Adagio sostenuto
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.
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.
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:
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.
This is a very notable album and definitely worth your time. It will probably be one of the top 5 albums of the year.
Tharaud is one of my favourite pianists and hopefully I will get to hear him in concert next year.
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.
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.
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.
I practiced just once in the last 2 weeks and I will be travelling again soon. So I am going to miss the April deadline to submit the exam. In practical terms, the hall I wanted to use isn’t available until sometime in June anyway. This is a pity but there you have it. I’m not far off ready to record and submit.
I was really close to being ready about 2 weeks ago but then on a personal level something popped up that got in the way of a lot of things in my mind and work has been busy. My mind is cluttered. I put my hands up – these things happen when you are an adult I suppose although I usually beat myself up with the “other people can do it” line.
It is never very helpful. I also found myself planning around planning this morning too which is a worrying indication of a messed up scheduler. Some reflection required I suppose.
In any case, I have started working on June by Tchaikovsky, and will also start looking at some of the Rameau Cyclopes this week before I leave. I did a read through of the Debussy a few weeks ago, can’t remember when. The remaining piece is some Rachmaninoff, and that’s also been subject to a read through. I should update the project plan.
In a previous job, I considered the whole being part time so that I could free up time to play the piano. I realised that this would be fine in theory but I already couldn’t get on time working full time so all that would happen is I’d be working the same hours and being paid less. Is that a reflection on me? Some people would argue it is; they aren’t IT project managers with operational pain on the side.
So for the playing, I have some work to do.
Ben Laude’s piano channel is absolutely worth your time. He is a loss to ToneBase’s piano channel in general. Anyway, he posted this lately:
I really got back into buying sheet music when I came across some of the piano transcriptions done by Vyacheslav Gryaznov (and I’ve started seeing them turn up in exam lists for the more challenging grades and diplomas). I like the idea, because it fights against some of the received wisdom I had when I was a child that you had to play things properly. That being said, my list would have been different (and is probably already different from the list I made yesterday while I was listening to.
I bought Gryaznov’s transcriptions on the foot of something that isn’t listed above – the Italian Polka by Rachmaninoff. It, too, is a great transcription in its own right. I’ll probably never be able to learn it.
Ben’s list did not include anything from Alexander Siloti and I think that’s a pity. Certainly, they may lack of the fireworks of the Flight of the Bumblebee but the Prelude listed above (originally in E-minor I think) is utterly stunning, no matter who plays it.
Warner Classics{I think, at least} and Alexandre Tharaud have been pushing tasters of his upcoming four hands album. This week it was the single with Vikingur Olafsson, some Grieg. This album is absolutely worth your time. There is also a brilliant single with Bruce Liu with one of the Hungarian dances. Definitely worth following Alexandre Tharaud’s instagram to keep an eye out for this. The man is criminally under-rated internationally.
Another interesting recording which hasn’t actually been made yet but which is in the pipeline is Medtner No 1 with the Belgian National Orchestra, soloist Florian Noack. As I speak, he should be in Lyon ready to play it; I heard it in Brussels Bozar last night. It was mesmerising. Noack I have been aware of for his transcriptions so assumed I should get to see him sooner or later once I relocated to Brussels. Here I am and yes I did. The performance last night was fantastic, and you can listen to it on Musiq3 here for about the next year if you want.
That being said, the record of the year is still looking to be Trifonov and Babayan but who knows how it will turn out.
I didn’t practice at all for the last days. It’s the longest I’ve gone without sitting at the piano since sometime in December, and I’d like to say I have good reasons. But “good” is subjective.
On the plus side, I did buy a tripod for the camera, and some sort of a mic which will probably struggle with the sound of a piano. I did that 7 days ago.
For myself, I’m sorry. I’ve been tired, and I’ve been getting home late from work. And I’ve been wondering what the point is about this and a lot of other things. I’m tired of online discussions about the piano – many of them seem to be either far too superficial (Is this piece of Rach too hard for me; I can’t sightread) or too deep.
I’m tired of YouTube. It’s got fantastic stuff hidden away but what it is pushing is utter crap about self improvement. I’m wondering if it is worth the monthly subscription I spend. It probably is because instagram’s sponsored posts are running at around 2/3rds of what they push to me. It certainly isn’t what I have followed.
I’m very close to being ready to submit the Grade 6. I have no idea how that will go either because I made the bad mistake of reading piano teachers asking if it was really necessary to comply with the instructions of ABRSM around being able to see the pedal – I’m sorry but I am not a piano teacher, I don’t have one, but I really cannot see why you’d even ask this question? ABRSM went to the trouble of recording a video for you.
So I need to go back to practice and see how that goes. I had started June by Tchaikovsky (although one of his nocturnes is around distracting me at the moment – I need to check if it is in any of the music books I own. Could be.
I will get to the piano shortly – I will set up the tripod then and we might see abut a youtube video later. Anyway. Have a good week. I have a couple of other pieces to write so this practice failure on my part might not be very noticeable to my 1 or 2 readers.