March 2024 – Concerto in C Minor

Noteable releases: Trifonov/Babayan

Trifonov/Babayan Rachmaninoff for Two

I really wish that Daniil Trifonov and Henle or someone would do a deal and release his transcriptions. He has done some lovely work on Bach.

However, quite by chance, I found out about this yesterday. I asked myself, how good can it possibly be? Oh god, it’s amazing. I’m not really familiar with Sergei Babayan’s playing but I’m going to be frank, this album is approaching the recordings Trifonov did of the Rach concertos a few years ago and I wish he would record the cello sonata without a pesky cellist grabbing all the limelight.

In particular, I’d kill to have the sheets for the Symphonic Dances from this. It’s amazing.

This is one of those albums that has to be on your listen-list. I really would love to see them if they toured. This lad does things with a piano that very, very few other people can manage. I love listening to him play.

There are not enough superlatives in the world for this. The dynamic range is extraordinary; the pianos sound like god built instruments and the mics are disturbingly clear (this means one of them was singing along while playing). It’s the end of March. Debargue’s Fauré album is exquisite, and Tharaud’s duet album is also due in May and I expect wonderful things from that (the tasters are already gorgeous).

But I have a feeling this will be my piano album of the year.

Contemporary Music – why?

Last night, to get to a wonderful rendition of Bruch’s first violin concerto, I had to sit through a work called Feast During a Plague by Sofia Gubaldulina. I’ve never heard of her but with Bruch and Prokofiev on the menu, I had filed the piece under “how bad can it possibly be” and bought the ticket anyway. The other two pieces were worth the ticket price. This was not. In answer to “how bad can it possibly be”, the answer is truly, unequivocably awful.

Apparently some people – I don’t know who, whether they really exist or how high they were – have called her the world’s greatest living female composer. I have no idea why. I really have no idea why. I don’t know how the orchestra suffered through it and I believe they have to again tonight in Charleroi. For the first time in my life in a concert hall, with a high quality orchestra on the bill, I heard an audience boo a performance. This is highly rare. If they got applause, it was for suffering through this piece.

I loathed it. I’ll admit I’m not a fan of much atonal output anyway – I think it’s self indulgent trash for the most part, and this was utterly devoid of a melody. It had some structure yes, but who cares when ten minutes in you’re wondering when the torture is going to be over. When you see her name being mentioned in sentences with Shostakovich, it’s the sort of stuff that makes me vomit. Shostakovich – whether you like him or not – wrote singable melodies. The second movement of his second piano concerto is a truly beautiful thing (if not the rest of it) and in one of his Jazz Waltzes he has given us a truly amazing short work whether you hear it played by an orchestra or a piano or two (there are a fair few transcriptions around), it is wonderful to listen to.

There is a recording of this Gubaldulina work somewhere on YouTube where at least one of the ten commenters described it as “lovely”. It is anything but. It is unmelodic, harsh discordant mulch with too much running around by the percussion crew. We use the world “lovely” to describe Rachmaninoff’s 18th Variation from Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. We use the world “lovely” to describe Puccini’s arias. We do not use the world lovely to describe self indulgent atonal compositions that should not ever have the indulgence of being performed and imposed on a paying audience who would not pay money for it if it were the only work on the bill. I cannot imagine that this is the Gewandhaus’s best selling album by any stretch.

From what I can see, the audience hated it. They were fidgety from about 10 minutes in, and shortly afterwards, they started chatting. There was a large group of bored teenagers in who loathed it. We have one of the top violinists playing Bruch like an angel afterwards but this nonsense lost a bunch of young people. Orchestras need young people. It’s why the hell we have concerts of computer game music all of which is better than this. It’s why we have concerts of Hans Zimmer’s music.

I understand the need to schedule new music. But for the love of god, if that new music is atonal please don’t schedule it with Bruch, or Prokofiev. She might have been a contemporary of him and Shostakovich but it’s no wonder they are known and she is not so much.

I love the BNO. I love the Henri Leboeuf hall in Brussels. I’ve been to some stunning concerts there. But whoever programmed that needs to explain why they programmed that with the Bruch and Prokofiev. It was an awful, awful choice, completely counter to the beauty of the other two. It didn’t complement them. People left that concert hall at the interval (as they do for Bartok symphonies).

Contemporary music doesn’t have to be like this. At the end of the day, if you want to play atonal crap, you have to accept that not a lot of people want to listen to it and without an audience, what is music anyway? Meanwhile, people like Ludovico Einaudi are selling out major arenas as did Ennio Morricone.

You might judge people for liking that simplistic crapola and not being sophisticated to recognise the true genius of Feast During a Plague. But there is a reason that when people are asked who their favourite composer is, it isn’t this that they are answering. Nothing from the atonal world comes close to matching a Bach or Mozart.

This was not music. I never again want to hear it.

March 2024 Concert Diary

Okay, a few concerts to mention in passing.

Alice Sara Ott is a wonderful concert pianist and you should definitely go and see her while you have the chance. Her Chopin preludes interspersed with (good) contemporary compositions in Brussels a few weeks’ back was a wonderful.

Maxim Vengerov probably is the best violinist in the world at the moment although Hilary Hahn is probably close. Last week he played Sibelius in the National Concert Hall in Dublin and despite some issues in the opening movement, it was truly glorious. In addition to the Sibelius, David Brophy and the NSO in Dublin gave us a Haydn symphony, and also Beethoven’s 7th. It was a night to savour. The brass section was a little overly loud but David Brophy is an excellent conductor with a very broad range of capabilities. He conducted the Beethoven from memory (together with the repeats) and I know he also did the Davey concert the week before as well. He is possibly Ireland’s best classical music asset at the moment and yet somehow, I think over rated.

Benjamin Grosvenor played Liszt 2 with the OPRL from Liege in Brussels on Holy Thursday. The OPRL are an excellent orchestra, treating us to wonderful Liszt Preludes and something by Strauss cannot remember what – beautiful. Sucks how talented he was when he wasn’t such a nice person. The Liszt piano concerto was accurate, finger secure and a bit underwhelming. I expected more but the piano was somewhat lost in the orchestra and I didn’t find it to be a particularly engaging performance for its accuracy and security. It’s a pity because that Liszt piano concerto is a stand out concerto, full of fire and drama. But it wasn’t really like that on Thursday night and I’m not in a hurry back. Given the coverage he gets on line, and especially in UK classical music coverage, I was expecting something more.

Sergei Khachryan came back to Bozar to play Bruch’s iconic first violin concerto on Good Friday. The concert was sold out and absolutely worth it for the experience of hearing him play; I wasn’t aware of him but have to note him as an excellent soloist, with all the passion that the concerto demands and then some. Two encores by Isaye (third and fourth sonata movements from what I remember) and an audience who truly loved him. But well they might. He rescued them from what was an seminally awful opening work, by Sofia Gubaldalina called Feast during a Plague. You will find a recording of it on YouTube where some elitist misguided idiots call it “lovely”.

The Romeo and Juliet ballet extracts from Prokofiev which followed the break was lovely. The Feast during a Plague was not but I’ll write on that separately.

20240327 Practice Diary

I missed the weekend because I was in Dublin, to see Maxim Vengarov. I know he plays the violin but still….

Anyway, the practice was daily except Sat and Sunday so I broke my streak. I’m struggling. Really struggling to get further than about 15 days in a row. But all that days I have missed in March so far were travelling days.

So where are we: quick look back at last week. Okay. The fingering accuracy problems which were a major feature of last week are not such a problem this week. I’m inclined to think they are hormonal and I probably should track them as such in my practice journal. This leaves us with a review of what I got up to since I last posted.

CPE Bach Solfeggio. This is going pretty much okay. It is still below concert speed but it’s increasingly accurate at higher speed. I love my metronome. I’m still surprised at how much better I got on with this rather than his dad’s Inventio in E major. I may go back to that at some point in the future.
Mendelssohn Gondollied 19b no 6: this is great actually. I play this and think, yu know, six months ago I couldn’t play this at all, and I wondered if this whole Grade 6 idea was batshit crazy for someone who is otherwise very decent at non-classical stuff.
Rebikov Fallen Leaves No 3 Con Affizione: I think of all the would be and were broken relationships since I was 13 and this is rightly afflicted. It’s mostly stable, I’m happy to record it
Milne Indigo Moon: After moaning a while back that I couldn’t really memorise this, the finger work is mostly sound, it sounds great when I get it right. I get it right 80% of the time and for those people who drop into my Tonic stream from time to time, it seems to be very popular.

I played other stuff this week at various times, sometimes when I am tired or lost and also because I passed through Brussels and Dublin Airports and touched pianos in both airports. This week that included the Waltz Opus 30/15 Brahms, the A major setting (by Brahms himself). Currently stuck on the opening piece as I shape my fingers to it, but I love it and I think it will be a useful building block to 118/2, the other great expression of unrequited love I think. From the Celtic repertoire, there were the following pieces:

Blind Mary (O Carolan)
Gracelands (Cunningham)
Gaelic Air (unknown, sadly)
Eamon A Chnoic
The Foggy Dew
Kimiad (based on Stivell)
Voyage en Irlande (Bensusan).

All pieces that I love. I also touched Exodus, Scarborough Fair, I dreamed a dream from Les Miserables, and I think that was about it for the late night session last night.

For my next trick I need to start booking grand piano time a bit more frequently, and then I also need a tripod for my phone so I can film the exam submission by the end of the month. I’m really pleased about this.

20240317 Practice Diary

The Isle of the Dead is playing in the background. I used to want to learn that; it’s a transcription of a Rachmaninoff piece. I’ve changed my mind.

So, to practice this week. I survived to Platinum for a second week in a row and to be honest, that was doing well because while I practised every day (go me), I only had one long practice. Next week has travel and two after work engagements. I’ll have to do a lot of active listening to offset the lack of practice next week because they will be mostly short sessions. Still and all, I intend to hang in there for my practice streak.

Tuesday was the big session and it must have done well. Since then, for probably hormonal reasons I’ve struggled with finger accuracy and memory issues across the board. It’s infuriating but as I don’t think anyone reads in here, I’ll be frank. I had sleeping issues and headaches and some serious nausea. All of that points to hormones all over the shop and yes, my period showed up yesterday.

Most of the practice time was devoted to CPE Bach. I can now play the piece more or less cleanly but far too slowly. So the effort for this piece is to raise the speed up to around 100bpm initially and then up to 125. After that, I think it may be dangerous. There are moments (time rather than place in the music) where I can tell my fingers where to go but not when. I would like it to be secure. It needs more time.

That being said, every practice sessions now starts with a performance run through of all four to get myself accustomed to playing them in sequence. I was wondering when I would get to the point I could do this.

All in all, would like it if my brain didn’t succumb to my ovaries but still on schedule to deliver the exam video before end of April.

Talking about the journey

One of my bucket list items has been to go to Verbier, and I am thinking of trying to make it happen this year. There are two or three concerts I’d like to go to – Alexandre Kantorow’s solo recital is one because that I would like to see.

By the way:

Alexandre Kantorow and friends celebrate their teacher’s time in France

I start off with Verbier because well, another bucket list item but which felt unattainable was grade 8 piano. And somehow, this is now realistic.

I love pianos. I’ve played piano in one shape or form since I was 8 years old. The world is full of people who are much better than I will ever be at this stage. The world is full of people who started learning at the age of 64. I’m better now than they are ever going to be.

But I wouldn’t be here without some hard thinking about a year ago and it boiled down to this: the work schedule I had would not allow me to do another university degree. It simply wasn’t possible and to be frank, I didn’t see the point any more if the outcome was to be more intense and constant exhaustion. In 2022 and 2023, I was constantly stressed and exhausted. So things were going to have to change.

So I started wondering about going back to music lessons and to see what I might yet be able to manage on that at this stage of my life. I looked on line and found Canada’s RCM and its extensive list of pieces. I have to confess, I didn’t realise it was in Canada until after I had selected some pieces for Grade 6 that looked doable. As far as I could remember, I had done up to Grade 5 in Ireland.

When I figured out it was Canadian and not UK system, I went looking again for a British one as I assumed there would be exam centres here in Belgium. This is how I discovered ABRSM had these performance grades that you recorded and uploaded. Also, they allowed me to prepare 4 pieces and avoid some of the other skills that I didn’t really want to try and structure according to their syllabus. I play by ear, and I play a rhythm instrument as well. I wasn’t totally worried about that.

But I had to do Grade 5 theory or prove I had done it in Ireland before. I figured it was easier to just do the Grade 5 theory rather than search remotely for proof I had done RIAM. In any case, I don’t think I did Grade 5 with the RIAM in Dublin, but with the Leinster School of Music which isn’t on the list of accepted alternatives for ABRSM. Doing the exam was a good idea.

It was really interesting. I learned a lot. I learned that I could still remember most of the theory covered up to Grade 4. What I didn’t know was really interesting and helpful. It covers a lot of how I think about music. From my point of view, obligation or no, being aware of Grade 5 theory is a good thing and I haven’t excluded doing further theory grades. For now I’ve been working on the performance grades.

I play the piano almost every day – if I miss a day it’s usually because I am travelling. To that end, I can now play pieces by Mendelssohn (dream come true), CPE Bach (love the piece), and two other composers that I didn’t really know before I fished them out of the syllabus. It’s really great.

The benefits though have not really just been musically inclined. I think the simple decision in April last year to start working towards something that a person I used to be has pushed me back into being some of the person I used to be, someone a bit more comfortable in myself. It took a long time and I’m really only starting to see the benefits now. My self esteem was still rock bottom in January; but these days, I think about those moments when I fly through CPE Bach – and I learned that incredibly quickly. I learned it in 6 weeks to be honest and now it is in polishing mode. I can’t quite believe it to be honest.

In the journey, it helped me to move around changing other parts of my life so that I could manage stress more effectively. That I could realistically think about learning some of the lots of sheet music I own. I go to more concerts. I’m thinking about going to a master class in the local conservatory. My resting heart rate is down. I’m sleeping better and some other health indicators around stress are also better.

I still have a lot of things to fix both musically and personally. But genuinely, making room for the exam one of my colleagues thought was crazy has changed my life.

20240310 Practice notes

If I am absolutely honest, what I am trying to do here is avoid house work. I could and will go back to the piano shortly but first a summary write up now that I am more or less back on stream with daily practice.

Anyway, in terms of playing objectives, there are four primary pieces which I would like to submit for my Grade 6 exam with ABRSM within the next couple of months. I write about them frequently, but the important part is that although they are all short of where I want them to be, they are all adequate to actually doing performance practice as well. What do I mean by this?

The exam is a single take video. That means I have to be able to play the four pieces in a row, preferably faultlessly, but most importantly, coherently. I couldn’t do this last night; I could do it today. I need to update the project plan for this actually. I’m happy with that.

All four pieces need work. For one, they are erratic. That means, there is no one piece I can reliably play through without faults. But the truth is, now, I have done a couple of start to finish recital practices, and this needs to be done a couple of times each practice session.

Solfeggio, CPE Bach

I’ve come to really like this piece and it came on stream much faster than I expected. I delayed the exam window to April after missing 2 months of practice (and untold problems with a different piece) late last year. I am close to 99% memorised here and the primary challenge will be to play it at an adequate speed.

Gondollied, 19b/6 Felix Mendelssohn

I love this piece but I am not happy with it in places and I am not sure how I want to adjust it. I will relisten to some recordings of it and see how that goes. I think there is a tutorial as well. I think the pedalling is overly heavy which is one problem.

Autumn Leaves, No 3 Con Afflizione, Rebikov

This was an unexpected pleasure to learn; and it’s brought a lot to my playing I think. It is about 90% reliable. I have two months to get it performance ready. We will see how it looks at the end.

Indigo Moon, Elissa Milne

This too was unexpectedly pleasant to learn. I’m happy with it although the memorisation is not 100% reliable.

In terms of upcoming work, there will be a lot of drilling for the CPE Bach with the metronome. I tend not to play that late as I don’t know if my neighbours can hear the metronome. There are 3 bars very close to the end where I often trip over my fingers but recent practice has seen that reduce significantly. I intend to keep this in my repertoire. For the Mendelssohn, I’m not really sure what to do about it at the moment. I listen to Igor Levitt’s version from time to time and it seems to be a different piece in his hands. I listened a lot to Jan Lisecki’s recording too.

I think I don’t play it as musically as I would like. Of the four pieces, in certain respects, it is now the most challenging (even above CPE Bach) from a fingering point of view. I’ve always wanted to learn it but while I can play it, I don’t think I have learned it. My fingers don’t sing. There may need to be some deconstruction.

For the two more modern pieces, they are done or undone by how I am feeling emotionally at the time I am playing.

I will do the recording without sheet music in around 6 weeks’ time if I can.

In addition to these pieces, I have also started one of Brahms’ waltzes; the sheet music I have is in A Major, it’s an arrangement by Brahms himself so the fact that it is the “easy” version isn’t bothering me. Anyway, the version Henle has in its Brahms piano album is that one. I can see elements of it will also help with 118/2 which is on my piano stand most of the time for when I feel like having a go at pieces of it. It’s lined up for my ARSM so it’s not super urgent. For reference, by the way, I picked up on this via Kantorow’s encore on Friday. I bet he plays it in A flat though.

The practising since about Wed is mixed. I had a couple of terrible sessions (this morning’s one was a horror) and I have also had some highly focused and productive sessions. I’m told that the improvements, especially in the Bach, are highly noticeable if you listen to me through Tonic. But the practice planning is not perfect for me – it’s still more emotionally driven based on what I feel like doing.

Alexandre Kantorow and the HKPO at Bozar, Brussels, 9 March 2024

I didn’t realise when I was booking the concert tickets, but the performance of the Hong Kong Philharmonic and Alexandre Kantorow was the opening concert of the Clara Festival of music in Brussels. In one way, it didn’t matter.

Looking at Alexandre Kantorow, it’s really hard to absorb just how young he is, how recently he won the Tchaikovsky and just how much buzz there is around him. He’s 26 years old. I remember when I thought that was ancient. But that was 40 years ago. Maybe 35 years ago.

He was scheduled to play Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. It’s the case that I would never pass by a chance to hear a piano/orchestra work by Rachmaninoff, and this was the second time in six months I was up to see this, albeit with a very different orchestra and a very different soloist. As usual, I hunted for seats that gave me an optimal view of the piano keys, and found myself in the front row. I was very glad to be there because watching Kantorow touch the keys of a piano is a remarkable experience and almost mind altering to be frank about it. His pedalling style is intriguing. I don’t understand how he does it, in the same way as I don’t understand how Yuja Wang does it with high heels (although that is still more easily understood that Kantorow pedalling with zero purchase on anything; just hanging in mid air).

So, to the performance. It was extraordinary. These pieces, they are standard repertoire, and you could cynically say there’s nothing more that can be said with them that we haven’t already heard from superstar pianists in the past. But Kantorow, there’s something special about how he plays, how he physically approaches the keys (and the pedals), almost as though he is sculpting sound from the air. Watching him play is as much a performance experience as hearing the notes sounding that result. I would have given anything to sit in a solo recital in the same seat just to see what he does with Liszt and maybe some more Brahms.

The standouts for me were the 15-20th variations. I don’t usually pick out pieces like that (especially not in that work as I think it stands complete). I would cheerfully listen to and watch him play those almost ad infinitum. He reinforced the cinema images I have always had from them (black and white moves of the interwar years) and the interplay with the orchestra was just * chef’s kiss*.

He gave us one encore, a piece of Brahms, one of the waltzes from Opus 39. I’m not sure what arrangement he played whether it was A major or A flat major. I note this only because I spent some time looking for it this morning and I found it existed in several forms, all done by Brahms himself. I find the A major arrangement for solo in my sheet music. The touch was delicate and in only the way that Brahms could compose, full of yearning love. I added it to my to be learned list but of course I’ll never play it like that.

Opportunities to hear him play should be grabbed.

The rest of the programme consisted of a commission for the orchestra by a Hong Kong based composer; as contemporary pieces go it was listenable and enjoyable. I suspect it will stay in their repertoire. The main event following the concerto was Brahms’ mighty first symphony. This is a piano blog but I will acknowledge that on the symphony front, Brahms and Sibelius, they the men. This was wonderful. But really, the highlight for me was Kantorow.

Love of my life

I bought this when I was about 15 years old.

That wasn’t today or yesterday. In fact, it was about 35 years ago and I bought it in a music book shop in London. I would give anything to find it again but I suspect it doesn’t exist. In my memory, it was a branch of Oxford University Press but it was, above all other things, a dream world. It had floor to ceiling drawers with mysterious labels. Ladders to get to the higher drawers. Middle aged men having heart attacks as I searched for Rachmaninoff’s name on the drawers.

I wanted two things. This and something else called Grieg’s Piano Concerto. Both of them together were too expensive, so after some no doubt annoying humming and hahing in the shop, I chose Rach. I’m not going to say Rach 2 has always been my favourite piano concerto but I hadn’t heard Saint-Saens 5 by then and Rach 2 is currently my favourite piano concerto.

You can tell this is an old edition. It doesn’t have the standard pic of Rach on the front of which most of the Boosey and Hawkes editions of his concertos do. Also, it is extremely grubby.

I didn’t really realise how grubby it had got until I looked at it today. I took it a lot of places with me. I sat in cars, on rugs, at picnic tables, analysing it, listening to Julius Katchen’s iconic recording and picking out bits of it. We got that from the Great Composers back in the day, on cassette and I recommend it. It’s a tragedy he died so young. The tape lived in my Walkman for most of my teenage years except when I was listening to Jean-Michel Jarre.

One of the girls I knew at choir said the coda was very hard and I would never learn it. She didn’t know it was a coda but the notes were small and there were lots of them. My music teacher did not want to know about it. It’s not like there was an orchestra handy where I grew up. I’m not going to say I was actively discouraged but I definitely was not encouraged.

Looking back, I think this was a pity. Claire Huangci says she learned it at 14. I bet she was encouraged. It’s standard repertoire. There are any number of renditions of it on YouTube. God I would have loved YouTube as a teenager. I just had The Great Composers partworks in cassettes. I learned the opening chords, before I bought the sheet music, from the accompanying magazine. I think my mother donated those magazines. I may regret that now.

I started learning it the summer I was 17. I was doing exams; I had worked my tiny little heart out on chemistry French and maths for two years; I had 2 weeks off before my exams would start and at that point, I didn’t think there was much I could do to improve further my chances in the Leaving Certificate in 1990. I scored two As, 4 Bs and a C back in the day when that meant something (old woman shakes fist at sky about the simplification of the maths syllabus amongst other things) so I probably wasn’t far wrong on that. I knew my theorems and I was the first person in years to do the chemical equilibrium question at my school and I got it 100% correct. I’m not bragging here. I’m about to explain that what I engaged in for the study break was the greatest torture known to a family in Ireland whose piano was in the same room as the TV.

I started learning the second movement of Rach 2. It was in E, a key I preferred to C minor in general (this is still the case). I used to get up, have breakfast, fill a pint glass with Ribena, the sugar filled version, put it on top of the piano, open Rach 2 somewhere in the middle and repeat a few bars endlessly. I must have spent 5 or 6 hours on it on occasion. I have a very fuzzy memory now but I’m certain I had had afternoon practice sessions which lasted 4 hours or more. I cannot imagine the focus I had that allowed me to decipher the notes (sight reading is not my strongest point although it has improved lately), and get myself to a point where I could play around the first – well this is the question. If I look at where I think I stopped, I got about 4 minutes in before I hit the polyrhythms for which I had no help at all and never navigated. But I really didn’t realise it was that far. I almost definitely got about a minute and a half in. There are some notes in the script – not many because mostly I tend to put in things to help to get the rhythm right and after a few years of RIAM and the Leinster School of Music, I have a horror of notes on my script (so I’m totally out of sync with most musicians, it seems) and everything is carefully in by pencil.

Why are we talking about this today? Because I have heard people learning Rach 3 on Reddit and Rach 2 on Tonic and I realised, if they are doing it, why can’t I? I am sure I wrote a bit about some of the people learning Rach 3 and yet I cannot find it quickly. So squirrelled away at the back of my head is that I would pick up the piano concerto again. The same movement – I love it – and start seeing if I could reawaken the memory of what I was able to do when I was 17 years old, drinking Ribena by the pint class. Today, I took it out and looked at how godawful grubby it is. I have the Henle Urtext on my iPad as well but there is some sort of emotional connection between me now (better sight reader and with some tools to deal with polyrhythms) and a girl with a crazy unrealistic dream in a house in the middle of rural Ireland.

I cry tears for that girl sometimes. She had a lot of life before her; I know now what that life included and a lot of it didn’t include a piano which is perhaps a shame.

I can’t still play the first 4 minutes. But I can – almost at will – play the opening page without fault and I can make it sound heart breaking. There is something about I play that which is absent in how I play Mendelssohn, for example. You can pick up senses of it in the Rebikov that I play with affliction when the mood takes me. But the heartbreak in these notes by Rachmaninoff is on a different scale.

I should be learning other exam stuff. I can’t even say how far I will get with this piano concerto this time. It’s mostly way above my skill level when you look at the piece as a whole. But I am now 50, and I can do what I like and what I like at the moment involves pieces of the greatest piece of piano music ever written.

20240307 Practice Notes

I targeted April (revised after missing most of November and December) for the exam recording and while the switcheroo from JS to CPE Bach made me consider that a delay was likely, I’m not certain that it will be. I’m now starting to play Mendelssohn reasonably cleanly, I regularly get Rebikov cleanly (although when it goes badly wrong, it’s a spectacular disaster near the end) and I can play the Milne cleanly albeit not yet from memory. People who hear that seem to like it a lot. And then there’s the CPE Bach bit. I can’t play it cleanly yet, but it’s 95% in memory, is playing okayish at a low speed. There are shaky bits near the end – about 4 bars – and after that, it’s going to be a long journey with a metronome to bring it up to performance tempo. I do a lot of work with a metronome for this. I never got his father’s piece even close to this level. I am not in the mood to analyse why.

The week and a half, nearly two weeks, was odd. I was travelling so lost 3 days completely. One day got 20 minutes in Amsterdam Airport where I was too self conscious to play the classical pieces so it hardly counts for exam purposes.

For some time, and more sustained than usual, I’ve been playing when I come in from work, minimum 20 minutes, often longer. 90 minutes if I can. The Bachs have often accounted for a lot of that time. There’s something really nice about coming in, sitting at the piano and forgetting about computers, policy and applications. Today, I put about 45 minutes to CPE Bach, learning the last gaps so that I start the gluing process. It took fifteen minutes to achieve my objectives for the other three pieces together. They are, admittedly, short pieces but usually, they take about 30 minutes. So here I was, an hour in to practice with time. I haven’t had time on a practice for ages.

So I read through Reverie by Debussy which is scheduled for Grade 8. I’ll be chunking it, of course I will. But the RH is accessible. I’ve now read through two of the pieces and, in line with plans, I will probably start learning one of them even before I’ve done the grade 6 test.

I did something else but it’s going to get an entry on its own shortly. All told, the last few days have been good.