Impromptu Thoughts

This Schubert Impromptu (Op. 90, No. 2) is tricker than I remember it being!

I first encountered it at the end of my senior year of high school. I was going to work on it the summer before college, but I ended up not taking lessons that summer, or maybe my lessons were so spotty that we didn't get far in anything. For whatever reason, I abandoned the piece before I ever started it.

When taking lessons from Deborah in the mid-2000s or so, I decided I wanted to finally do that impromptu. I'm not sure why; No. 3 in G-flat minor is my favorite. Maybe I was hungry for something scaly; I don't know. So I got as far as writing in some fingering ... but then I got another job, or I moved, or something. And, once again, the impromptu didn't happen.

Fast forward to now, and by golly, I'm going to learn that piece before I die. Third time should be the charm, right?

I started working on it in earnest this weekend--just the last dozen or so measures at the very end. And I realized, very quickly, that this piece is going to be a big challenge. Just figuring out the notes takes real effort in some places ... and I'm a pretty good sight-reader! And then there are passages that are similar to others, but just different enough that you can't let yourself coast on what you learned before.

But I'm in it for the long haul. Last night when my voice lesson was canceled, I took the free hour to (1) practice one of my songs, and (2) have a micro-practice on Schubert. I played what I'd micro-practiced yesterday, and--relief--it was still there, in my head and in my hands! So mostly I just repeated a couple of measures at a time, very slowly, to lay the tracks in my brain.

It felt so good to feel those notes under my hands: to hit the right notes, and to enjoy the sounds of the chords. Two days ago, I was struggling, picking through the notes, missing the chords, focusing, focusing, focusing. But today? They're there. Those last dozen or so measures are there.

Next micro-practice: play through those measures a couple of times, and if they're still there, move on to the preceding measure ... and do the work.

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Picking Up the Pieces

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