Favor - would anyone care to play this, and post (or PM me) a recording?
just took it to the piano to see what I can find and scribbled in some notes which might not be helpful. I don't know what you / your teacher back then, did with it. Anyway, these are my scribbles.
What I see is a main 8-measure section that goes the traditional 4 bars + 4 bars in a call-answer kind of way. This part keeps coming back and I colour coded it. So you have Theme (something) Theme (something else) Theme (end).
If you are used to more diatonic music with more predictable patterns then some of the chord qualities and dissonances might be throwing you, and sound wrong to you. To me it's lake walking through a strange woods, and the colours and scenery keep changing. You get dissonances that resolve, like a muddy brown unfolds into a clear yellow and then turn green as blue drips into the yellow.
I looked at the section starting m. 13 transcribed here:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/9nqr8bw5b0scyl0h6nv5z/25.01.02a-excerpt.pdf?rlkey=7mkzas2gevf8lm9hgho5787ca&st=oefjdec1&dl=0
This part was kind of odd and I wondered if that might have some of the problems in it. The very first chord is quite dissonant. Then we have a chord with G# and that G# appears again at an Ab and suddenly there's a Bb7 out of nowhere: but it doesn't go to Eb; instead it slips to D7, which doesn't go to G, instead it slides into E7b9 with an odd melody in the RH and finally gets predictable going A7 to D. The odd RH melody has the notes of a dim7.
Playing it. I did m. 1 again and put it in separately in front, wondering if the first chord shouldn't linger a bit to dissolve the dissonance of the G going against the RH chord notes.
I should be able to give it a try today.
- Edited
Ithaca I see you have a Db for the chord beginning on the 2nd beat - is that an error, or what you think it should be? (I have that chord as D/G/B)
That's a mistake in my transcription. I'm still learning to use Dorico and am used to writing music by hand with a pencil. I have no idea how the Db got in there.
I also slipped up in measure numbers. That was sloppy of me, and makes conversation about the piece complicated. I'll fix that. 
Ithaca The following four measures (your m.14-17) I quite like, and bleeding over from the last note of your m.17 (an A) to that C#->D/G is perhaps the only time the C#->D/G combo sort of makes sense to me. The way you play it - much less heavily - makes it much better, so I imagine that is part of my problem - bad execution.
That part starts with problem no. 3 in the list that popped up after I did it. The G under the RH F# chord (call it F#/G?) really stuck out for me, like it did for you and that's when I decided to go with that section. What you said about the blurring into the next measure made me look at what I did:
One thing I didn't do was to follow the pedal marks. Where the score has us pedal three times, I pedaled only once or twice to allow the notes to blur in. It's something I was taught that I'm still learning to do: use the pedal to shade your notes and decide how much shading you want - how wet or dry you want it to be. I didn't consciously decide to blend into the next measure but did. Looking at the score, it looks like their pedal lifts into beat 1 of the next measure as well. What I "see" here is blending into the C# but then make the GD, which are the main notes, crystal clear by removing the blur (new pedal).
Some thoughts are forming but indistinct. Like, if you were taught to play very cleanly, and if you pedal cleanly in the manner written, might that actually take away from the shading with pedal as part of your palette? I'm absurdly seeing oil pastels, where you can smear the edge of one colour into the next one. I'm groping about here, and am also a fellow learner.
- Edited
Ithaca Photos are so easy to send here on PT, so I thought video would be the same, but apparently not.
Video hosting takes up a ton of space and bandwidth. Unfortunately, forums can't bear the cost, which is the reason why YouTube is so big and has a near monopoly.
You can sign up with an additional email account and upload unlisted videos to YouTube; that way, no one except those of us here on PianoTell can find them.
Edit: and there are tons of sites which have enough space to send a short video. Found this on Reddit -- is this what you're looking for? [Reddit source: ]
Ithaca I think you should be able to do this from your phone. If you have a YouTube account, just go to your home page, scroll down to ‘your videos,’ and press the plus button. It’s pretty intuitive from there. I always post things as ‘unlisted.’ You can also take the video down when every you want.
- Edited
Here's what I came up with.
Ithaca (1) The very 1st beat of the piece w/the gracenote (C#->D/G), which is repeated in measures 5, 17, 21, 33, 37, and 48. (keystring, if you're labeling measures, I think you're counting each of the 1st 2 measures which contain a broken chord twice, so your count will be off from mine by 0->2, depending.) I'm not playing the grace note well (I can't do them now with my left hand), but even when I tried it with my right (which can do grace notes), or skipped the grace note entirely, it still sounded wrong to me. Ponderous, heavy (though maybe that's my touch), and a bit ominous in an out-of-character way compared to the rest of the piece.
I think it needs to be a really light grace note. It makes it sound frolicky.
(2) The G# in the treble clef of the 2nd beat of measures 7, 23, and 39. It resolves in the 3rd beat, but it seems to me as if it should be held for at most an 8th note, not a quarter note - throw in the fact that the G# is the beginning of a ritardando, and IMO it really, really sticks out like a sore thumb when paired with the bass-clef D/B. I can make the measure make sense to me if I hold the F# for 1.5 beats and make the G# an 8th (no longer than the B and A# that follow it), but as I'm playing it, my soul feels rumpled. Granted: I'm playing this at half speed, so I'm hearing it more, but even when I speed up, it seems to me that the issue is that the relative time value of the G# is just too long compared to the notes around it.
I see the F# G# B A# B as a secondary melody. It actually resolves kind of nicely.
(3) The C#F#A# chord in the treble + G in the bass of measures 12 and 44. I don't hear it as resolving at all - it reads completely like a mistake to me. Musically, I just don't understand it.
It essentially functions as a suspension. The F# major chord is present in the previous measure - imagine you don't actually play the F# major chord in m12 but just let the one from the previous measure continue to ring (or try playing it that way).
ranjit I think it needs to be a really light grace note. It makes it sound frolicky.
I would play it that way if I could! 
But - question - is "a really light grace note" how you played it? I don't think I'm used to hearing grace notes in the bass, and I'm having a hard time imagining what that should sound like. Yours is obviously much lighter than mine, but I don't know that I'd call it light - but maybe that's b/c I'm comparing it to grace notes in the treble.
I'll have to think about your last two points - there's something about the piece that I'm just not getting/hearing. I tried playing this again this afternoon, and both times in the phrases that have that G# (so my issue (2)), I feel like I'm just wandering around totally lost.
Anyhow, thanks for having a look at this, and taking the time to make the recording and post your thoughts. I appreciate it!
- Edited
Ithaca But - question - is "a really light grace note" how you played it? I don't think I'm used to hearing grace notes in the bass, and I'm having a hard time imagining what that should sound like. Yours is obviously much lighter than mine, but I don't know that I'd call it light
It can be a bit hard to describe it in words, but I think about as light as I played it or even lighter would be what I would aim for.
Edit: Also, since the dynamic was already piano, the grace note couldn't be that much softer. Make sure it doesn't sound louder than the chord, though.
- Edited
I enjoyed hearing the playing by both of you. Ithaca, my instinct listening to yours reminds me of something I learned, which is to first create a solid framework and as a next step to start tweaking it, pulling here, pushing there, but the framework holds it all together. Like, you've created a first base to build on.
Ofc the challenge in these kinds of things for any of us is what we are capable of doing at a given moment in time. There are loads of things I perceive in music presently that I cannot quite execute yet, and then I have to wait until I can, or maybe experiment to get close to it. Or I can execute a thing but have created an aching neck because of what I did, and then it's back to the drawing board.
That grace note seems to bother you. Can you experiment with all kinds of variants to that? For example, is it a quiet grace note followed by a louder two main notes? Does the grace note have to be super quiet, or the two notes that follow, louder. I actually find it physically awkward for the grace note to be followed by two notes and I did struggle with it a bit myself. The grace note is a black key: the other two are white - so a key at a height down to two keys in the flat white valley --- "fall into" the white keys with a loose hand kind of sliding into those keys rather than the fingers "playing" those keys?
I've not had a chance to go further or go at the first page.
For the part I played yesterday, the measure just before the theme, I got a suggestion to pedal 3X as written, but to hold down the first LH D with the finger so that it sounds throughout - and if able, then do the same for C in beat 2. I tried that last night before going to bed so it's a bit crude. The first is holding the D only, the second is holding the D, and then also the C, and I like that effect.
I find this piece has a lovely, old-fashioned charm. I just ran through the first few bars:
https://whyp.it/tracks/242119/cahn-reflections-beginning?token=2f28c
In bar 7, the second voice is the most interesting one and needs to be brought out.
Ithaca The 2nd voice in m.7 - is that the lower F#, G#, B, A#? I had never thought about voices in this piece, but playing that lower line alone without either of the higher F#s makes it sound more coherent to me. I just want to make sure I’m understanding you correctly.
Yes, that's it. The right hand has two voices at this point, and only this one moves: the top voice just stays put. It's a pretty general rule: give more prominence to a moving voice than to one that just keeps repeating the same note.
So aim to make that second voice sing, while the voice above it has less weight. I imagine the second voice being sung by the altos in a choir, relishing the rare moment where their part is more interesting than the soprano part.
- Edited
I got slowed down by the voicing, because I wanted to bring out the top voice and this is where technique-wise, esp. if the RH plays 2 or 3 notes, I'm still weak and learning. I recorded the first two lines, got feedback that the bass notes giving the bassline, sometimes close to ghosted/disappeared - they should also be heard more prominently so it was back to the drawing board. That's for my own learning and growth, which most of the time involves technical weaknesses. So: pending.
MRC, I liked your recording.
MRC In bar 7, the second voice is the most interesting one and needs to be brought out.
Excellent advice, and I heard it in your recording.
- Edited
My teacher reminded me of an aspect of working from a piano score that I don't know how much it is taught. It's where you pull things out of notes - or pull out notes - that aren't written in because they can't be written in. Or the music would look too complicated if those details were added. Another factor that is that the bass line or bass note adds to the music, and the question of also bringing that out.
There were two places on the first page where because of the bass note part I played with this idea of bringing out certain notes. The first was measure 11. What if we play the F# in the RH, so that we can hold DA in the for the entire beat in the LH, making that D prominent - grab the E with the thumb? Something like this (someone with better technique might do this more delicately):
Original on left, idea on right.
In measure 12, the bass note is G and to keep it continuing, one can play G,D,G in the RH keeping the fingers down until the pedal at the top G and then release with the pedal holding those three notes you just played - it's richer.
I played it once without pedal to show what the LH is doing, then how it sounds with pedal; then putting it together.
This measure: