WEEK TWO Updates: Main Thread - Brahms could be so charming!

• Waltz you worked on: No. 1, 2 , 3 and 9
• One thing you found easy: I don't find any if it easy as such, I do enjoy finding the music if that makes sense
• One thing you found difficult: The left hand jumps up the keyboard in 2 are difficult for me, but I'm nearly there. I am concentrating on 2 which I love, and 9, which is such an odd piece of music, it intrigues me... 

Waltzes worked on:  refining #1, began #2 and #15

One thing I found easy:  The desire to practice!  When I can squeeze out even five minutes of free time, I find myself wanting to do a run through or just work on a section.

One thing I found hard:  Finding a solid stretch of time to practice is tough, but I have made it happen everyday!

#1 is coming along well, but there are a few times where I suddenly feel like a deer in the headlights on a transition that previously went smoothly (the repeat of section A and section B 4th line to beginning of final line?!!)

#2 is so sweet but there are a couple of chords that my fingers like to improvise over the written chords

#15  I’m pretty sure I played this as a youngster!  Why do the rolled intervals in the LH sound so great sometimes and other times sound incorrect?  I’m working on the timing of those!

Hello, Roy here.  This first post is to say that I have missed my Tonebase sessions this week because of other meetings that were already in the diary.  However, we heard Sir Andras Schiff yesterday evening at Saffron Hall, which is an intimate setting of 700 seats.  We were in the gallery around the stage with a view of the keyboard and were about forty feet away from him.  The acoustic there is phenomenal.  There’s a whole story about that!  Sir Andras explained to the audience that there was no programme and that he had decided during the solitude of the COVID-19 lockdowns that he would no longer be providing programmes for concerts as it was hugely onerous on performers to have to provide programmes 2-3 years in advance of a concert.  This may explain why Martha Argerich has a reputation for cancelling at short notice.  Sir Andras played Mozart’s Rondo in A minor followed by Schubert’s A major Sonata and commented that they were late works for both composers, who, as we know, died very  young indeed - in their thirties.  He started the second half with Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in F sharp from Book 2, commenting that Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin played Bach’s Preludes and Fugues regularly throughout their lives.  He finished the concert with Beethovens’s Hammerklavier Sonata, saying that the fugues were the connection and that he learned all the notes of the Hammerklavier sonata when he was 13 [or 30 - it was difficult to distinguish] but that he didn’t understand the meaning then of this sonata from Beethoven but that it was now in the reverse, as he understood Beethoven’s meaning but the notes….? He joked that Beethoven was mistaken when he said that the sonata would make life difficult for performers for fifty years after his death, as it made life difficult for performers one hundred and fifty years after Beethoven’s death, which implies that it has not been considered too demanding for the most advanced players for the last fifty years.  Sir Andras played beautifully and he was in the room to do so.  There were moments that were completely transcendental.  It’s now past midnight in the UK so I’ll write on topic tomorrow, briefly, about the Brahms’ Waltzes. 

• Waltz you worked on: No.2 && number 3 
• One thing you found easy: Number 3 is super easy and mellow
• One thing you found difficult: Memorizing everything from 1 to 3

was stuck for a while in #1, some days can play it at the right tempo but some other days I need to go back to slow.

Still practicing 1-4 over here. They’re all improving gradually but I’m still giving the most attention to #1. It is the most difficult of the 4, but also the most addicting to play over and over to see if I can play it better than the last round! It’s the only one I’m memorizing so far. I might memorize #4. Piano has really gone out of tune in the last week after finally getting rain here in California. Hope to get it tuned before the end of the challenge before I make a video.. It’s really meowing today.

This post covers weeks 1 and 2.  I am working through the following: 1, 2, 3, 59, and 15.  I am a flute-player so we use all our fingers to produce one note, although the right thumb is supporting the flute not pressing a key.  Also, the fifth finger of both hands is hardly every used.  Therefore, I like to play pieces on the piano that focus on separating the fingers and and/or separating the hands.  The different rhythms in each hand in No 2 is great for me.  I love the sections that sit under the hands, such as the second half No 1.  I am using a Liberace-style flamboyance in my left-hand to create the separation and flicks in the broken chords while playing legato in the right-hand, which is really good for developing my separation between the hands.  Does the swiggly indication to break the chords have a proper name?   It would be really useful to have some suggested fingerings in the sections that move around or do not sit under the hand, such as Bar 3 of No 15.  I am using 1 and 4 on the F# and D, to give 5 and 4 to the grace notes ending on 1 and 3 on the E and C#, then 5 and 2 on the D and B, to end on 1 and 4 on the E and C#.  The issue is whether I should use this fingering, which is aimed at being as legato as possible in the slur   In the right-hand, or use 1 and 5, 1 and 4, etc., and pedal through it?