I have been practicing a lot of things with the Quick Study in mind, and am just wondering where you stand on ornamentation and phrasing. On the one hand you are to play what is marked, on the other to produce a musical performance. I am trying to get used to doing it all without writing on the music, which is definintely what I do when I am working out a piece, I scribble fingerings and position changes onto the trickiest bits. I know you're pretty unlikely to get anything in a baroque style, but if you do and it's just crying out for ornaments do you put them in or leave them out? One piece I was playing finished in the classic crotchet, dotted crotchet, quaver, minim in minor key with mediant, supertonic, tonic, tonic. I realised that I had gone on autopilot to put in an acciacatura and trill on the supertonic dotted crotchet, and wondered that would be acceptable in the exam or not. What would you do?

I don't know in an exam! But I do that sort of thing on the organ when I'm sight reading voluntaries before a service. Mind you, nobody's really listening to them....

I think you are in danger of worrying about things unnecessarily, RoseRodent. Concentrate on the bigger picture.

Actually one of the quick study pieces I had was contrapuntal and in what I would have described as "in a baroque style" The ornamentation was written into the music. I didn't even think about adding extra - I thought I had more than enough to do just getting through the piece.

Not sure if you are a pianist but I find with my pupils that the pupils who naturally finger pieces well are the best sighreaders. For example when they see a scale passage they naturally turn under (or over) so they always have enough fingers to play the passage. They also have a secure knowledge of what's under their hand so can concentrate on looking at the music not their fingers. One of the things I am most rigorous about in my teaching is ensuring that pianists learn the best finger patterns and develop a secure sense of keyboard georgraphy. Actually stuyding Bach is a brilliant way to enforce good fingering because it becomes fairly unplayable if any old finger is used.