Week 2: Share your progress
WELCOME TO THE LATEST COMMUNITY CHALLENGE!
For this challenge "A Fresh Start" the goal is to pick a BRAND-NEW piece to work on this month.
This is the time to finally open that score that you have been thinking about and get to work!
WHAT ARE WE DOING IN WEEK 2?
- You should have selected your new piece by now, so this week let's start sharing our progress
- Share a video or type what you have been working on this week! It is always interesting to hear how people start the learning process!
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Here is my first post of an excerpt from Rachmaninoff’s Moments Musicaux- #5 in d flat major. I am going to try to post regularly throughout this challenge to make sure I can complete the piece and see progress while doing it. This is actually one of his simpler pieces- technically only things to worry about are lots of flats (and double flats), melody constantly switching between being in a polyrhythm and not, and maintaining a kind of barcarolle feeling with the steady left hand triplets. Harder part is on the dynamics side and having a beautiful singing melody.
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Vidhya Bashyam So beautiful, Vidhya. I appreciate the way you approach the piano and the piece with such respect and thoughfulness. I look forward to hearing you play the rest!
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Vidhya Bashyam Lovely piece. I've never heard of this one, and will dig into it more.
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Thank you so much! Just finished watching all of Jarred’s tonebase lessons on dynamics, so hopefully will help as I get further into the piece.
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Vidhya Bashyam As always you sing very beautifully with your playing, Vidhya! Can't wait to hear complete this gorgeous piece.
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Vidhya Bashyam Lush dynamics and a true barcarolle-y feeling. Great job feeling the phrasing and dynamics already!
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Vidhya Bashyam Sounding great so far!
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Vidhya Bashyam calm and smooth, Nice
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Vidhya Bashyam Like a serene and tranquil lake in the woods somewhere in Eastern Europe... absolutely spellbinding. How it is that this piece is not at least as well known and as frequently played as that ubiquitous D major prelude Op. 23 No. 4 is beyond me.
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Alexander Weymann Great imagery! A serene piece for sure compared to the previous one in the set. Strangely, I was also thinking of Prelude 23/4 when I first started practicing this piece.
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Vidhya Bashyam Beautiful job, Vidhya! I particularly appreciate how you kept everything very tranquil and the LH in a consistent sotte voce as backdrop to the main RH line.
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Tammy Thanks Tammy! This piece is a nice low stress way of enjoying a beautiful Rachmaninoff composition.
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Hey guys! Here is my progress from practicing last week.
Mainly worked on the 1st section of this prelude.To be honest, not super thrilled about my dynamic contrast right now - I need to pace things better for sure. I think this prelude/march goes through many characters, like "spooky, powerful, defiant, ominous" and much more. Dynamics will be key for these moods.
Mainly was working on memorizing/learning notes, and finding a tempo I think works. I know my tempo is slower than the "marked tempo" but I like it that way!
This week, mainly working on the middle section of the piece, the "lyrical part".
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Dominic Cheli Love it! Can’t wait to hear the middle part. Thanks for posting your progress!
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Dominic Cheli Yay!
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Dominic Cheli Awesome, Dominic! You make me want to pick this one up again. Looking forward to hear the next part!
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Dominic Cheli Super awesome that you join and share the challenge with the rest of us :D Looking forward to hear more!
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Dominic Cheli This is such a fun piece to listen to! Really great work. Thanks for joining this challenge with us.
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Dominic Cheli Bravo, Dominic! It's absolutely great that you join us in this challenge, thank you!
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Dominic Cheli So cool that you are doing the challenge WITH all of us. I actually prefer the tempo you're working with...I sometimes feel like folks rush it, but you don't. And I can tell already that the contrast with the next section will be beautiful.
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Dominic Cheli wow just amazing!
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Gail Starr great observation Gail I agree!
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Dominic Cheli Nice work. I heard Horowitz perform twice. I can still hear his performance of this as an encore.
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Dominic Cheli Spectacular! The rhythmic energy and the dashing momentum of those ascending figures in octaves are very compelling. I echo everyone's comments that it's wonderful that you're joining us all in this challenge; great to hear you work on a piece like this and follow your progress.
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Dominic Cheli I was watching a teenager compete this in the local music festival last week. It’s remarkable how quickly you can learn this to comparable quality!
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Dominic Cheli wow I still am just in awe of how quickly your hands can move yet still with such grace and perfect dynamics
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