Week Two: Joie de musique!
Hello and welcome to the WEEK TWO 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 May 16 - 23 I hope to be reading your daily updates in this very thread right here!
Please use the following format when commenting (feel free to copy & paste!):
- Piece you worked on:
- One thing you found easy:
- One thing you found difficult:
- (Optional): a video of you performing it!
Sample daily update:
- Piece you worked on: Ravel's Prelude
- One thing you found easy: Learning the notes, and rhythms were rather straight-forward, and not challenging!
- One thing you found difficult: Shifting the Hands was a bit tricky to get smooth!
Feel free to make these updates as short or long as you wish!
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Hi everyone,
For week two I worked on the opening movement from Ravel's Sonatine. This is a piece which I studied a number of years ago with my piano teacher, however it was both challenging and nice to practice it again for France month on Tonebase.
- Piece you worked on: Ravel - Sonatine I (Modere)
- One thing you found easy: I must admit there are no easy aspects to Ravel however I think the overall mood of the piece returned to me relatively better than other parts.
- One thing you found difficult: Balancing the melodic voices and in particular the top / soprano melody which is awkward with the rapid harmonies in the middle voices and which are a bit tricky in terms of hand positions. Frequent changes of tempo and shade also make this challenging. I was also trying to resist using too much pedal, even though its a tricky balance.
I would love to learn more of the Sonatine later in this year and the last movement is a technical challenge which I would like to take on.
Derek
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Gail Starr thank you so much Gail! Yes I certainly found the opening part tricky to revisit, and had to "let go" a bit rather than treat it as a strict Etude!
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Juan Carlos Olite thank you!
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Hi All,
I took a mini-break from practising the Etude today and started going through some of the other works by Alkan. I found this piece at the end of Esquisses Op. 63, it's a stand alone piece that was not written into any part of the 4 volumes. Alkan titled it "Laus Deo" ( Praise be to God). The entire opus was published in 1861, a year before Debussy's birth and more than a decade before Ravel's, yet the harmony soundscape transcended ancient and modern approach. Previous to this challenge I have never played Alkan before but I am slowly understanding why Busoni ranked Alkan amongst the greatest composers like Chopin, Liszt, Schumann and Brahms.
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Jeff Hi Jeff, It says here that the video is private, so I can鈥檛 watch it. Maybe you have to do something with the privacy settings?
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Sindre Skarelven Hi Sindre, thanks for the heads-up... I just changed the setting in Youtube, had no idea it was set as private lol.
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Jeff Very interesting to hear this piece! I would never have guessed it was published in 1861! You have made me very curious about this composer. Nice playing, thank you for posting :)
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Jeff really interesting piece and sounds good there! Thanks for sharing it.
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Jeff wow! I loved that. Thank you for sharing, and for the information. I also have not played anything by Alkan before. Fascinating.
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Sindre Skarelven What a wonderful discovery! I need to learn more about Alkan also.
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Jeff Amazing music, Jeff! Thank you for sharing it!
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- Piece you worked on: Ravel's Prelude
- One thing you found easy: Learning the notes, and rhythms were rather straight-forward, and not challenging!
- One thing you found difficult: Shifting the Hands was a bit tricky to get smooth!
Above I just copied and pasted the example from the rules, because it was exactly my experience! :) - I really love this piece! So many tasty sounds. Thank you to Dominic for introducing me to it!
I missed out last week with just too many unexpected situations keeping me from getting to the piano or even checking in. I am looking forward to catching up on everyone鈥檚 posts over the next few days.
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Susan Rogers Lovely performance! It鈥檚 a beautiful piece with many tasty sounds, as you say :)
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Susan Rogers Very nice! Love hearing all these new pieces!
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Vidhya Bashyam thank you. Yes, I also love being introduced to all these pieces that are new to me!
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Sindre Skarelven thank you! :)
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Susan Rogers beautiful playing, Susan!
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Susan Rogers that was really nice and the sounds were very rich and colorful!
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Andrea Buckland thank you! :)
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Derek McConville thank you so much!
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Susan Rogers You totally communicate every tasty morsel of Ravel-ness in your video! It does have a bit of the Sonatina flavor, doesn't it?
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Gail Starr thank you so much Gail! I will listen for that鈥 thought I detected a hint of jazz :)
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Susan Rogers Beautiful performance, Susan! Thank you for sharing it!
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Susan Rogers Oh this is wonderful to hear. I'm learning this piece too, and enjoying it very much. Your performance is sounding lovely already!
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Jenny thank you! It is a little gem of a piece, isn鈥檛 it?
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Hi all,
I made a practice video of the first 2 pages of the etude today.
- Piece you worked on: Alkan Op 35. no 5
- One thing you found easy: The main theme is very catch after hearing it a few times and is easy to memorise
- One thing you found difficult: Taking a video of myself playing. I found it very distracting and added to my stage anxiety. LOL. I purposely played at a slower speed for the video recording but I still kept messing up the notes and found it hard not to accelerate as the piece progressed.
