Category: me

Practice journaling and related thoughts

Since I started being “serious” about objectives with the piano (rather than just sitting at it and playing by ear), I’ve done what people do these days: read a lot of stuff on the internet, and watch a lot of videos on YouTube. It’s the time honoured way these days. Anyway, one concept which comes up now and again on the music front is practice journalling. Journaling and bullet journaling is a hot topic on the self improvement industry, or as I like to dub it, the “you’re not good enough” industry.

I have certain mixed feelings about this, not least one of them being, I’ve been keeping a personal journal for 30 plus years and I started because I fell in love, not because I wanted to do self healing, or be more efficient or change the world. But it’s a habit I have kept up, and in any case, if you have spent any time working in IT, tracking is a habit and if you have been a project manager, well….then.

Anyway. Back in the day about 6 months ago when I was working towards grade 5 theory I selected a notebook and tracked my way through the mock exam papers (several times). I wrote a bit about that here.

The notebook was a very nice Beethoven unlined Paperblanks. It seemed wrong just to abandon it, so it is morphing somewhat into a music planner and journal. I’m just not very systematic in handling it so I of course resorted to TeachTheWorld site, YouTube and Instagram. Neither were very helpful. Nor were comments about rushing to the keyboard. I’ll write a bit more about that in a separate entry in about 25 minutes but in short: I don’t have a lot of free time. I have a piano because I want to play a piano.

Currently I have one primary goal (yes, I know I’ve written something slightly different elsewhere) which is to complete ABRSM Grade 6 Performance. I have four pieces and November and December were washouts (I’ll discuss that in the next entry). The tasks I need to achieve that goal are, basically, play four pieces in a reasonably engaging way such that an ABRSM examiner doesn’t vomit and die on watching the exam video. The four pieces include a piece of Bach which is relatively straightforward, apart from one bar, I’ve written about that too.

So, back with the practice journalling, you get the advice about laying out what you want to achieve with each practice session. I have to be honest. For session A, I want to be able to play Bar 7 of Bach’s two part invention in E major and for session B, I want to be able to play a Mendelssohn song without words without making any fingering errors. I can play every bar of it without an error but by God I can’t string all of them together error free.

One of the big concerns I have about the journaling industry (and not specific to music practice) is that an awful lot of time goes into the planning, the laying out tidily [the use of washi tape, ten colours of highlighters and special pens ordered from Japan and a dozen stamps]. All this takes time. I don’t have this time [watch for that entry].

Journaling for me is not planning. So if I practice journal at all, it’s to outline how I feel about how the practice went, how I feel after it, how frustrated I am, what went wrong, what went right. I think most people would do well to start with that.

It doesn’t have to be in a nice notebook (I have about 100, however because when Covid hit, what I did was Buy NoteBooks, Buy All The NoteBooks) but something that you can put somewhere and get it out after practice if you feel like it (doing practice is a lot of discipline, it being 11pm and your alarm clock being at 6am means that you don’t need to feel guilty about not writing in your practice journal).

If you’re a music student though, these rules will not apply to you. Do the planning. Do the postpractice analysis.

Some thoughts at the start of the year

I’ve already done a review of last year and talked a bit about some of the things I did [or not did] last year. But I have signed up for Pianist membership so that I get [what I have wanted for a long time] ongoing access to the digital archive – this matters to me because they have a lot of really nice music and accompanying tutorials.

In the latest issue which I think is from pre=Christmas, there is a piece on deciding (as an adult) to do an exam and a lot of practical advice. I value it a lot. It covered some practical advice, some timing and planning advice, discusses some of the pitfalls.

I’m also interested in using the sheet music as a resource for improving my sight reading. I’ve two major goals I think:

  • Complete the prep for Grade 6 and do it
  • Start the prep for Grade 8.

Supporting that are some improvements in basic skills, such as the dreaded polyrhythms and above all else, the sheet music reading fluency. For me, it’s not good enough but having gone through a lot of the tutorials on reading sheets, it’s obvious to me, I have the basic skills in place. None of the hints are new, I understand intervals. I understand the mnenomics and have done for years. I have some trouble with extreme ledger lines. These things are basically practice.

In the last few months, maybe the last 6 months, I have put a lot of resources into becoming a better piano player. This site is one; I’ve signed up for ToneBase, I have signed up for a Pianist membership, you can find me on Tonic for practice accountability. I have bought a metronome and I want another one (you can probably have too many metronomes – I have a lovely Seiko one which is totally not helpful for dealing with my Bach pains). What I want, more or less, is to be able to play any [bits of] music I want to. The grades are less to do with that and more to feed a little piece of my ego that is feeling neglected.

I’m also looking at practice journaling – I already log what gets practiced on a day to day basis since start of this year (a very nice Japanese agenda is used for that). One of the points raised in the Pianist article I mentioned above related to the difference between practice and rehearsal. This is not something that occurred to me but I’m happy enough to consider it – it allows me to highlight the differences between my Mendelssohn (rehearsing, sort of) and my Bach (ugh practising).

Gifts for the pianist in your life

It’s 17 December. I suppose I should have done this a few weeks ago. Sorry about that.

Anyway, there are just a few ideas to think about if you are stuck. I’ve no handy pictures. When I do this next year I’ll do it better.

A piano

Most pianists already own a piano but if you are a multibillionaire with a nice big house, then Steinway Ds or Faziolis are always popular. If you are not wealthy and your pianist already has some sort of piano, then the chances are this is not your market segment.

Lego do have a grand piano model which is several hundred euro worth of bricks. You may want to consider it.

Annique Gottler has a grand piano model on a shelf in her studio. I covet it. I have no idea what it is but as she is a Boston ambassador I’m going to guess it might come from Steinway.

Sheet music

The safest bet here are vouchers for your pianist’s sheet music dealer of choice. There may be several. Credit for Henle Digital is always useful too but difficult to do in secret.

The cotton hardback editions of Rach and Bach are an attractive addition to any bookshelf. I don’t recommend Bartok in any shape or form. If your pianist is a teenager, consider books of computer games music as well.

But vouchers. Vouchers are always possible

Concert tickets

Or vouchers. Most concert halls do them. Vikingur Olafsson’s Goldbergs are the hit tour of the minute. Check out your local options or plan a trip to, say, Verbier, the Elbphilharmonie. Are they notably partial to a particular concert pianists like Martha Argerich or Danil Trifonov?

Verbier’s schedule is out on 15 Jan, and public sale starts on 29 Jan. Not sure what will be available but let’s put it this way. I would love to have been in the room for this.

Bach concerto for 4 pianos at Verbier in 2002

Metronomes

There are Metronome apps on both the Apple and Android stores. But there are battery operated little beauties (I bought one the other day) and then, your budget can cover a multitude with the Wittmer or antique ones. I’m conflicted between a turquoise or a ruby red little Wittmer. Ebay is full of antique wooden pyramids with brass fittings. If your pianist has a youtube channel, check their styling. A 19th century brass thing is going to look out of place in a cold modern black and white studio.

Digital Services and online teaching

You can get lifetime subs to ToneBase and Josh Wright Piano. I’m not going to recommend one over the other and these are high end gifts anyway. But there are some pianists who give private lessons on line lessons. Youtube premium for ad free watching of Garrick Ohlsson lectures might also be an option but that is a monthly commitment.

Absolutely anything which has a grand piano printed on it

  • Cups
  • Totebags
  • Scarves
  • Hats
  • Brief cases
  • Stickers for their laptop
  • Notebooks. The Beethoven Paperblanks is still knocking around in a few shops. I regret missing the Chopin and Schubert ones.
  • Earrings and other jewellery
  • Rulers
  • Pens
  • Blue print of a Steinway
  • Books such as The Piano Shop on the Left Bank, The Lost Pianos of Siberia.

A troubled relationship, sometimes

I did a recital at the end of October at my current place of employment. I also agreed to play on the recital at the end of November. I have no idea what I will play and I have a chronically overwhelming lifeload for the next few weeks.

My brain is refusing to cooperate on all sorts of things. Bach, for one thing. Planning for the next six months, which has implications for the Grade 6 plans for end of Q1. I have a brand new notebook beside me for that, and calendars and stuff like that but the ideas for what I want to do are currently in a high security jail in side my head.

And I am afraid to even touch the piano. I don’t know if that is JSB’s fault (it’s hard to blame a man who has been dead for more than 200 years) or whether it is mine or whether it is linked to a whole pile of other stuff. Net result is the practice account is empty for the week. This is a pity on two fronts; one I made no progress on the piano and two I’m also berating the hell out of myself. About the only thing I did do was tidy the sheet music library (the printed one):

Tidy music
Lovely tidy sheet music organised alphabetically

Oh and I found lots of lovely music in D Flat. More about that below.

Because we passed from October (that month flew), a new set of Piano Jam pieces went up on r/piano. I tend to look at that list with a view to using it as sight reading fodder which is something I managed once and then found a long searched for piece of music. Somehow I missed the three monthly list that went up in October (despite catching the Tiersen that I genuinely intended to do for that month but never got around to) and it has George Winston’s arrangement of Carol of the Bells, together with a link to MusicNotes. I have mixed feelings about MusicNotes and nKoda (I really don’t much like the subscription model) and it’s not clear to me with all the “you can only print once” or “you can’t print at all” how much this is really musician friendly. I don’t tend to want to print the stuff I have on Henle but nKoda and MusicNotes, and Sheet Music Plus are really in your face about that. I have downloaded a couple of pieces from Stretta and they had some version of the Carol of the Bells arranged by George Winston sans prelude. I have no idea when I can possibly start it and it will hopefully go into my forScore.

Rather irritatingly, on the first real day off I had in months, ie, I didn’t have to do anything, go anywhere, be anywhere, I was sick and I was effectively useless for 2 days for anything that involved concentration. Very unhelpful. I had hoped to get past the problems with the Bach that stands between me and the Rameau that I want to start sometime after Christmas, and clean up bits of the pieces for the exam which I had initially scheduled for March on the basis of regular practice which is just not happening since about the second week in October.

This has an impact on the planning for the following exam which includes a grade skip to 8. Like grade 5, Grade 8 is a gatekeeper grade in that unless I pass that, I cannot go onto the diploma programmes. I’m fifty and horribly afraid I won’t be up to Chopin Sonata III which is my plan for the FRSM in about 10 years time. It frustrates me and worries me. I get nervous about it.

My plan was to be more or less finished the finger/learning/memorisation work for the Grade 6 pieces by around Christmas and to continue polishing them for 2-3 months while starting some basic work on one or two of the four pieces for Grade 8. But I got impatient and looked at the Rachmaninoff sometime recently, mostly to investigate it for murderously big chords (there are two that I will need to roll) and to see how hard it was to read. It’s a measure of how differently my mind works that in fact, I don’t find it harder than the Bach that is eating into my self esteem. So at some point this week I watched a Tonebase webinar on planning piano practice for the next six months and I really need to start nailing down actual practice session goals.

I just wish I wasn’t missing so many. It’s like the piano is laughing at me.

Things in D Flat

For Grade 8, one of the pieces is in D flat, the aforementioned Rachmaninoff. For this, I’ve at least started two exercises that tend to support the playing of stuff in keys I don’t usually think in, the scales and improvisation. Because I somehow played stuff in C sharp when I was a teenager (by ear, so who knows, it could actually have been in D flat) my fingers fit the shape and improvisation and scales fit okay. I read through the Rachmaninoff, and I keep forgetting that G is flattened. What would be helpful would be other things in D Flat.

Reader, there are other things in D Flat. This for example:

Christan Sinding Rustle of Spring

Have I already mentioned this last week? I think so. Anyway, there was also a piece by Cecile Chaminade. We’re not talking about other things in D Flat that will make the Rachmaninoff any easier.

So I will probably finish off the C major Prelude by Bach (not the stuff that is keeping me awake at night) and transpose it into D flat. I’m not sure how much that will help but I think it might be complex enough to force me to write it. Someone told me the jazz guys, or at least the good ones could all play all of Well Tempered Clavier in any key they liked.

It’s just occurred to me that I haven’t played the piano since I went to hear Vikingur Olafsson play last week. I’m not sure why.

In the meantime, my brain is currently attacking me with the following: “Do All the Bach”. “Do all the Rebikov” = Oh Rebikov, I forgot to mention that. There’s a piece on the Grade 6 repertoire. Some days it goes beautifully, other days there is open warfare between my fingers and the piano. Isn’t the word mercurial? But also, a few years ago, Pianist Magazine listed one of his pieces, Yolka? Waltz from the Christmas Tree as a nice idea for Christmas, not too taxing. I should like to learn that. And the Carol of the Bells. Do the Carol of the Bells. Do all the sightreading from the November piano challenges. Do bits of the Chopin Ballade in G minor just for the pure hell of it. And you can start that Rachmaninoff.

LEAVE ME ALONE.

Oh and there is that waltz that Gregory Sokolov plays as an encore from time to time. And Le Matin by Tiersen which I was supposed to do in October on the side while working on the exam pieces as well.

WAILS IN PAIN.

I know the best thing to do is sit in front of the piano and at least do some of the Bach so that it goes forward. But I also want to plan. And I need a mindmap to get all of these cries out of frustration.

May I recommend Dvorak’s Piano Concerto if you are looking for something different to listen to?

On the administration side of things

I bought some more sheet music yesterday; all from Henle so all with the distinctive blue covers, so I will skip the photos for this.

  • Brahms Opus 76
  • Brahms Opus 119
  • Liszt Sonata in B minor
  • Brahms Ballades

I have bought a crazy amount of sheet music and that doesn’t include the pieces I also pull from IMSLP to whom I intend to give some money soon. I know deep down that until I get past the necessary block I have with one of the exam pieces I am learning, I will not do anything more than tip away at bits of these collections. I bought the Liszt Sonata – a piece I never expect to even start learning in its completeness simply because I love the second movement.

But it’s nice to dream and I Feel No Guilt about this. However.

I need to tidy the sheet music into some sort of usable system so that I can find it more easily. This involves bookshelf reorganisation. I dread it, I already have piles of actual books around the place. The oldest sheet music I possess is in Ireland and the oldest that I have here is my copy of Rach II which I bought in about 1988. So it’s like, 35 years old. I take care of my music and even my exam books are in pretty decent nick given that they cost one or two pounds also around 35 years ago variously. Yes I know it seems crazy that someone working grade 4 or 5 also bought Rach 2. But I like dreaming of the possible and I’m never going to forgive the people who focus on how hard something will be instead of how motivated I am. I still can’t play bits of it but I totally get lost in it when I am working on pieces of it just for the pure pleasure of doing so. The journey matters not the end. Anyway, I digress. The Liszt cropped up on Igor Levit’s latest album; I have quite a few bits of Liszt that were bought to be read rather than played. A bit like Islamey by Balakirev. I’m not even going to try. Okay. Back to the objective.

I have a mix of music: a lot of so called classical – basically written 100 or more years ago – and more modern stuff like Tiersen, Arnalds and Einaudi. I’m going to write about Einaudi after I am done with this. I bought mag boxes to store them in because they are mostly not hardback and the music can be fragile and when you don’t have a lot of it, mag boxes keep it somewhat safe. Now I am thinking that the alphabet is going to have to be my friend and that I will just have to sort that way. But I want to keep a mag box aside for the kind of loose single piece sheets and also for the Grade 6 and Grade 8 piano pieces. Currently the 6 is cluttering my piano. I want to declutter my piano but that’s going to be challenging as I’ve all sorts of tools and notes there. I also have the free stuff that came with the piano (stuff that includes Burgmuller and Chopin plus a couple of collections of Various). So there needs to be a collections section as well. I also tended to sort by publisher which was fine when most of it was Henle. Most of it still is but I’d prefer to sort by composer now that a bit more Barenreiter is coming in and I bought the Chopin Institute’s issue of the Chopin Sonatas.

So I’m writing about doing this instead of doing it which is…an interesting bit of procrastination.

OBJ Bach Two Part Invention in E Major BMV777

If you check under my objectives, you’ll see I’m currently working Grade 6. I wonder sometimes how valid it is that I write a piano blog when I am stuck firmly in the intermediate box as far as classical repertoire is concerned.

I had trouble selecting the List A piece at the time. I was surprised; I thought the List C would be harder but I found recordings of some of them, liked the first one I heard, and off we went.

Out of the four pieces, the Bach is KILLING me. Well, some of it is incredibly easy. The rest of it is killing me. In part, this is a gap in my education. I don’t align so much with Bach as I do with Chopin and Rachmananinininininininoff or indeed Felix. This is not the kind of thing you admit out loud in the piano world. Bach is 42, the answer to life, the universe and everything.

The one piece of Bach that everyone knew (well I never played it but I could pull it out by ear if I really wanted to) turned out to be composed by someone else (Christian Petzold in this case, apparently). The only piece I truly liked was the Toccata and Fugue although Sky might have something to do with that.

It’s worth digging out an organ version too. But that’s not where we are right now.

I want to do the exam performance in February or March in 2024 so I need to get a move on with Bach. I don’t know the Rebikov but I can sight read it without too much difficulty. Learning it by heart is the challenge there and I’m already at a stage where I can deal with thinking about how I want it to sound. But the Bach had been a traincrash and more to the point, Apple’s music search meant I turned up very little when I went looking for a recording of it, at least initially. Once I discovered that looking for Angela Hewitt would be more productive, things got better. I’m now more motivated to learn the Bach because I’ve realised it is a stepping stone to the Rameau that I want to do for Grade 8. So back to Bach we went.

I’m stuck in the middle of the first part. Henle tells me this is easier than the Mendelssohn that while it was a swamp inhabited by dragons from a fingering point of view, it was also readable from day one. I won’t say it was easy to get right but it was easy to motivate myself to pick it apart and start putting it back together.

I don’t believe Henle. Maybe it’s easier if you started playing Petzold instead of a music hall version of the Rose of Tralee, aged 10 (god knows why we had it) but if you’ve somehow got to the age of 50 without doing any counterpoint at all, Bach is a big thick brick wall.

Bach777_FirstPart
Bach, Two Part Invention in E major

In particular, I’m struggling with the highlighted bars above. Well, the first of them is okay after a great deal of very slow work and repetition. Yes, I have been using a metronome, at length, much to the pity of my neighbours no doubt. But it is very very slow going. I’m operating under the fatal excess optimism that once I manage that, then much of the rest of it being easier than the Mendelssohn might materialise.

On the plus side, it’s a decent enough piece of Bach, and I’ve also spent some time with the C Major Prelude from WTC lately, and I’ve had a look at Aria from the Goldberg Variations. I bought a copy of Anna Maria Bach’s notebook as well (and it has the Petzold in it too which is handy and now I am wondering about getting CPE Bach’s notebook too). And I really, really hope it helps with the Rameau.

In other news, I will see the Goldbergs courtesy of Vikingur Olafsson next week. I am looking forward to it.

New sheet music

I went on a shopping spree today. I wanted to buy the Goldberg Variations – one of the things that Vikingur Olafsson succeeded in making me do was decide I wanted to learn some of them, with what time I don’t actually know but hey, I can read them anyway. I also wanted to buy Un Sospiro by Liszt – I’ve seen a couple of videos of people trying to learn them lately and I realised it is a truly lovely piece (I must have heard some serious butchering as well. In fact, I have a shopping list of music I want to buy for which I don’t have the time to learn, I’m struggling with my current set pieces and also, there’s a monumental amount of other stuff going on.

So I walked to the shop, and spent money. They had one copy of Goldberg (it’s probably popular at the moment for one reason or another).

More sheet music
A pretty blue book of Bach music.

And I found one copy of the Three Concert Etudes which gave me Un Sospiro. I don’t expect to touch this for a while, but hey, it merits reading and occasional experimentation.

More sheet music
Mount Liszt

I came across a video of Helene Grimaud, aged about 18 years ago (so recorded on 4:3 TV back in the day) rehearsing the piano part of Schuman’s first violin sonata. I liked it and while I have no handy violinist, I still wanted to learn some of it. They had it, past tense because now I have it.

More sheet music
An essential ingredient is lacking but so what.

They also had some Barenreiter anniversary specials – both they and Henle seem to be celebrating birthdays at the moment – so I picked up their collection of selected Brahms pieces.

More sheet music
I like Brahms, don’t you

I tend to pick up collections like this for “sight reading practice” which usually turns into “oh this is a nice Waltz or other, I should actually learn it rather than butchering it for 10 minutes”. We will see how it goes.

A few weeks ago, I found a shop selling second hand sheet music and had a flick through it and found one single solitary copy of the Hummel piano concertos for solo piano. I haven’t examined it in detail, but I assume it is just the piano part and if I want to play it with an orchestra, I’m on my own babe. But it is a thing of beauty.

More sheet music
Elitist secret music

I mean, isn’t the engraving gorgeous? I have one copy of Solveig’s Song which is recent but also beautiful. Oh I know the Henle blue covers are classy and stylish and all that, but seriously, some of the older designs are just more…beautiful. I could almost frame either of them (and since I somehow have two copies of Solveig’s, I actually could frame that one).

Anyway, since I bought the Rameau a while back I’ve not actually worked on learning stuff. I just blew my mind on stuff I already knew or arranged myself when testing the piano emulation software last week. Need to get back to work.

A perfect piano

If you take a look at this long indulgent post I wrote the other week on the question of Pianos I have Loved, you’ll see I included a Steinway D in that list.

Well, I will probably never be able to afford one but I now occasionally have access to a Steinway B and I like it rather a lot and at some point in the future I might be able to find space for one in an apartment. It’s the second Model B that I really liked playing – a few more and I’ll assume that like Ds, they are safe to order sight unseen (but let me visit the factory anyway) – I tested one in Steinway Hall in Paris (I love that place but don’t go often enough). In the end I didn’t buy the Ronisch I was looking at (mentioned in that long post) because the current apartment isn’t really suitable for a piano, more for the health of the piano than anything else (it gets extremes of humidity and heat and I didn’t think this was good for a 1930s piano that Rach might have played. Someone else apparently has bought it so it will forever be the one that got away).

So I will set up a savings plan for the Model B and hopefully by the time I have enough money, I will also have a suitably modern climate controlled apartment to put it in. The question is, what am I doing in the interim without a beautiful grand piano? Well, at some point, I came across something called Pianoteq. I have a digital Kawai, a CA59 which I bought during the pandemic (and thus had to wait a long time for delivery) and while I like it very much to play physically, I wasn’t all that lost on the selection of sounds – there are a couple of nice grand piano sounds but for some reason, they didn’t always float my boat (if you have one of those pianos, I like the Warm Grand sound). Anyway, the plus point about having a digital piano is that you can use it as a Midi controller. I wasn’t really in a hurry to go messing with that side of things until I started making recordings on it and figured I should learn a bit more about the capabilities of the piano beyond the on/off switch, the volume control and the sound selecting bit.

Pianoteq is a piece of software developed at the University of Toulouse and it is a physical model of various piano sounds. During the year they released a version for iOS and either an ad popped up in Instagram or YouTube or I saw it mentioned in one of the piano magazines. The reviews on YouTube are sparkling to say the least. A high proportion of people using this software state it is the best piano emulator and they have licensed some sounds not present on my Kawai, curiously enough, the two Steinway Ds (both New York and Hamburg), the Steinway B, a number of C.Bechsteins and some instruments from historic collections. And then some. They allow you to install for test purposes, and kibosh the test system by a) blocking some keys and b) going silent after 20 minutes or so (but you can restart). I had some issues configuring it which may be linked to the Kawai more than anything. Also, I learned that the Bluetooth lag to Apple AirPods is … long.

So my set up, despite cables being connected, is a Bluetooth connection from the piano to the iPad into Pianoteq and wired headphones into the iPad and that works okay for me. There is a very, very, very ickle lag.

What to do I think of it? Well, I bought the software after some testing (so yes, I liked it). I bought the entry level licence plus some additional instrument packs. It’s not exactly cheap but it is a licence rather than a subscription and you can run it on any of your appropriate devices (eg, a Windows machine or a Mac) without having to cough up more. You get two instrument backs with the basic licence which you can choose – I added the Steinway D pack and the C. Bechstein pack, and then I separately added the Steinway B and the historic set which included a 19th century Erard. I really liked that sound testing.

It costs less than an actual Steinway B and so far my Kawai isn’t cribbing about the humidity that I sometimes suffer in the summer. As a stepping stone to my dream piano, it fits my needs. On the downside, even though it does cost less than a Steinway B, there’s an upfront cost. Your mileage may vary on whether you want it or not. For me it has joined the toolset. And I hope it will support some more recordings out to my Soundcloud channel as apparently I can start running things through GarageBand with it.

I used to dream of all this sort of musical freedom when I was 15 years old.

Rameau: Les Cyclopes

While I still have a way to go to finish the Grade 6 pieces, I wanted to finalize a selection from List A for Grade 8. It’s not a period of music I instinctively ever want to learn and I wasn’t enthusiastic about more Bach to be honest. So I had a look at the list and attempted to find a good reason to learn the Scarlatti that was on the list. I failed.

I’ve chosen this:

Les Cyclopes, Rameau as interpreted by Vikingur Olafsson

There is a really great version by Grigory Sokolov around too and what fascinates me is how how different the various interpretations are. I suspect in part it’s because it was written in the early half of the 18th century, at a time when the composers did not necessarily leave much on the way of instruction, given they were written for harpsichord and this allows today’s musicians some latitude in how they play the pieces. But there are elements of this that I absolutely love.

Rameau_Les Cyclopes Extract
Extract from IMSLP version of Les Cyclopes by Rameau

You can find the sheet music here. I congratulate myself on finding a particularly antique version of it. I think it’s the first edition. Currently, it looks like the best publisher to get this from is Barenreiter – it’s not on Henle’s digital library and Barenreiter appear to have a couple of options to get it in print. I don’t think it’s on their digital library yet. In theory I am not in a hurry to get this. But I will still try to buy it tomorrow. I’m not sure I want 43E worth of Rameau, on the other hand I am supposed to be upping my sightreading game too. We will see what is supposed to be there.