Tuesday, August 15

Spent 80 minutes practicing so far today, and I'm hoping I'll be able to grab another hour at the piano this evening.

Scales sound good. OK, so g# gave me some trouble, but I did a little bit of 9-8 and did a little bit of playing in rhythms, and voila! it sounded fine after that.

Arpeggios sound pretty good, too. I've always been better at scales than arpeggios ... maybe that's just the way it's supposed to be. As always, they sound good but not great to my ears.

Inversions are becoming much smoother. Triad inversions (plus the 4-note dominant seventh) are easy enough to play, but I've started playing the triads in octaves (4 notes). That makes it a little harder. The familiar focus has to shift. Sometimes the results aren't so great.

I can now play twelve and a half measures of the fugue! It doesn't sound like much, but it's a nice little chunk of music. I started with mm 25-26, then went back and worked on mm 14-15 (the two measures before the big section I've been working on for so long). Measures 25 and 26 were stubborn, but mm 14-15 didn't take long at all.

Measures 25-26: OK, here's what's going on. The RH is playing soprano and alto together. The soprano voice is bouncing along, jumping up sixths in a staccato. The alto is legato and is descending as the sixths descend. Meanwhile the LH bass is pattering out the counter-subject, which is very similar to but not exactly like something it plays a few measures earlier ... so there was the issue of remembering to play it the "new" way and not the "old" way.

Measures 14-15: Bach has mercy. Measures 14 and 15 came pretty easily. Here, the RH is doing the pattering while the LH plays a version of the subject. The alto is quiet for most of these measures, which, I'm sure, is part of why it wasn't too hard to get in my hands.

I practiced the Liszt for about 15 minutes but got tired of sitting (how's that for an excuse?). I did get to work on the first page and a half, which I have by memory. It sounds good; at this point, I'm just trying to play it smoothly and by memory. I'm sure Deborah will have many things to point out when I play it for her on Thursday. But to my ears, for now, my progress is sounding good.

Comments

robert said…

Fie, fie, Waterfall! Not the way it's supposed to be! No reason arps can't be within range of scales. Well, maybe not has fast as the scales unless one in...Pollini (or Argerich). I'm living proof!

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