Week 1: Choose your piece!
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 1?
- Select your New piece to work on, and share it below! Let's see what everyone is choosing!
- Submit one video of your practice this week, perhaps featuring your favorite passage of the opening bars!
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Here's where I'm at after Week 1 on Scriabin Op. 8 No. 12 Etude in D# minor... Thankfully it's short so half-speed is still only ~5 minutes! I documented what I did, what I noticed, and what want to work on in Week 2 - in the description of the video.
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Judy Kuan Already sounding so good! This is an epic piece for sure. I really like your detailed learning plan too!
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Vidhya Bashyam Thank you for listening and for your encouragement! This challenge is so helpful because normally I wouldn't be recording videos of myself so early in the learning process, but it really does clarify next steps.
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Judy Kuan What a great start to the challenge! It sounds both beautiful and dramatic. There's so much tension in this music(in a good way), and this gorgeous melodic line goes straight to the heart. I can't wait to hear where you'll take this in the coming weeks!
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Sindre Skarelven Thank you, it's been really fun to work on! For beauties like the Chopin Ballades, I often want to hold up a sign that says "wait for the end", but this one is pure drama from the first beat.
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Judy Kuan just wow!!! I don’t think I’ve ever heard that piece before but I will be downloading the music for sure. It will probably take me a year to learn it though
you play so beautifully I just kept imagining you playing that on a big stage! Judy Kuan -
Andrea LeVan It definitely made an impression on me the first time I heard it too! I agree on the long learning curve... All etudes are little lifetime projects for me, especially ones like this where the pro's almost seem to have some Jedi-like instinctive force to perform full out (emotionally + tempo).
I picked this etude for this challenge, specifically knowing I wouldn't have to perform it live though
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Judy Kuan catching up on Week 1 recordings after being out of town for a couple of weeks (still am, actually) - this is a great start! Very clean, with a good sound, and already an excellent feel for the mood and expression of the piece. Very much looking forward to hearing your progress on it.
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I am coming to this late but not as late as it could have been. The weather in the UK has been good in parts over the Easter holiday so lots of Spring cleaning and garden preparation for the Spring and Summer have taken precedence. The musical benefit is that I am more relaxed from the huge physical effort and feel assured that this intensive work will free up much more time over the summer for practising!
I have chosen Schubert's Impromptu in A flat, Op. 142 No 2. There will be several other fresh starts to accompany this piece: picking up where I left off with the Schubert Deep Dive led by Ben Laube. My prep for the piece will include Andrew Aziz's live stream on Schubert's harmony, and Dominic's live stream, "The Sustain Pedal in Schubert's music", on 28 October 2021.
There's a past live stream on this impromptu, which was by Irene Kim and was on 27 May 2021 but the recording is less than good so I abandoned it after about an hour of struggling to make it work.
I shall use this impromptu to finish the TWI with Leann Osterkampf on "Controlling Dynamics" .
I started the TB course on the Taubman Approach, so that is not quite a first but finishing it over the next four weeks will be a first!
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Roy James-Pike Looking forward to hearing this beautiful impromptu! Will also check out the livestreams you have mentioned as I am always working on a Schubert piece
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Vidhya Bashyam Thank you Vidhya. There are a few other TB Schubertian courses, which I intend to do after the most relevant for this Impromptu. Dominic did “Feeling the Rhythm of a Waltz (feat. Schubert); duo Vieness “Schubert Essentials: a Look at the F Minor Fantasy” (April 21 2022); and, another one on the 4-hand Fantasy in F min, which was on 24 May 2021. It will be interesting to see if I can get this piece off the page within four weeks, but we shall see.
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Here's the first section of the Chopin Ballad 3 op 47, for week 1.
My goal for week 2 to will be to get up to the Coda :)
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Sindre Skarelven Really enjoyed it and didn’t want it to end! Looking forward to hearing the rest!
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Sindre Skarelven Wow, you learned that incredibly quickly! Such a gorgeous piece, I can't wait to hear your work on the next section.
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Sindre Skarelven You memorized it just in a week?! Incredible!
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Sindre Skarelven absolutely gorgeous!
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Sindre Skarelven Bravo, Sindre! Great start!
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Vidhya Bashyam Judy Kuan Heng-Pin Chen Andrea LeVan Andrea Buckland
Thanks so much, everyone! It's a true joy to finally learn this piece.
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Sindre Skarelven Beautiful work, Sindre! I'm looking forward to hearing the rest.
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Sindre Skarelven That is really lovely. I'm impressed with how fast you are learning this!
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Sindre Skarelven Amazing job and admirable playing, Sindre! Looking forward to hearing the whole piece!
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Michelle R Randi Juan Carlos Olite Thanks so much!
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Here’s how my Scriabin 16 1 is sounding at the end of week 1. Plus you get to hear me trying to sing different voices, haha (it turned out singing was pretty quiet because mic wasn’t pointing my way). I spent some of my time this week writing out a rough analysis of the piece…and some time down a rabbit hole making a video about how to achieve vibrato at the piano…so I’ve only got the first 6 bars together so far.
The link: https://youtu.be/aCcOm_iAM34
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Marc M what a beautiful piece and I really like your approach to singing the melody line. My dogs may abandon ship when I try it but I can see where it could really train the ear to hear that line in the music
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Marc M Sounding great! I haven’t heard this piece before.
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