I made a single video of all 4 movements. The recording volume is a little low. But there are so many wrong notes that it's kinda humiliating and I'm thinking of redoing it. At least I wouldn't be going in cold and not warmed up.

2 Days Left: the whole thing!!

This is my final video for this journal, recorded on a Zoom Q8 Handy Recorder. I couldn't believe that in the first take the hardest part of the 1st movement was spot on! Of course it wasn't repeatable. And the 4th movement final page Molto Presto was better the first time around (but far from perfect) but I'm going to blame the second time around on being tired. I played the entire 4th movement faster AND more accurately the first time around! Oh well. The nice thing about doing the video twice was that I positioned the recorder more to the right the second time around and the sound is much better.

Thoughts:

  • 1st movement: the second-to-last page is still not solid despite tons of practice and it not being hard, and every time I'm there I panic and wondering where my fingers should go. I need to practice it more tomorrow and attempt to semi-memorize. Also should refresh those big chord jumps that I've been working hard on memorizing.
  • 2nd movement: I think it was acceptable. I'll leave it alone for now.
  • 3rd movement: Ouch. The first half is good, the second half has a lot of mess from me not being comfortable enough with the notes. Tomorrow I will focus on the last few pages and hopefully next week they will magically be better.
  • 4th movement: Today my left hand could not keep up with my right hand at all for the runs (for both takes). I think I've put a lot of work in this past week and will just let my brain do its thing over the next week. If I overdo it I might actually injure myself, as my wrists have been tired for days. This movement is clearly beyond my ability and I'm just faking my way through it...

I don't want to work on anything this hard for a while! For the next 6 months I'm taking it easy with my piano projects and if all goes to plan I can sign up for something more challenging the following year, but not as hard as this. It was one of my bucket list pieces but I was in over my head. At least I tried, though 🙂

    For what it's worth, I'm very proud of you 🐱🐱! You can now consider the piece as learned. Mastery is another thing, but you have to leave something for teachers to teach you anyway. And it's a big, big piece. But here's a trick. Since you're twocats, just think of it as a big piece of catnip, and you'll be fine🤣.

      Rubens thank you!! I did do my best, although most of the effort was heavily weighted to the end. I have to say that the progress from 3.5 weeks ago has been really great, though!

      My piano needs voicing so badly 😭 I'm glad that once my tech comes right after I return, he's going to voice the whole thing and then I won't be playing such "abusive" pieces so it should last a while.

        1 Day Left: Nothing haha!

        I was intending to practice the 1st and 3rd movements today but I still have to finish packing and I feel burned out and may also be on the road to injury. I'll only have access to a piano again next Sunday, so almost a week of break. It will be good to have the time off and I can still study the score in the evenings and try to improve my memorization that way. I'm not sure if it'll work but I can try!

        I may post some more videos during my practice at the workshop if it makes sense (fingers crossed for magical improvement after the week off!). My favorite practice room has an old Bösendorfer, and the final concert will be on a small August Förster that is generally quite easy to play.

        I'm not sharing the specific location of the program for privacy reasons, but we're going to Europe! It's a long trip from the West Coast and I also need time to recover from jetlag-- I don't want to play horribly just because I'm tired. It'll be my husband's first time in Europe so it's very exciting 🙂

        Talk to you all on the flip side!

          Europe, get ready for double-cat-mania! They won't know what hit them.

          twocats I hope you and Mr. twocats have a great trip! Can’t wait to hear about it later!

          Yamaha C5X

            Have a good time in Europe!!

            Thank you, all! The taxi comes in a few hours and it finally feels real. I'm gonna miss my cats! There are actually three of them now (three different cats from when I first chose my username almost a decade ago). Two of them spend a lot of time with us and I hope they will be ok.

            I have muscle aches in my fingers which means I probably overdid it a couple of days back. I also woke up with the absolute conviction that studying the score will improve all the bits that aren't solid because I just don't know the notes well enough. So the cramming can continue even if I don't have a piano 🙂

            All the best! Have fun!

            Good morning!
            I don't know where you are in Europe, and you don't have to tell that of course, but you might want to check the weather forecast for this evening/night. For some parts of Europe there is a risk for severe weather.

              Josephine thank you, we've been experiencing some heat but our current hotel has AC. Tonight we won't 😭

                We don't have airco at home, so I'm glad the temperature dropped since yesterday where I live.

                The area I'm talking about regarding the severe weather is E-France into Germany and NW Switzerland.

                  Josephine thankfully we're not affected by anything dangerous, just extremely uncomfortable!

                    Oh, I always forget the likes, and now you said it's uncomfortable I like your post, oops 😅

                    Have a nice day!

                    We arrived at the workshop town today! It's so hot here but thankfully it'll cool down by Monday. I studied the score on the plane on the way to Europe but we've otherwise been too busy and tired for me to even think about it.

                    Tomorrow we start the workshop and thankfully I'm in the afternoon group so I'll have some time to practice in the morning. My hands seem to have recovered from last week. I get a 75 minute piano lesson on Monday! It's such a nice thing that they do for the pianists because the coaches are all string players. I heard that the guy is super nice and people get a lot out of the lesson. Last year it was with a different woman because the poor guy had broken his hand (??) and I had a great lesson with her. I just hope we're able to cover a lot because the Brahms is such a huge work!