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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I'm still continuing Ravel's Pavane.....hoping to have it memorized and performance ready by July. Not much practice time yet this week, so thought I would record the entire piece, so I can see where my trouble spots are. It's funny.....when I record myself, new trouble spots always seem to reveal themselves, just like playing for others! It's in a rondo form: A - B - A1 - C - A2.
Piece I worked on: Ravel's Pavane
Things that went well: I feel I have the A and B sections in pretty good shape. The B section requires the sound to be very distant, and I feel I have achieved that.
Things I need to work on: The A1 and A2 sections continue to give me trouble with the rolled chords and making those sections flow. The C section has some bumpy spots as well.
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Michael Thanks Michael. I'm heading to pianoSonoma in July. While the main focus is chamber music, we have opportunities to play our solo pieces as well. :-)
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Amy very nice playing
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Amy gorgeous phrasing! Please tell us about pianoSonoma. That sounds like fun!
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Amy I love this piece and you are playing it so beautifully! Wonderful!
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Amy I just closed my eyes and listened.....magical. what a beautiful piece of music. Thank you for playing this with such sensitivity, it is a joy to listen to!
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Gail Starr Here's the website: http://www.pianosonoma.org/ This will be my 7th year attending it! Peter Dugan, one of the instructors on Tonebase, is one of the artists that is there. :-) It's fabulous!!
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Jenny Thank you!
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Amy I鈥檇 love to attend some day! Is Peter the same person who does 芦 From the Top 禄 now?
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Gail Starr Yes he is!
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Amy So cool! Since I have about as far away from Sonoma as possible with still being on the USA, I鈥檓 not sure I could get there too easily. But it sounds SO awesome!
There is a cool piano camp on Vermont that seems quite fun, too.
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I am still working on Debussy's Arabesque #1. I felt I made a marked improvement since last week. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find time before I had to leave for ... France :) So I will just hope that being in Paris infuses me with some extra creative juices to employee in my playing for when I return home. However, I just noticed in the train stations here they have random pianos setup. I am going to try to find a few minutes to capture playing in Paris #pianoEnGare.
Looking forward to listening to everyones playing throughout the week.
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Michael Yes, Gare de Lyon definitely has a nice piano (or it did before COVID). You'll get lots of happy listeners. Enjoy your trip!
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Hi All,
Hope your practices are going well.
Week Two of the practice: I am slowly playing both hands together. It turns out the non-unison figurations are much harder to play than the octave passages. It cognitively challenging and somehow messes with my LH-RH coordination, I can almost feel smoke coming out of my head when I play through the piece.
Here is the score below:
- Piece you worked on: Allegro Barbaro Op 35 no 5, by Charles Valentin Alkan
- One thing you found easy by comparison: unison octave passages
- One thing you found difficult: everything else.....
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Jeff I like your "everything else" comment!
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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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Derek McConville Beautiful piece and what lovely playing! Thanks for sharing.
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Derek McConville Well done, Derek! You are bringing out the melodies very nicely! This is so nice to listen to, and it鈥檚 a piece I hope to start learning myself next month :) Thank you for the post.
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Derek McConville great piece and interpretation!
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Derek McConville that sounded wonderful! It is very beautiful.
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Jeff thank you!
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Sindre Skarelven thank you! it鈥檚 a really enjoyable piece and hope you find it interesting to learn if you get to it next month :)
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Vidhya Bashyam thank you so much!
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Susan Rogers thank you!
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Derek McConville So lovely! You really bring out the personality of the movement with your light touch. That beginning theme is SO tricky! I worked on this a bit when I was a teenager, which was millions of years ago. Gotta revisit it!
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Derek McConville Sounds wonderful, Derek! Admirable playing!
