Rondo alla Turca Progress

As I've written in this space before, I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I learned Mozart's Rondo alla Turca. When I mentioned to my piano-store friend (who is a fellow pianist) that I wanted to learn it, her eyes got big, and she said, "No! Stay away from that piece! It sounds so easy, but it is a bear! Avoid! Avoid!"

Well, maybe she didn't use those exact words, but you get the idea. Of course, I wasn't going to let her warning stop me, but it did cause me to pause and think, "OK, do I really want to learn this? Even if it takes me six months or more?"

The answer, thankfully, was "yes." And so I began to learn it ... and found that it wasn't so hard.

That's not to say there aren't hard parts. The section with the broken octaves is not easy. Keeping them balanced, both dynamically and rhythmically, is a feat I haven't yet mastered. And the scale passages are tricky. They are sounding pretty good now, but I've had to put a lot of rhythm work into them. The coda, as well, has its challenges.

When I played it this morning, at a tempo of about 100bpm, I was surprised and delighted at how good it sounds. I wish I'd recorded it, but it's summer, and the kid was still asleep, so I had to use the headphones to play. I think what surprised me is that it sounded so good, despite the fact that I haven't put a ton of work into it. I mean, I just started learning it on May 1, and I missed two weekends in a row of focused practice because I was going back and forth to North Carolina. (Which, by the way, was fine. I love my North Carolina trips!)

And then, this morning as I entered my time into my practice log, I realized something.

I've actually put 13.7 hours into this piece. That's almost two work days.

That still doesn't seem like a lot of time, but it's more than I would have thought.

Here is a video of just the first couple of sections that I made for Instagram. It's from a week or so ago, so it's slower and not as polished as I have it now. But it's all I have for the moment, so consider it very much a progress video.

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Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

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