I have learnt today after finally getting round to listening to the Grade 4 pieces CD that I have been playing the wrong notes in the LH for the last few bars of Alone at Sunset. Correct chord, wrong inversion

I found out last night that I'd reverted to the wrong LH fingerings in one bar and also was playing the wrong chord (missing a sharp) in one of my pieces. I still keep playing a C# instead of an A in another piece too, despite drawing a big circle around the offending note!

Still ploughing on with Chopin Etude op 25 no 12. Progress is slow but steady - maybe the smallest pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel. Next up is Brahms Rhapsody op 79 no 1.

Jon

With exam pieces put on one side, all forthcoming events fully prepared, and Brahms Op 118/2 sounding good I took another look at one of my "must play before I die" pieces ... Scriabin's 5th Sonata.

#$ $^& *@!

Ah well - keep practicing - one day it will be do-able. Meanwhile back to Chopin etudes, Rachmaninoff concertos, Liszt transcriptions ... you know ... easy stuff

I'm practising Scarlatti K427 obsessively. I won't be taking it as fast as this! My teacher introduced it to me as one of her favourite Scarlatti sonatas, but suggested another one that might be 'more manageable'. I love this one, but I'll see how realistic it seems after ten days or so!

Another probably unrealistic obsession I might attempt over the holidays is Schubert's Moment Musical no. 2...but I am so in love with this piece I think it might be better to play something else in the meantime and leave this one until I can do it justice with less danger of playing it so badly I get sick of it!

My teacher has suggested I learn the Ravel Concerto in G for uni final recital...

On one hand I'm thinking great a good reason to learn a concerto properly

On the other it will take up space I could fill up with other repertoire...

Don't know how to react at the moment!

Well if you think about it, everything you learn takes up space that could be filled with other repertoire it's a bit like saying, ifyou have sausages for dinner you can't have fish & chips. But you could always have fish & chips tomorrow, and you could learn other repertoire later on, if you see what I mean??

OK glibness aside, I suppose if you learnt one big piece where you could otherwise learn 15 smaller ones, you might be giving up variety for the sake of learning one piece really really well. I guess it depends on whether it was more impotrant to you to learn one piece in depth or more pieces with less depth.

yeah that makes sense. to be honest I would rather use my time at uni learning a few things well while I have the time and the teachers. so what I think I am going to do is just learn the first movement of the Ravel which is great on its own and carry on with stuff I'm already working on at the same time to get a more varied recital. If I learned the whole concerto that would take up the whole recital, and I already play a LOT of Ravel; in fact I spent the whole of my first year working on Gaspard, so I won't really learn much from just focusing on the concerto.

Next lesson is Monday evening, and I'm hoping to look at the exam pieces for grade 3.

Having got the Diploma out of the way (at least until the results come through) I am playing a mix of old & new stuff: Some sight reading every day, a little jazz and improvisation, some exercises scales & arpeggios but in terms of pieces:

Beethoven, Pathetique sonata.
Chopin, Op. 25 no. 2 and no. 9.
Debussy, Jardins Sous la Pluie.

After that some Gershwin, some Ireland, some more Chopin, some Mozart, some Schumann, some more Debussy, some Rachmaninov, some more Chopin, some Liszt, some Haydn, some more Beethoven, some Brahms, some more Chopin, some Bach . . . not necessarily in that order and not necessarily exclusively!

Next lesson 7/1/11

Any reason for the 6.5 month break from lessons? And nice repertoire

That's only 2 weeks. UK style date.

Ohh, that makes sense now Forgive an American... was totally reading that date as July 1, 2011...

I live in the UK where 7/1/11 is the 7th of January 2011!

(And thank you!)

Haha, yes... sbhoa straightened me out!

As for repertoire, I just happened upon a couple of pieces from very long ago and I think I might have some success with them now! Specifically, Mozart K. 457, of which I learned the first two movements to "performable" standard and dabbled with the third, but my performable standard when I was 13/14 was nowhere near what it is now, and Chopin's Nocturne op. 27 no. 2, which was the first Chopin I heard as a track on my very first classical CD when I was 12 or so. The music I'm using now was printed out then, but not really played because it was way too difficult! No... not so much

At the last few lessons she who must be obeyed has dropped increasingly big hints that I ought to learn some (more) Liszt, so over Christmas I am reviving the only two Liszt pieces I ever learned: The second Hungarian Rhapsody and the First Mephisto waltz. I could play them back in 1985. Huge sections seem to have vanished completely from my mind, but learning them again ... it all seems a whole lot less difficult than first time round.

But they won't be ready for the next lesson so I am also working up a few of his "easy" pieces ... The second Petrarch sonnet (learned for DipABRSM, but ultimately dropped infavour of the Schumann that was more fluent and comfortable), his piano arrangement of Schubert's Standchen, and Consolation No. 3.

Watch out Leslie Howard



Merry Christmas everyone

. . .you're having piano lessons from Ursula Andress???


surely you mean the 3rd sonnet (123 as opposed to 47 or 104)


Nice.


Ah yes, the only person ever to have recorded the entire Liszt solo piano music. Dam good too. And serves a mean pint.

whoops ... you are right ... but 47 and 104 to follow

My teacher is going to regret mentioning concertos to me. I've scrapped the Ravel and gone for Rachmaninoff 3rd, though only the 1st mvt, the 2nd won't sound right alone and I have no idea how anyone can get their fingers around the 3rd (I attempted a sight read of it a while back and actually damaged my wrist and couldn't play at all for a couple of weeks ).

Anyway, work on 1st mvt is going really well which is a pretty good confidence boost for me ^^ Last time I went near it pretty much every other section was evil, but looking through it again it feels manageable (though still a LOT of work). It's put me in a really good mood though, I've got some form of motivation back!

Wow!! It's a monster of a piece that is beyond my abilities at the moment. And having heard you play in November, I have no doubt you'll do a great job of it. Pleased that your work on it is going well!

I've been learning Elegie from Chaminade's Album Des Enfants-I think it might have been set for grade 5? A friend recommended it as a piece I'd like and she was right!

Over the past three days, I've managed to learn the Gershwin-Wild Virtuoso Etude No 4 'Embraceable You' - it is such a wonderfully brilliant composition!

Not so hard ... I could sight read the first two pages

...

now that i have heard Invidia and know how good he is ... no doubt he'll get a bit further with it. But it is monstrously difficult. An order of magnitude of difficulty beyond No. 2


Another Earl Wilde fan. Great. I'd love to hear you play it some time.

Am I the only pianist who actually doesn't like Rachmaninoff 3rd? I much prefer all his other piano and orchestra works, even though I have the utmost respect for anyone who can actually play the 3rd!

Not a problem - perhaps at a future forum event sometime!

Right now I feel like I am playing whack-a-mole. I have to keep track of semiquavers in the left hand against melody in the right plus additional harmony in triplets also in the right. I can get either: semiquaver rhythm + triplet rhythm fine, but melody sounds like I'm playing with boxing gloves on, or semiquaver rhythm + melody fine, but triplets are uneven.

Grrr.

I also did not like (or understand) it much when I first heard it. It takes much more listening to "get into" it than No 2 (which has instant appeal).

Ditto. It took me ages just to get past the first movement. I'm now struggling my way through his first symphony, which I'm finding tough. I love his 3rd Symphony, but it also took me a while to get into it. Ditto his Symphonic Dances. Not easy listening, but very rewarding after a while.

So Invidia is a fella, and not the elegant lady I envisioned. I mean, a name can really put you on the wrong track can't it ? Good luck with the concerto, erm... mate. I don't know much by Rach either, but am currently working on several of his preludes, including the popular Alla Marcia in G minor which i've just about got the arpegiated mid section, for me very hard work. Know two Transcriptions, Lilacs and Daisies, which are firm favourites of mine, they need some more work though. Mostly I am concentrating on the Brahms pieces, some from Op76 and most of the late pieces(including that beauty from Op 118 that MT's playing)...20 pieces in all...it took an age to work out the fingerings, write them down, the density of textures in his music make this especially time consuming, and this is a long term project, which seems to have taken priority over everything...But is steadily getting there. Others that i've completed are Respighis Valse Caressante and Nocturne , also Scriabins Impromptu No1 from Op14...which i started a couple of years ago !

Currently learning Chopin's Polonaise in C# minor. I remember when I was about 9 or 10 and about to learn my first piece of Chopin (a mazurka of some sort) and my teacher told me I would have to be at least grade 8 before I would be able to play a Polonaise, so I decided that one day I wanted to learn a Chopin Polonaise, and now I am! I had to sit down for about an hour in one sitting, just to get the first four bars, but the rest of it seems okay!

I was actually the reverse. The first time I heard the 3rd I loved it. The 2nd I listened to once, shrugged and didn't give a relisten until a composition of mine started sounding like the 1st mvt opening (after the solo chords) and I went through every recording I owned because I knew it wasn't original and didn't want uni having me for plagiarism...

Chopinzee- what made you think I was an elegant lady? o.O

Well, i did'nt know the real meaning of the word until a couple of minutes ago. Sounds very much like a name though, perhaps it reminded me of Lydia. Looked on Wiki ...it appears relative to coveting, envy, jealousy...from Latin. However, it does also mention something to do with a Godess, and shows a painting by Waterhouse 'Circe Invidia'...

I've started playing piano again properly

So I thought I'd post up what I'm learning -

a few things out of the grade 5 book 2009-10 version,
No.3 out of the Camilieri Sonatas (no I can't spell that and I'm rubbish at remembering names for pieces)
Some simple accompaniments for pupils

My To Do list following this week's lesson:

- polishing 2nd half of the Schubert Sonata in A (D664? can't remember and too lazy to go and check) 2nd movement

- next page of Debussy's Reverie - now onto page 4 after a mere *cough*six*cough* months (Though I only had about 4 lessons in that period, in fairness...)

- learning the middle section of Granados' Berceuse properly, rather than half-sightreading it each time I come to it

- have a look at the new Grade 5 pieces, since I'm tentatively thinking about finally sitting Grade 5 after 25 years [I was on my third set of Grade 5 pieces when I finally gave up lessons as a teenager ]. I've done this bit of my homework already, and I don't like any of the first 3 list A pieces at all The Bach "Air" in particular is weird at the beginning - it really sounds as if the bar lines are in the wrong place until about half way through the first page (and that's not just my poor playing!). The B and C lists are rather more promising - the Gershwin should kill or cure my hemiola issues, for sure , and the Elegy by the Latvian composer is beautiful....

Still working on Debussy Toccata. If I was able to dedicate the same amount of energy to anything else productive as I do to learning this piece... I would probably be quite rich. Not that that means I can play it. I can approximate it, but every time I sit down to it I find something else that I missed. I wonder when it will wear off. I really don't advocate this method of learning an instrument, but "strike while the iron is hot" seems to be appropriate here. Since I'm not bored of it yet, and I'm making progress (which interestingly enough is showing up in improvement in other pieces that I take out and play now and then), I shall continue this approach. I am finally developing the flexibility that I need to play it even at 3/4 speed, and the good thing is that there is no sign of my tendonitis reappearing, either from typing or from piano.

Am also learning some accompaniments for Egham which are all nice pieces to work on. Looking forward to hearing them put together with the soloists.

After getting my result of grade7 back (pass), I am working on grade 8 pieces
B2:

• Chopin Grande Valse Brillinate no.1 op.18
• Schumann Traumerei

Clementi not camillieri thats what I'm doing on clarinet, lol!

With one week to Egham I am trying to imagine the solo lines to the accompaniments that I am playing- even though I know all the pieces, it is still hard to try and hear the solo going on when it isn't really there. One of the pieces is a song which I can at least sing to myself even though it sounds horrific (horrific when i sing it I hasten to add, not horrific because it is an awful piece!)

I am seeing how fast I can work up my other piece - not a hope of doing it at actual speed but that is Ok - and I just had a eureka moment which I mentioned on another thread, that I want to write out again so I won't forget... apologies for length.

i have been practicing this by being mentally conscientious - thinking very hard about hand placement, how to move my whole arm so that I can play the fast awkward bits as smoothly as possible (and learning in the process that my previous perception of piano playing involving the hand remaining in the same position and just moving from left to right is totally wrong). I have been speeding up gradually and playing each passage at a steadily increasing pace.

I have been trying to maintain the same degree of thinking when playing faster and faster, and it has not been working. At some point my brain just shuts down and my hands go like the centipede who forgot which leg goes next - I can almost see how it is possible to develop focal dystonia from this, because I honestly feel like something short-circuits in my head and I can't control my fingers any more.

I suddenly remembered something my horn teacher said many years ago which was something to the effect of "try to not control what you are playing so much, you will find that fast things come easier". I didn't know what she meant then, but I tried to do it with this passage - to just let the muscle memory take over. It seems to have worked. I do not know if I will be able to reproduce this on demand, but I guess that is where practice comes in.

Agreed, it's very difficult to "give up control" and just let yourself play, but it is ultimately the most effective way, especially during performance situations. On another forum, one apparently knowledgeable poster argued that musicians who were too "intellectual" find it too difficult to perform because music just goes too fast for us to be able to think consciously about it as we are performing - I don't know if this is true, but it seems to have helped me and it's an interesting idea! But on the other hand, one cannot rely entirely on muscle memory, since that can lead to "blanking out" - so different types of memory have to work together. It's a fine line to draw!

I haven't been taking regular lessons so I don't really have a "prescribed" repertoire, but my teacher vaguely mentioned that she thought I should play some more Liszt, so I'm currently trying to learn Sonetto 104 and see if I can subtly or not so subtly talk her into letting me perform it the upcoming studio recital...

Apologies to this other poster (who is not on this forum?) but I do think that is not correct.. I think it is how you use the "intellectualism" (I am really struggling for a better word here). I definitely can be accused of overthinking, but most of the time that is used to teach myself how to learn. I am intentionally using the awkward phrase "teach myself how to learn" because that's been a big factor in my learning an instrument, whether horn or piano.

Completely agree about not relying totally on muscle memory. I try to have checkpoints where I match up what I am hearing with the mental image of the score. It seems to have helped so far but ask me in a week if I've got through that piece at Egham without a memory lapse...

Edit: changed to "not correct" from a different and possibly more emotive word

I think (and I might be wrong since this is something I read on a different forum quite a while ago: apologies to that poster, wherever he may be, if I'm taking things out of context) the poster was not referring to the learning process, but just performing. He wasn't saying that intellectualism shouldn't play a part in learning the notes and developing interpretations, or in the slower, broader process of attaining control of the instrument, but that "thinking" about every note and motion during performance is not realistic given the "speed of reaction" necessary to play accurately and the fact that our "thoughts" are more likely to be affected by nerves than our muscles. Using terminology loosely, but I hope my meaning is clear.

OK, I see what you mean. Yes I agree!

Has anyone played Schoenberg's 6 little pieces? It's probably going to be my next project.

Jon

Just smash the keys and make a discordant noise? That's the impression I got last time I heard Schoenberg! I'm sure he's written some nice stuff, I just haven't bothered to seek it out yet.

Ah, but it's a very organised discordant noise . I have to say that it looks somewhat alarming on the page!

I think I have no chance of playing Schoenberg right now, seeing as I wouldn't be able to hear if I was playing the right notes or not!

you are a better man than I (err, in a lot of respects ). I cannot get my head around the Second Viennese School

I also struggle. After seeing a performance of Wozzeck a couple of years ago, and also being present at last year's Berlin Phil prom where they played Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, I started to feel a sense of what they were trying to do. However, it will never be music that makes me smile.

wow - more kudos to you then. I just can't imagine even trying to play something that doesn't in some way make me smile. All the best...

Thanks! I guess that I feel the need for my music to move me emotionally in some respect, but not necessarily always in a positive or happy way. Tortured personality? Who knows. Joking aside, I do generally play for enjoyment. And I don't rule out the possibility that the Schoenberg might turn out to be fun to play (if not to listen to)