Hi folks! I'm calling this a "journal" because I've decided to document my next 26 days of preparation to get the Brahms g minor piano quartet ready for my chamber music workshop. This was a bucket list piece for many years and I thought it might always be beyond my ability, so it was a real challenge to myself! Now I think it's at the edge of my technical ability but that I'll be able get it performance-ready just in time with some hard work and optimized scheduling (I want to play the 4th movement at an exciting enough pace but can't do it super fast)! It's an amateur workshop with low pressure but I want to play as close to a professional level as possible.

I've been working on the piece for 9 months so far and am using a loose version of Dr. Molly Gebrian's neuroscience-based practice schedule for the final push, breaking up my practice into three big sections:

  1. 1st movement
  2. 2nd movement + first half of 3rd movement
  3. Second half of 3rd movement + 4th movement

When I started this piece it would take me hours just to play through a handful of pages, but I'm finally at the point where a lot of it is getting into my finger memory and feeling like second nature, so I'm mostly focusing on the harder parts, consistency, and gradually speeding things up. I think on my practice days I'll report back on how long I practiced and share a video of my playing at the end of the session, and it might be interesting to see how I improve!

For those not familiar with the piece, here are some videos:

Love the 1st movement of this recording but I think they take the other movements way too fast:

Really enjoy the 2nd-4th movements of this performance:

Feel free to follow along and comment if you'd like! Also I welcome critiques from anyone familiar with the piece. I never felt comfortable posting much of my playing before, especially for works in progress, but this forum is a nice place and I want to try something new!

Tomorrow I'll start journaling 🙂

    twocats I'm curious how you got involved in chamber music and if there's any 'formal' society/group in the Portland area?

        JB_PT I played my first chamber music piece in college (and bonus, got course credit for it) and have wanted to do more of it since 🙂 There was a great amateur program in Austin TX where I used to live, but unfortunately there's nothing like that here. There are only the ACMP single-day "play-ins" that happen once in a while and are run by a volunteer. Many people just show up to sight read but since pianists usually require preparation, they can schedule a group and piece(s) in advance. I only went once, met a violinist, and then we played piano-violin works together for several years. Unfortunately there aren't any chamber music workshops that look compelling to me on the West Coast and I'm actually traveling quite far for the one I signed up for... If you're interested in the ACMP play-ins, I can put you in touch with the woman who runs it to get on the mailing list!

            twocats Thanks for the info. I'm nowhere near ready for something like what you are doing; just looking to the future. It is something I'd love to try one day.

                JB_PT too bad there's nothing like the Austin program here; it was really great and had musicians of varying levels. I hope you'll get to play some chamber music someday!

                  26 Days Left: 1st movement

                  I made a video! I took it on a 1st gen iPad Pro 12.9" wedged against a futon with a pillow to get the correct angle, and the sound is pretty bad and has no dynamic range but it'll have to do since it's easy and it works.

                  I'm tired today and practiced for maybe 1-1.5 hours. I decided that for my videos I don't just want to record my playing, but I'll also talk about what I'm focusing on and what's challenging and how I'm trying to improve my playing, both technically and musically.

                  Today I worked on the second half of the first movement, and I am reminded that when the camera is on, things that were fine before start falling apart 😆

                    My first PT post!

                    I’ve been following your grand piano search & regulation threads for years, and now there is the practice journal 🙂

                    It’s nice that you have 3 string players to work with. I noticed a chamber music festival that is at Tacoma, WA. I haven’t been there though so I don’t have any first-hand experience, but maybe this is sth that you’ll be interested in?

                      Are 26 days the time you have before performance, or before the first rehearsal? If you do plan to perform, the rehearsal might take time.

                        Harpuia I’ve been following your grand piano search & regulation threads for years

                        Hi, so nice to see you here!! The piano progress felt like it would never end, and I'm sure it felt like that to the folks who were following as well 😆 The latest is that my tech may have been forced into early retirement and I found a new guy; we're working together to figure out a tuning that sounds good on my piano since my old tech is out of commission. The new guy is extremely meticulous and seems to be pretty good at voicing so once we voice down the new hammers more I think I may finally be done with the ongoing work (until it needs more due to normal use). Oh good heavens, I just realized I got the piano in 2015. It's been nine years of trying to get it fixed up!!

                        Harpuia It’s nice that you have 3 string players to work with. I noticed a chamber music festival that is at Tacoma, WA. I haven’t been there though so I don’t have any first-hand experience, but maybe this is sth that you’ll be interested in?

                        I have three string players at the workshop, but not here! I would really love to have a (good) group here but maybe it's for the best, I already had a hard enough time with my violinist friend when we disagreed on stuff (and we were mostly on the same page) and adding two more possibly opinionated people into the mix wouldn't be fun. The workshop is coached so we'll all just follow the coach's lead 🙂 Aside from having the best time there last year, I think it's a really good fit for me to work on something to a high level over a long time, but then also have the opportunity to be "done" and be able to put it away after that. Otherwise I just keep working on stuff forever. Also as you can see right now, having a deadline is very motivating.

                        Are you in the Seattle area? Unfortunately the Tacoma program looks like it's for students only. Portland actually has a very good chamber music summer festival (a series of performances); I'll miss the first two weeks but have pencilled in a bunch of performances for when I get back!

                        Harpuia Are 26 days the time you have before performance, or before the first rehearsal? If you do plan to perform, the rehearsal might take time.

                        26 days before I leave town, then the workshop is for a week. Last year we worked on one movement a day, picked one to perform, and then had 1.5 more days to work on it before the final concert (the audience is the other attendees, so it's low pressure). I feel like I have so much work ahead of me still, but the progress I see with every practice session is heartening.

                              JB_PT I don’t play chamber music… maybe some day. But one of my friends is really into amateur chamber music, and she’s on the board of the Associated Chamber Music Players and is always talking about it! It’s an amateur chamber music society. You can easily search their directory for other chamber music players near you, and gives you information about their level, etc, so you can get a sense of whether it might be a good match. They also support coaching and performance. So check it out!

                                  Sgisela Thank you! I didn't know what AMCP was but I figured I didn't really need to ask at this point. 😆 I've bookmarked the website.

                                    I'm back to practice today after three very busy days, including one where I visited my friend and played her 2-year old Yamaha C5X which I hadn't seen since she first got it. It really threw me off and I'm glad I already know that the performance piano at the workshop is easy to play! I always thought I like a deeper key dip but the C5X key dip felt very deep compared to my Bösendorfer, and the edges of the keys felt sharper. It had very little resonance compared to my piano (small room) and the keys sprung back very quickly, and I felt that it was clear and unforgiving and highlighted all my mistakes. Also, my wrists were tired after just a few minutes.

                                    I guess the light touch on my piano is why I can play for 5-6 hours without much break and not be tired! The touch response isn't what I prefer but after installing a new action and hammers from the factory and reweighting all the keys, it is very controllable and doesn't get in my way. My new tech says he specializes in key rebalancing and I was considering doing it at my next big regulation but now I think perhaps I should leave it alone unless he can somehow get it back to the touch it had from the factory, where I preferred the general feeling but the touchweights were all over the map so I always felt like I was fighting the piano.

                                    Anyway, I thought it was interesting to play my friend's piano and find it so different from mine that I struggled. And funny thing but she finds my piano unforgiving! I guess we just all get used to what we have at home.

                                    twocats Today I worked on the second half of the first movement, and I am reminded that when the camera is on, things that were fine before start falling apart 😆

                                    Getting to that stage is exceptional/outstanding already.

                                        SouthPark Getting to that stage is exceptional/outstanding already.

                                        Thank you! 🙂 It took a lot of work to get to this point but there's still a lot needed to get it performance ready, or at the minimum "play mostly the right notes at speed". But I think it is achievable in the 3+ weeks left.

                                          22 Days Left: second half of 3rd movement

                                          I practiced for maybe 3-4 hours today. Today I was supposed to work on the second half of the 3rd movement and also the 4th movement but I'll have to work on the latter tomorrow.

                                          This still needs a lot of work and then it got much worse when I was recording, but I'm sharing it warts and all. I'm also very tired and I'm not sure if my brain absorbed all that much today. Usually I see progress happening during every session and it's very motivating! I am determined to get better rest and more practice over the next few days.

                                          Also watching myself... ugh. I hate the way I look when I play! A couple of years ago I took some lessons with a guy for ergonomics; he was trained in Taubman and Alexander technique. He helped to train me out of my "floating pinkies" (pinkies sticking up when not in use) but now I see that my right hand fingers are very tense and curled upward when I'm playing chords. I think I need to make some efforts to relax them. My left hand has no problems playing in a relaxed way but my right hand always looks activated.

                                            twocats
                                            I love your video, and the way your hands move on the keyboard!
                                            I'm just curious, your hands don't look very large (I hope you can take this as a compliment 🤣). Can you reach a tenth? I'm asking because you don't seem to have much trouble playing Brahms' chords, and yet they're not made for small hands.

                                                Rubens thank you, I'm glad you don't think my playing looks terrible!

                                                My hands aren't big but thankfully they aren't tiny! I can play octaves with ease and can reach a ninth depending on the circumstance. There are a couple of places where I'm rolling a tenth chord but other than that Brahms didn't put many big chords in this piece! There are quite a lot of legato octaves though. There was a local teacher I went to briefly for help when I got obsessed with Chopin Ballade No.1 (actually the piece that started my piano upgrade journey!); she used pedal to do legato seemingly everywhere and then would do whatever was easiest for her hands. I never bought into that and think you actually need to play the melody line legato for it to sound convincing. I'm able to play a slow octave with my 1st and 4th fingers so if they're adjacent notes I do a lot of 1-5 to 1-4 to 1-5 walking so that I can keep the top note legato.

                                                I had abandon plans to play the 4th movement of the Franck violin sonata (which can stand on its own quite well without the rest of the movements) because once I started looking at it, it was filled with tenths! I started marking up the score to use my right hand to play the top notes of the left hand chords but it made it way too complicated, so I gave up 🙁 I don't know what a professional with small hands would have done, do the awkward RH substitutions? Roll everything? Skip the top note?

                                                My Polish piano teacher had us do hand stretching exercises so my hands can reach their maximum span (pic below). Also, since I'm already taking a photo, do you ever show off your piano muscles? I tell people my hands have biceps 😆

                                                    I watched the video and it's actually great that I'm recording, because now I'm seeing a lot of places where I should be playing the left hand more softly!