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.