Month: February 2025

Practice – some time has passed

It’s Tuesday and it’s raining heavily outside. I have barely played for three or four months and I’m well aware that the longer this state of affairs continues, the less likely I will make December for Grade 8. So I have started practising. Not daily (bad Treasa) but a bit more frequently. Greater than Zero times. I also bought a couple of copies of Pianist.

What’s the progress this week? I think my fingernails are too long. I don’t know where my cute nail care kit is. I watch Annique Gottler’s videos about learning the four Chopin Ballades in six weeks. I haven’t touched the first one since before Christmas. I looked at the Raindrops Prelude a week or two ago, so there is that. It’s in the key of D flat.

D flat seems to be everywhere. Especially it is in the Rachmaninoff that I am not practising at the moment. After some careful consideration of what worked for Grade 6 (focus) and what did not (trying to do everything at once), I have decided to set two pieces aside for the time being. The two hard pieces. The Rachmaninoff and the Liszt. I have decided to focus mainly on the Rameau which I love, and the Debussy which I am struggling with.

Mostly, the Rameau had been memorised, while slow to play, it had been under my fingers. This was no longer true so for the last few practices I have been working on fixing that. In fact, there is just one set of bars on page one bouncing around D minor, that I struggle to memorise correctly. Today, very slow practice, it’s okay. At the kind of speed it will take 20 minutes to play the piece. Bearing in mind that on average, pros seem to knock it out in about 4 minutes, there is a lot of work to go there with the metronone and there in lies some problems. There are two bars which I simply don’t play at the correct rhythm. Technically it is common time although it definitely plays more like eight eight which I don’t think I have ever seen written down. Anyway, two bars have a batter where they come in on the end of a crotchet as a quaver. I don’t get the line in correct any time. It is going to be painful to count out with a metronome.

That aside, there are a few other shaky bits but I actually think this is not far off completion.

The Debussy is less happy. I am unhappy with page 2, and have decided to look at all of the rest of it, and learn it in pieces. I did this with two of the grade 6 pieces (after trying everything else) so my hope is that I will have building blocks at some point and can then try to glue them together. Page 1 is okay. Page 2, not so okay.

And that’s it really. No Rach. I was struggling with the triplets. I’d feel a lot happier if I had more of Debussy done; as it is, I have ten months to do the other two; normally should be enough as the later pieces go faster for some reason (hence the focus) but I can’t be certain I won’t lose weeks of practice again.

We’ll see.

Alexandre Tharaud at the Bozar – Ravel

I am not, it must be said, the biggest fan of Ravel, but when Alexandre Tharaud released it, his concert clips were rather intriguing, and anyway, I have loved his playing forever.

He just never seemed to be anywhere I was. Until a couple of weeks ago when he turned up in Brussels to play both Ravel concertos with the BNO. He could have played Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and I would not have missed it. I happened upon his Chopinata, and his Chopin in general is stunning. I also have his transcription of the Adagio from Mahler’s 5th Symphony, plus it is his fault that I have all of Siloti’s transcriptions. You should take a look at his Autograph album for a couple of those. I can’t find it on YouTube for the moment.

Anyway.

I managed to select the worst seats possible – I like front row seats for the piano but seats A3 and A5 should be avoided in the future. Nevertheless, we were right under the piano (a Yamaha on this occasion) and it was a really lovely way to experience the music. But I could not see the soloist. His pedalling is exceptional though.

For me, the two concertos were way beyond my expectations – I do like the second movement of the G-Major and there is a reason I own the sheet music for that. But the live rendition of the Concerto for Left Hand was also wonderful. Henle don’t seem to have that yet and I haven’t found another version. There’s something engaging about how he plays though – thoroughly at one with the music. I don’t think I’ve seen that relationship from any other pianist. And he looks like he is truly enjoying what he is doing, at least on stage.

He did a meet and greet afterwards and he is utterly sweet. Being honest, and looking at some of the people who are huge superstars, I don’t understand why he is not but maybe if he was, he would not be the musician I listen to.

Strongly, strongly recommended and here is some Chopin from him.