Week 3: Starting new pieces

Week 3 was the first active piano practice week of 2018. I feel I got in most of the hours I wanted, aside from Thursday. I also started working on some new material this week; then again, I realize I have not mentioned the liszt of things I'm currently working on so here goes.

• Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata - 1st movement
• Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata - 2nd movement
• Czerny Op. 299 No. 1
• Czerny Op. 299 No. 2
• Liszt - Sancta Dorothea
• Schubert - Moment Musicaux 3
• Schumann - Knecht Ruprecht

As new pieces / studies, I began working on

• Prokofiev - Tarantelle
• Czerny Op. 299 No. 3

Analysis

  I personally feel that I'm probably ready to move on from most of the pieces in the 1st bracket (although the studies I will probably keep as warm up for an extended period of time); however, I trust the judgement of my teacher in this regard and am quite likely to end up doing some polishing on quite a few of them.

  I feel like I am getting the basic antics and most of the fingering down for Tarantelle after my initial few sessions of working on it. I'm still mostly doing hands separate on that, but it is quite a fun one to play.

  Here's a short breakdown of practice time per day (does not include lessons):

Realizations and insights

    This entry is more of a log entry for me to track my progress; I will attempt to have more insights on what and where on further updates. As a big takeaway from this week, I would especially note the realization and implication of alternative fingering for the Liszt piece. I did not realize it before as it was not explicitly stated, but there is a relatively standard case of centering on the second page that I did not construe as such initially. These kind of things happen semi-automatically in a lot of pieces, especially over time when one polishes pieces, but the fact that you can consciously think about where you should be for a certain grouping at what time, it allows you to save practice time for more complicated problems.

  The specific scenario was an octave long four note arpeggiation that I could awkwardly reach and was attempting to do so. But simply by dividing it into two groups and moving hand to those positions and to next transition after, the passage became easier and less awkward (one could almost say natural) to play with the left hand; essentially removing the last technically challenging bit from the piece all together. Obviously there are more things to polish there, but all the pieces are there albeit a little crooked.

I also found a new pianist I like Vitaly Pisarenko, never heard of him before, but he plays through some Rachmaninoff quite well and all sorts of Romantic era pieces. Here's a lovely piece of expressive ravel to conclude this week's post.

Musical Moments

I have decided to reactivate myself in the writing department. I, however, also decided to concentrate on blogging about my Piano Journey and keeping other stuff to a minimum. Everyone knows how 2017 was for the world and it needs no recapitulating. However, the undeniable beauty of the arts, the satisfactory feeling of accomplishment, progressively growing skill set and sharing knowledge make for a good basis for a more uplifting blogging experience.
  I feel like I have progressed in leaps to pieces that I wouldn't have thought possible a year ago (and thensome) when I was recording Dolly is Sick. I am now (my teacher might disagree) at the brink of reaching the level I am comfortable recording for pieces such as Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata's first two movements, Schubert's Moment Musicaux 3 and Knecht Ruprecht by Schumann. Obviously there has been a bunch of other pieces I've breezed through over the year, but I want to establish - for my own record keeping - a base level defined by the pieces I am able to play to a satisfactory degree. I am still quite a way away from Rachmaninoff but solidly progressing towards it.
  Besides advancing in technical skills, I am also digesting an immense amount of theory knowledge coupled with additional realizations about technique thanks to my teacher and a few YouTubers (most notably Dr. John Mortensen). I am also living exciting times in my piano "career" for yet undisclosed reasons.
  Anyway, as future goes, I will actually be posting my practice data, insights, realizations, links to piano performances and educational videos at a rate of how striking I find either. I will be tagging all these posts with a piano tag so if it does not interest you, one could also filter those out - assuming it is possible to exclude tags.

Happy New Year, 2018!