skarelven
      • 23 hrs ago
      • Reported - view

       what a great and fun piece, Kerstin! Really inventive and unique in it’s own way, though I could easily have seen this as part of a Prokofiev Sonata or something. Love that you are bringing this back, and keep up the composing! 

      • Kerstin
      • 23 hrs ago
      • Reported - view

       Hi Tammy! Thank you so much! I am working on my pieces for my recital I want to give for my friends on 03.07.2026. That’s also the reason I am not so present on tonebase, because I don’t have enough time. I want to play Beethoven sonata op.7, Bach WTK2 c-minor and d-major, Chopin op.61 Polonaise Fantasie and C. Franck op.18 Prelude, Fuge and Variation. My piece is the encore. 
      Last year I have played Chopin sonata 3. Should be somewhere on tonebase. Let me know, if I can help you with what ever. 🙋‍♀️

      • Kerstin
      • 21 hrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Thank you!

      • Kerstin
      • 21 hrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Thanks Peter!

      • TT2022
      • 8 hrs ago
      • Reported - view

      I hope we here get to watch your recital. Big program! Your composition is a perfect encore piece! look forward to your progress along the way to July  

    • Pianist, composer and piano teacher
    • Sindre_Skarelven
    • 11 days ago
    • Reported - view

    As we are about to start on this journey into the galaxy on May the fourth, should we perhaps take with us this quote from master Yoda: “do or do not, there is no try”  ? Looking forward to hear everyone! 

      • Pediatrician
      • a_weymann
      • 11 days ago
      • Reported - view

       oh, I didn’t even think of that wonderful quote in this context, but it obviously is the PERFECT motto! 

      • Have a growth mindset, no matter what!
      • Gail_Starr
      • 7 days ago
      • Reported - view

      True genius!

    • Graeme_Cameron_Wilkinson.1
    • 11 days ago
    • Reported - view

    The 3rd mvmt of the Ravel Piano Concerto in G is my ongoing challenge.

Content aside

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