Month: May 2024

Random piano news

While I was looking up some YouTube links for the Releases of Note entry for Lucas Debargue, I discovered he was playing a piano I wasn’t familiar with. It’s a Stephen Paulello piano, a rather beautiful looking large concert grand. So I went looking.

The pianos are designed and built in France, and built to order no less. I’m not sure when I would ever accidentally get a chance to play one although I’ve played one of Chris Maene’s pianos, a couple of Faziolis and one or two of Marcus Hubner’s pianos as well. It would be interesting to try this one too as the sound on the Debargue album is beautiful. But apparently an appointment can be made to play at their workshop. It’s tempting.

Releases of Note: Lucas Debargue, Complete Piano Music of Gabriel Fauré

I realised I hadn’t flagged this when I was writing about more recent sheet music acquisitions. This is out and for me, it is an unexpected piece of joy. Gabriel Fauré’s solo piano music is a little undervalued I feel. The piece of music which I truly love is the B section from this.

Lucas Debargue plays Fauré

I haven’t come across many stand out solo albums this year – the top two albums of the year so far are duets.

This is, however, wonderful, and deserves a lot of recognition.

Newly acquired sheet music

I had a ninja trip to London last week and took a few minutes to hare up to the music department in Foyles. I was looking for a couple of things, one of which is not available at the moment but you might randomly find it somewhere that hasn’t sold all its copies yet. In Foyles, I was not so lucky. There was no copy of any of the Liszt works I want. Why I want them I don’t know; I don’t play much/any Liszt at the moment.

The other piece I wanted was Barcarolle Number 1 by Gabriel Fauré. There is an album of Fauré’s complete piano music knocking around which I don’t seem to have flagged but I will. Here’s the trailer:

Lucas Debargue – complete music for piano by Gabriel Fauré

Anyway, the taster which Apple Music released absolutely ages ago was the first barcarolle, and I want to learn it. I see it, I buy it. However, Foyles also had a transcription of Pavane, so I bought that too.

The Liszt that I am looking for are his transcription of Beethoven Symphony No 7 and the chorales. I don’t urgently need them but if I see them, I will pick them up. In any case, I will ninja to London again soon.

Missing public piano Brussels airport

The piano in Area A in Brussels Zaventem appears to have moved. This is sad.

There has also been a really nice upright at Gare Central in Brussels in a hall with wonderful acoustics. I haven’t had time to play it yet. But I have heard people playing it and it just sounds exceptional.

Practice Diary 20240526

I practised three days this week. This is a big improvement on most of the month of May which has featured a few weeks of nothing at all.

So, where are I? I’ve missed my April deadline for submitting the exam, and I won’t make the end of May either. But I am close and that makes me happy.

This week I worked primarily on the exam pieces, and one of the Grade 8 pieces.

Grade 6:

CPE Bach: = this is about 97% there. I make precision errors from time to time and these are really linked to how tired I am.

Mendelssohn: 99% there. Mostly clean playing.

Rebikov: this one is odd. Mostly, it is 100% there but when it goes wrong, it goes spectacularly wrong.

Milne: likewise. Mostly it is 100% but when it goes wrong, it goes spectacularly wrong.

I now practice all four as a performance and I have started practising the little speech I want to give introducing the pieces at the start of the exam recording too. That’s a bit nerve wracking to be honest.

I had intended to use the Steinway I occasionally hire for the exam recording but it is mostly not available until August, so I will more than likely wind up recording it at home on my digital Kawai. That’s a little disappointing.

In addition to that, the Grade 8 piece I looked at today (only today, I’m afraid) is some Rachmaninoff. I will have to sit down with a recording of it and do a few read throughs. It’s in the key of D flat, and that’s just a little challenging.

I realised today that since I had finished memorising the Grade 6 pieces (I will play from memory), I wasn’t reading much music and this is detrimental to the progress I made reading earlier in the year. So I want to resolve that and while I have to read the Rach, I need to do some easier to swallow stuff. I need to pick up the 40 piece challenge I started at the beginning of the year. In fact, I cannot believe it is almost the end of May. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

I’ve missed practice. It’s been hard as I’ve been away from home quite a lot, and I’ve otherwise been tired. I’ve also picked up reading and drawing again. This makes a difference in terms of available time – don’t call this an excuse – the reality is many people have struggles on available time. Nevertheless, I spent 40 minutes at the piano today and more than 2 hours yesterday. I’d like to go back to doing at least an hour a day. We’ll see how this week shapes up.

20240520 Practice Diary

Let’s be honest. The practice has fallen off a wagon lately. Admittedly for 2 weeks I have been travelling. So I think there was only one practice session in there. It was alright given I haven’t been playing much. I also played at the Airport in Amsterdam.

I would have played at the airport in Brussels but the piano in Area A is GONE. NOOOOOOOOO. I hope the one in B is still there. I’ll check the next time I am flying outside Schengen but as I tend to exit Schengen in Amsterdam lately….Oh well.

Someone left a book of movie themes at the piano in Amsterdam though so if you are looking for Chariots of Fire, there you go.

Now that it occurs to me, I used to have a copy of Chariots of Fire when I was a teenager. It didn’t turn up the last time I went through the piano music at home.