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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For me: I need to work on some new music this month especially:
Rachmaninoff: Prelude in G minor op.23 no.5
Really looking forward to playing this very popular prelude for the first time!
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Dominic Cheli this is great; I am looking forward to hearing everyone’s submissions of brand new music! Two questions:
1.) What’s the projected duration of this challenge? 3 weeks? 4 weeks?
2.) Will we get to enjoy a recording of you playing that Rachmaninov 23/5 Prélude at the end? :-) -
Alexander Weymann
Hey Alex!
This is a month long challenge, so 4 weeks yes!
Also yes I will be posting my Rach Prelude :)
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Dominic Cheli Rachmaninov is truly my favorite composer but I find a lot of his music really challenging so his music is an aspiration. Can’t wait to hear you play this piece!
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Andrea LeVan Thanks! I will be posting this coming week :)
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Hi everyone! Nice challenge, Dominic!
I will take the opportunity to work on a new piece which I've always had in mind and never practiced seriously:
Rachmaninoff: Elegie op. 3 nº1
I wish I could play it at the end of the month!
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Juan Carlos Olite This piece will surely highlight the elegance you bring to the piano. I'm looking forward to watching your progress throughout the month.
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Juan Carlos Olite Gorgeous piece, this is in my bucket list now.
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Juan Carlos Olite beautiful piece that's on my to do list too. Looking forward to the clarity and thoughtfulness of you bring to your playing each time.
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Michelle R Heng-Pin Chen Ching Lee Goh Thank you. I think Rachmaninoff wrote this piece when he was nineteen years old, but it has his absolutely peculiar mood his hallmark and I love it.
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Juan Carlos Olite oh I just love Elegie so much I had started on it a while ago but then just stopped actively working on it I look forward to hearing your progress!
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There are few things I like better then a fresh start, a new challenge, and a new piece!
I will use this opportunity to learn Chopin Ballade nr 3 in Ab-flat op. 47. Hope to get through the piece and have it memorized by the end of the challenge.-
Sindre Skarelven that piece is impossible to learn in a month for the rest of us - but, as we all know, not for you!
Very exciting. -
Alexander Thanks for your confidence in my abilities to learn this
Have you picked a piece for the challenge? -
Sindre Skarelven I will pick a piece tonight! It’ll have to be a short and relatively easy one because April is going to be a super busy month for me, especially having to prepare for Jarred’s masterclass with Carol Leone on 4/21.
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Alexander Weymann Sounds great! Best of luck with your preparations for the masterclass!
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Sindre Skarelven What a beautiful choice, especially with your ability to tell a story through your playing.
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Michelle R Thanks, Michelle! Yes, the storyline will be very important.
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I'm working on the two Nocturnes, Op. 55 by Chopin this month.
My goal is to get it polished up by EOM April and be ready to perform in May.
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Neat! I'm on a Scriabin kick these days, so I'll do a prelude I haven't touched before: Op. 16 No. 1.
I look forward to seeing everyone's work. And, it's cool to see Dominic making a submission too!
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Marc M Ooooh! Can't wait to hear you. I'm such a Scriabin fan!
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Wonderful! It's time for a new piece, so this is excellent timing. I'll see what my teacher suggests this week. I look forward to seeing what everyone is learning.
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I will use this fun challenge to learn Rachmaninoff’s Moments Musicaux #5. Hopefully, performance ready by the end of the challenge.
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Vidhya Bashyam I'm sure you will play it with your trademark gentleness and thoughtfulness. Looking forward to hearing your progress!
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In 1986 – I was 17 years old and had been taking lessons with my first professional piano teacher for less than 2 years but was already as crazed a piano nerd as they come – Vladimir Horowitz visited my hometown of Hamburg to give his first recital in Germany in decades. After 60 years, he returned to the city of his first breakthrough triumph outside of Russia when on January 20, 1926, he had filled in on short notice, for a soloist fallen ill that day, in Tchaikovsky’s B flat minor concerto, with Eugen Pabst conducting.
My father and I waited in line all night, from the late afternoon to 11 am, to buy one ticket each (the maximum allowed per person). On the day of the concert, my mother – to whom my father had graciously yielded his ticket – and I were in our seats, nearly bursting with anticipation, when the old, frail man entered the stage of the Laeiszhalle, sat down, gently placed his white handkerchief beside the keyboard, and began to play. After the first couple of bars, we looked at each other with what must have been the same rapturous smile; neither of us had ever heard such a rich, grand, singing, breathing, blossoming and utterly beautiful sound as was emanating from the piano now, seeming to fill every niche of the concert hall.
That piece with which Horowitz opened his recital, which immediately brought tears to our eyes and forever embedded its magic in my memory, was Scarlatti’s Sonata in B minor K. 87 / L. 33. I have always wanted to learn it, and now I will.
