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Mostly the Polonaise-Fantaisie and the 1st Scherzo these days. Both are beginning to feel very much "there". The secret to the Scherzo turned out to be playing most of it between p and mf!


-J

The development of the 2nd mvt is VERY annoying to learn, but after you put in all those painfully long hours, it will start to kind of "play itself"..

Well, the part where the piano plays all of the nice melodies is fine, just the part that enters after that huge whirl up the keyboard including the cadenza is just ridiculous. The rest is comfortable, just requires shaping a loong loong melodic line that accompanies the woodwinds.

Are you talking about the middle section, or after the climax of the middle section, or/and after the recap, so the coda?

After the climax, when the piano plays in quick sextuplets that almost sound like trills flying around is the tricky part. The rest seems manageable...

I`m trying to get my head round some stuff I played in restaurants, and develop a unique style based not on skill, but making mistakes sound good . . . if you hit sufficient notes, some will invariably be correct.
Though maybe not in the correct order . . . .

Yes! Very annoying to learn. Take your time with it!

This week's project: tightening up Beethoven 3rd and Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Winds. Both are somewhat unpianistic in their own ways!

Piano Concerto or Violin Sonata or ? I'm kind of assuming you mean his PC and, if so, do you have a performance coming up?

Scriabin's 10th.

Much of it is readable, but there are deep mysterious pits of complexity. I just spent a half hour on a particular ten measures, mostly working out the rhythms. Yikes.

-J

I'm assuming you're talking about pg 32-34 here? I honestly hate learning those passages.. I find it such tedious work. (One of the reasons I never took a real stab at the Rach 3--lots of passages like this.) Fortunately for most of them, there is a repetitive pattern within the passages, and once you identify it, it becomes far easier to learn. Then you just practice the pattern and you have the passage, no matter where it goes on the keyboard. I think in this section, there are seven patterns, 6-7 individual beat-long breaks from the pattern (some are only a half-beat), and then a quick run at the end. Once you break it down, I think you'll find it much easier to get through.

Mendelssohn's Andante Cantabile and Presto Agitato.

Learning Chopin's 9/3. Polishing a lot of stuff.

Now that Unsung III is all done, I'm playing through stuff to see what I want to work on next.

Obvious choice, the last three of the set of 12 Esquisses by Koechlin - they were, in fact, getting fairly far along before I ditched them to concentrate on the ones I did manage to upload. There were a couple of other things I started for Unsung III but dropped - a Bacewicz etude and a gavotte by Thuille. I think I'll keep working on them.

I have been having educational fun with Rach's arrangement of the MSND Scherzo, even though it's wildly beyond my reach. For some reason, I don't know why, it is teaching me how to relax, which has been a big issue for me. So I'm practicing it every day.

The A minor P&F from WTC II - it seems doable and is interesting. I may have learn it for real.

Other things I practiced in the last couple of days - some Clementi sonata movements, some chunks of Chopin op. 22, Rach prelude in G major from op. 32, Prokofiev's "Landscape" from his 3 pieces, op. 59 and the second of his op. 54 sonatinas (more and more, I'm liking some things from the more obscure corners of his oeuvre).

Good for you. If I'm reading (into) this correctly - and calling into account my past experiences with similar pieces of difficulty - this piece will not be wildly beyond your reach for too long.

(Though I'm not sure of how to define "long." :))

prelude and fugue on a theme of Ponce.. it is fantastic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehDuUNAGZsw

especially the fugue.. pretty hard too. ok - I can't play the fugue no way, I can hardly play the prelude, but i can work on it and pretend I am a concert pianist.

pic coming soon.

Chopin's Ocean Etude
Copland's Piano Variations
Bach's Prelude and fugue No. 4 in C# minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1
Mozart's Sonata No. 17 K570

Well then, I best get back to practicing.

apple, just a quick note -- if anybody belongs in the Unsung Heroes event, it is Manuel Ponce! The compositions I've heard of his have all been written beautifully for the piano, and his conceptions sensitive and elegant.

R.Strauss-Fiorentino:Waltzes from Der Rosenkavalier
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZiaz5R7N5g

Well, for me, two categories:

Bach -- Partitas in G Maj and C Min, for a Bach Around the Clock event that MAY happen in 2013 in Madison, WI (the woman who started it left the area for greener pastures, so we'll see).

My "REALLY" contemporary program, for the 2013 Boston Amateur Competition. Several of the Boston "contingent" were in Chicago for the Chicago Amateur this past May, and I informed them of my intention to foist...uh, present this literature to my adoring public. I say REALLY contemporary, incidentally, as a reaction to the fact that at the Colorado Competition several years back, I won prizes for the best "Contemporary" selections: but these were pieces drawn from the American piano literature of 1930 - 55; i.e., now 60 - 80 years old!

First round:

John Harbison -- On an Unwritten Letter (1999)
Milton Babbitt -- The Old Order Changeth (1999)**
Paul Schoenfield -- Boogie, from Peccadillos (1997)

**In memoriam; I really have no business trying to play him!

SemiFinal round:

Augusta Read Thomas -- Fire Walts (Homage to Bartok) (2003), or
Joan Tower -- Holding a Daisy (1996)
Katherine Hoover -- Toccata (2011)
Libby Larson -- Mephisto Rag (2003), or
Judith Zaimont -- Wizards - Three Magical Masters (2004)

Final round -- really up for grabs (I'll never get that far, anyway):

Steven Paulus -- Sprightly, and Rollicking, from Five Preludes for Piano (1993)
Richard Danielpour -- Elegy, from Enchanted Garden II (2008)
and Night, from Enchanted Garden I (1993)
Lowell Liebermann -- Nocturne No 8 (2004)
Michael Torke -- Blue Pacific (2006)

I've been working heavily on these over this past year, among others written over the past 20 years or so -- but this is the final cut! Obviously, not much time for anything else, although I do plan to dust off a few more, uh, contemporary American pieces from the 30s through the 50s for next year's Unsung Heroes (if there is one, of course).