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:
- 1st movement
- 2nd movement + first half of 3rd movement
- 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 🙂
