Hi Casinitaly,
I am still working on Lilla. I had to work so hard on the last two Alfred pieces that it dropped from my practice routine for awhile. My husband "requests" it though. By far, his favorite piece I have ever played. I was touched that my teacher chose a book of "flowing romantic music" for one of my work collections, largely because she saw my excitement in playing Lilla. So, my pieces are those I mentioned plus Lilla. I don't have a lesson again until the 14th of June. Lots of time to work on all 4 pieces!!!!!

Got assigned 2 new pieces at my lesson yesterday (in addition to the two from last week that I'm working on. For those familiar with the Suzuki method books, I'm in Book 3 and working on the four small pieces in between the Kuhlau (op. 55 no. 1) and Clementi (op. 36 no. 3) sonatinas. The conservatory goes into hiatus in mid-June, but I hope to be able to get these little pieces cleaned up by fall and get that last sonatina in the bag by Christmas, along with the nasty little Bartok thing that was added in the new edition of the method. Then it's on to book 4 with lots of Mozart and some more Bach!

Thought I'd never get the Kuhlau sorted out, but it seemed to come together overnight. The Allegro movement still gives me some problems from time to time, but the Vivace is solid. Lesson learned: keep on keeping on.

I finished the ending to Mozart's Fantasy 3 in D minor (the ending is actually in D major...) in the last few days, and I'm playing in a school concert tomorrow. I'll record it soon.

Glasslove - I'm so glad you are continuing with Lilla! I use it as my warm up and my concluding piece for most of my sessions I am getting to play it without errors much more consistently now which is lovely (and my husband is still humming it all the time

Thumper: I'm not familiar with the Kuhlau- one of the things I love about this forum is being educated on so much new material!!!. Yesterday I bought the booklet for Clementi Op. 36, which contains 6 Sonatine. I'm working on the first, but all of them look like great fun!

Lunatic: Congrats on getting your Mozart wrapped up! and "in bocca al lupo" for your concert. (That's the Italian equivalent for "break a leg". "In the mouth of the wolf" - and the reply from the performer should be "crepi"..."he will die" )

I managed to finish my recordings for the Schumann e-cital. Hooray!!!

Time for a break and work on some new stuff.

Memorized 10 bars of Mozart K545 in a few play throughs compared to taking days with some of the rest of it. Partly it's because I'm starting to "get" the piece so the flow makes sense.

HomeInMyShoes - I hadn't realized that there WAS a Schumann e-cital! lol.... What a sense of accomplishment you must have! Now we can look forward to listening to you ! that will be a treat!

Andy Plat - now that is very exciting - seeing that your learning curve is not so steep, I'm delighted for you!

^I'm looking forward to all the recordings in the Schumann e-cital. The whole Kinderszenen is covered which is great. I think Peyton has four entries for the e-cital as well. It's nice that everyone can submit whatever and duplicates are accepted so we'll get to hear a few versions of some pieces which I always like.

I'd start on some of A Charlie Brown Christmas, but the shrubs haven't even flowered out front yet so it's definitely too early.

I'm interested in the CB Christmas too, but as you say.... it is just too darn early!

I had my piano lesson yesterday and my teacher complimented me on my memorization work

I also played 2 duets with my little buddy (Alessandro, he's six years old). We're going to perform together in a little recital in June.

Nice to find this self pat-on-the back thread. We all need talk about our personal achievements. At times our "non musical" friends, family members, etc. don't always understand when we say "I got it, finally, or it took me forever to learn....."

My achievement of the year, let alone the week, was taking part in my 2nd ever recital. Wow, what difference from last year's disaster! I played Guantanamera, Those Were the Days from Alfred's bk.2, & the primo part of a duet arrangement of Songs My Mother Taught Me by Dvorak as arranged by Chester Wallis. All in all I played well, 1 minor error in Those ....Days. The duet was fantastic, to the point that I'm looking forward to playing another one with the same partner. I was completely overwhelmed with the ovation & praise I/we received from the audience. I'm looking forward to next year's recital.

Now, if only I can get my fingers up to a nice fast speed for the Hungarian Rhapsody, then I will have achieved this week's goal.
__________________________________________________
Working on secondo part of Songs My Mother Taught Me;
Light and Blue

Ciao 2picky4most - what a great success story! I'm listening to Songs My Mother Taught Me as I type this - what a lovely piece! Gentle, slightly melancholy, something to stir the heartstrings. It sounds pretty challenging to my ear! Complimenti on getting through all your pieces with only 1 error! I'm happy if I can get through 1 piece without an error so far. If I make it through without any (a rare treat), I'm leaping with joy!

How exciting too, to play in a duet!
I think the Hungarian Rhapsody will be the icing on your cake eh?

My achievement of the week was accidental -
I uploaded some pieces to www.box.net for sharing, and then I was goofing around on my phone (which has internet access) to see if I could play them from the phone, and I ended up downloading one - so I made it my ring tong! I now have Verde Smeraldo by Remo Vinciguerra to charm me when someone calls

What got me excited is that although I'm learning this ragtime piece in my signature for a 3 months time already I'm making progress. Things that I found impossible I'm playing at fast tempo already, I'm witness of "the miracle of practice".

What get me frustrated is "gee I'm playing the same piece every day for 3 months"!!!!!! And the final measures of the 3rd section is far harder than the rest, tricky piece...

I'm really excited to see this thread still going strong!! It's a great reminder for me to focus on the positive and so fun to see all the great achievements posted here. On that note, I had a really good lesson this week. My piano teacher finally felt I had mastered two pieces, both of which I have been working on for a few months. I will be starting something new for this week. I'm really quite excited about that.

Thanks again Casinitaly for starting this thread, you're the greatest!

AK

I second AlleyKatt's opinion, you are indeed the greatest Casinitaly!!
My accomplishment of the week is that I reliably played my Alexander piece today with no mistakes. Now I need to breathe some feeling into it (my teacher wants me to use the pieces in the collection to develop my expression). I have been flying solo for a couple of weeks, so I don't have a sense as to whether or not I am playing it properly, with expression (I don't have another lesson until the 14th).
My Oscar Peterson book came today. I worked on exercise # 1 and the minuet. I was a little disappointed that Minuet # 1 isn't remotely jazzy. The end of the book looks scary! Kinda like the end of the Alfred's all-in-one Level one book used to look
And.....one of my Greek friends found a collection of Hajidakis Piano solos for me. It is in the mail as I write. He is one of my husband's favorite composers. I will work on a piece for his birthday!!!!

So I'm not sure if this count count as my achievement of the week - but it did make me feel good. I'm learning Chopin's Prelude No. 7 (Opus 28) and starting to get it flowing a bit better. Anyway, I was listening to BBC's Lunchtime Concert and, lo and behold, there's the piece I'm learning being played. Actually he played all 24 preludes but the fact that I can play one of them is enough for me

I'm really thrilled that people are still writing here too - I think we all want to dance with joy sometimes and by focusing on those moments we will see our little stumbling blocks as just that ..little problems that we are dealing with.

Al-mahed - Ragtime! Now that is great fun! You must feel great seeing your 3 months of hard work paying off! 3 cheers for you!

AlleyCat - isn't that satisfying? You'll have to let us know what your new pieces are!

Glasslove - no mistakes! Yipee! I'm still hit and miss, more than I'd like, but slowly slowly improving. I'm really getting a new appreciation for the word "focus". Don't be disappointed in Oscar - the minuets (that I've tried so far) aren't jazzy -but even as early as exercise five you're getting into boogie woogie patterns - hang in there.
How cool you are getting Hajidakis music from a friend! I have a buddy in Memphis who sends me all kinds of stuff - I'm getting a "shipment" soon via family who are coming for a visit!

Andy Platt - Chopin! I haven't really done any Chopin yet, but he's on my "really want to do" list! Isn't it a special thrill when you hear something from your personal repertoire being played?


I think we're all doing splendidly! We're the greatest!

I've got the first movement of my Clementi memorized.
Whew.
Now.... where to start with the improvements .... there are just a few I could make (working on the art of understatement here )

*sigh* Improvements are hard to come by more and more frequently. I had to finally man up and drop from the rotation a couple of pieces I just couldn't get my fingers wrapped around properly, and a third is dangling precipitously close to being sent to the farm team. I'll let the two haunt me in my dreams for a bit and try again another time.

And then today I *finally* had a chunk of alone time to record video on my upright. It went exceedingly well and I recorded 3 pieces that have been simmering for some time until I could get a chance to record. Tonight I discovered that the company logo shirt I was wearing was extremely visible as it was reflected by my shiny new piano (corporate would sue my butt to oblivion if I gave the impression that they were somehow sponsoring my bumbling on the piano (not really)).

Next time I'll have to remember to wear my official Star Trek logo red-shirt as proof of my galactic employment with Starfleet Command.

On a positive note, I did start on another piece this week that seems to be going well (Clementi 36, 2), and my 5 year old son has been making some great progress under my direction in between his beginner group class and private lessons.


Sometimes it feels like learning piano is self abuse, but most of the time it's absolutely enjoyable. It's a good thing I'm addicted to learning piano, or I would have quit a while ago.

I love Clementi 36,2! I'm planning to work that up on my own over the summer when my teacher is on holidays -- it would make a nice surprise for her when lessons start up again in September. Either that, or a nasty surprise if I mess it up. I'll be starting the first movement of 36,3 as part of my regular program in the fall.

My achievement for the week is to have made some progress on my four assigned pieces. Does anyone besides me feel like a total dork having to play Beethoven's Ecossaise K. WoO23. I can`t hear it without recalling the Monty Python skit about the Fish Slapping Dance.

I've finally gotten the coda of Chopin's first Ballade fluent. So in a couple days I'll probably be able to go back to the music I was before studying. I had to finish the ballade so I could perform it at a small engagement.

So now back to the hellish but fun Godowsky Sonata.

*sigh* Godowsky just had to one of the most beautiful romantic melodies right between between 19 other minutes of technical and interpretational hell.

I really like all of Clementi's Op. 36. I would love to be able to work through all it, but I always get distracted with other stuff.

So much to learn and play, so little time.

Good luck with #2!

When I arrived for my lesson last week my teacher was playing this. I was a little surprised (usually she's rattling off some Rachmaninov prelude). There was no fish slapping when she played it but when I do - perhaps a little!

I ordered Alfred's Greatest Hits #1 and #2, the finger exercises for Alfred and the All Time Favorites for Alfred! Anxious for them to arrive!!!!!

I'm just excited about learning piano every single day!!!!

Nancy

You know, I'm a Monty Python fan, but I doubt I'd have remembered the tune to the Fish Slapping Dance!

Here's another exciting bit that is a bit different.... My piano teacher wants to learn English, and as I'm an ESL teacher....we're going to swap lessons! How cool is that?

I already have some great ideas on how to get her started studying English with the theme of music! What fun we will have!

Cas, that's so cool!! For a while, I taught a Japanese businessman who listened to jazz & played trumpet in his spare time (what little time he had, considering his job!). But I found lots of articles, etc that I could adapt.

That sounds like fun Carol! My teacher is a real beginner, I'm going to start off using the verbs Have and Be with reference to notes, measures, beats, I can work on pronouns, singular and plurals. It is going to be so much fun!

Ok, I know this is really cheeky but it is really very entertaining, and I can't resist.

My absolute "coolest" client was (about 4 -5 years ago)... the managing director of .......


La Scala in Milano.

AWESOME!!!!!!

I am so excited for my children to be on summer vacation. School is OUT on Friday.
I just downloaded two duets (4 hands) for my younger son and I to play.
My older son plays the Saxophone and I found a sax/piano duet for us too!!!
Of course, this is a cheesy accomplishment, it would be better if I were writing to say that we had mastered all three of these pieces, but the thought of pursuing them has gotten me very excited!!!!

I don't remember the exact tune, either, but that Ecossaise seems to call for fish slapping, somehow! I'm just NOT a big fan of folk dances.

Totally cool that you're able to trade lessons with your teacher! And she can say that she is learning from the person who taught the director of La Scala. Wow!

We've been very quiet about our progress lately!

I'm really pleased that this past week I have started to be able to look at my music in patterns rather than single notes. It is just the beginning - a small step -but absolutely in the right direction and it was quite a little thrill.

What are you pleased about this week?