An Easy Section of the Schubert

Working backwards, I've been through several sections of the Schubert, which I outlined (a little) in some previous posts. I've been through the coda (which I found challenging) and then the E-flat minor section with all of the chromatic climbing (which I found challenging) and then the circle-of-fifths section (which I found less challenging but still challenging).

After that, I came to the E-flat major theme. Compared to what had come before? EASY. Really. It just flowed right along. All that scale work I've been doing has helped. This section is little more than running up and down on the E-flat major scale.

So this morning, it was time to move back to another ben marcato section, which is similar to what we had in the coda: marchlike, a little jarring, and generally lots of jumping around. Very different from the smooth, flowing scales of the main theme.

I was ready to dive into to a challenge. This section is in B minor, and it has lots of accidentals. So I dove in.

And it was ... easy! At least this first part was. It was just a bunch of repeating of the same thing, first on E-flat minor, and then on B minor. (Of course, if you play it forwards, it's B minor and then E-flat minor!)

Here's what I practiced this morning, starting at measure 154:

I'll admit, I was not expecting to get through 18 measures in a short 20-minute practice at 6:30 this morning. I peeked at the next few measures I'll still be working on, and it looks like there's some relatively simple repetition there, too. The tricky parts are coming, though! The challenge here is not to blow off these "easy" sections and to give them as much serious attention as I do the harder sections.

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Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

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