Last week, I wrote about how I feel stuck with Rondo alla Turca. I learned it easily; after just two or three weeks of moderate attention, I knew all the notes and could play the whole thing by memory. But Mozart being Mozart, it's not enough just to know the notes. It's not enough to be able to play them. Everything needs to be even. Everything needs to be elegant and smooth. Articulation is king. It needs to be ... something other than what I'm doing.
Progress Video #1
I hesitated to share this video because it's so bad. The left hand sounds too loud, but that may be due to the placement of my phone. Still, the repeated notes in the big octave sections sound thudding rather than brisk. And in the scale passages, I keep hearing moments where I hold one note a little too long and the next one a little too short, or vice versa. In other words, the runs lack evenness. And I don't even want to talk about the dynamics, which are virtually absent.
Now that I can play the darn piece, I need to focus on really playing it.
Therein lies the problem. Here is where I need a teacher. Because I don't know what to do beyond (1) continue with slow practice, inching the metronome up when I feel absolutely ready, and (2) listen to favorite recordings for dynamics, phrasing, and articulation, and copy what I like.
Oh, and (3) - do separate drills on scales and octaves--which I have been doing. The octave drills, in particular, have helped. It may be hard to believe, the but broken-octave section before the coda sounds eons better than it did a couple of weeks ago.
The coda, too, sounds a lot better. It's still a mess, but it's less of a mess than it was before. So many this is just a matter of needing more time, more slow practice, and more repetition.
I have a piano lesson tomorrow, and I'm really hoping Eric can suggest some drills that maybe I haven't thought of, because I do feel rather stuck.
Progress Video #2
Here is Progress Video #2 (recorded just a few minutes after Progress Video #1), where I decided to play it fast, just for fun. It felt good after weeks of slow practice, but I still slip up here and there. And, for some reason not known to me, I stopped in the middle of the second scale section. Sorry.
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