Day 7: Performance Day!!
I didn't sleep well at all. I was so itchy and had music running through my head all night, the Brahms as well as other stuff. I think maybe it was nerves? 
[Journal] Brahms g minor piano quartet performance readiness
This might be of interest: we did a tour at the castle yesterday and they had a fortepiano that Mozart played regularly during his visits (not at this castle though)! But I took a photo because Mozart played this piano!!
Good luck with today's performance!!
I warmed up for less than an hour late this morning, and we did the run-through and it was ok. 1h20min until the concert starts and we're the last group. I'm also page-turning for the gentleman in the group before us.
Just took a small power nap after we had lunch, not really sleeping but I closed my eyes for a while. At the end of the fourth movement my heart was pounding during the run-through! So at least I don't think I will be tired during the performance, haha.
So much of the piece is in my finger memory now compared to a week ago! It's amazing, I can just play and I'm not thinking too much or struggling. The fourth movement doesn't even seem that hard anymore, which is truly mind boggling to me 
People are arriving from next week's group to listen to our final concert! I'm meeting new people and look forward to seeing my friends from last year 
It's done!! The violinist and I bombed a bunch of our entrances but the playing was very exciting and at least we all ended together!! People loved it and keep coming to congratulate me 
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Congratulations! I'm guessing you'll sleep well tonight. Would love to see a video of the performance if you find the time + hear your thoughts on these piano intensives.
Condragulations. Time to try the local drinks!
Thank you all!
@Rubens I am not a beer drinker but I was told I absolutely had to try the local beer. I said "just a little for taste" and they poured me almost a full cup haha. I was definitely tipsy!!
The coaches all came to tell me how much they loved my playing 
I told the cello coach I'm done because it's too hard and she said no, I am just starting, I have to keep playing it! Maybe I need to keep it fresh every month and then I'll finally get those two tough pages? I feel like putting it behind me but it's also a shame if I lose it by not playing it anymore!
@Ithaca I will post the performance video once I get home and on my computer where I can figure out the face blurring on YouTube again
Ithaca hear your thoughts on these piano intensives
I love it so much! I came for the first time last year and I plan to come every year (probably spring) while it exists. I met people who have been coming for 15 years or more. I'm making friends (some of whom are excellent musicians) who are passionate about chamber music, but too bad most of them live in Europe.
It really suits my personality to have a serious project where I work really hard, make it the best it can be at a coached workshop, but then also have a final ending point where I can put it behind me and not just work on it indefinitely.
I also like having something to look forward to. I was telling the organizer today that this chamber music workshop adds so much to my life
Future Plans
I was trying to decide last night if I will stress myself out to learn a challenging chamber work in 6 months. I feel like it takes me so long to learn anything new-- I mean getting it so familiar that it's in my finger memory and I don't have to think and it just "plays itself". I did learn the Schumann Piano Quintet to performance level (we didn't perform the third movement, but I learned it) in one semester in college, which seems insane! I must have practiced a lot.
The other thing is that I am sick a lot during the spring with allergies and am tired all the time. I could hardly play for months this spring which is why I felt underprepared with the Brahms.
If I play the "easy" Dvoลรกk piano quartet for next February but sign up for an Arensky trio for next July in California with my friend (we'll have to find a good cellist to make it happen, I know one in Portland but will have to see if she's interested), then I'll only have 6 months until the following February in Europe. And all the quartets and quintets that are high on my list are hard! But if I already know what I want to play, maybe I should just get a head start and start working on both Dvoลรกk quartets. Having 1.5 years of it in my brain is much better than just 6 months!
So when I go home, maybe:
- start on the Dvoลรกk quartet in D major (the easy one) using strict Dr. Molly schedule
- start on the Dvoลรกk quartet in E-flat major (the hard one) by slowly reading through it often
- run through the Beethoven cello sonatas in G minor and A major once a week. They should magically get learned if I read them enough.
I noticed when I was cramming for the Brahms that I started doing good practice techniques like actually paying attention to what I was playing instead of just reading the score and counting on my muscle memory. I would practice separate hands, pay attention to chord sequences, break large phrases into smaller groups to make it mentally easier. And I thought, why didn't I do all this earlier?! 
But hopefully I can apply these new learnings going forward!
It is really rewarding to see myself becoming a better pianist! I remember my big weakness as a teenager was that I couldn't play a convincing left hand trill. And then one day in my 20's, I could do an ok one. And now I can play a respectable left hand trill. I'm really hoping that everything will just get easier as I keep signing up for difficult works.
6 days later
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I got the recordings on my computer and listened. The video has really bad audio quality and I'm trying to merge it with the .wav file using software. I'll see if it works.
But wow, the performance was a bomb. So many missed entrances, wrong notes all over the place, it was generally terrible! After the performance I was so emotionally exhausted that I felt like I was going to collapse. The violinist said we should have recorded the rehearsal and now I have that learning for next year. I'll share it anyway, even though it's not good
I ended up using Microsoft Clipchamp and it was easy to merge the files after a bit of learning curve! I just dragged and dropped the .mov and .wav files in and then moved them both to the left to start at the beginning of both files. And then (learned this the hard way) right-clicked on the video and muted the audio for it. Then exported at 720p. Documenting this for next time!
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Workshop Final Performance (2nd & 4th Movements)
I should probably never take on a piece this hard again. We were pretty solid during rehearsal and then the violinist and I could not hold it together for the performance. Luckily this has the reputation of being the hardest of the Brahms piano quartets so the others should be less challenging!
It is really hard to get the video blurring to work. There is this bug (which YouTube hasn't fixed after it was reported years ago) where if you apply the blur to the very end of the file, it doesn't work. So you have to apply it to almost (less than a second) before the end. And automatic face blur doesn't work so I just applied a rectangle blur to our faces and truncated the video before we stood for applause. It then takes a very long time to process. But anyway, here it is:
twocats Wonderful! I am a casual listener and I'm not familiar with this piece. To my ears it flowed very well. Nothing happened to disrupt the flow of music that I could hear!
I think all four of you played very well. The passion, the intensity, the musicality were great! The strings and the piano played off of each other beautifully. As a piano player I of course focused on the piano part and I was impressed. Very well done!
Thanks for sharing your journey! It was great fun to follow your meticulous preparation at home, your travels to a far away place, rehearsal on site with your fellow musicians, and now the final performance. Thank you so much for bringing me along via this great thread!
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rogerch thank you for your kind words!! Yes, we did manage to make a good save on all the missed entrances; with chamber music you just have to keep going and thankfully you don't have to memorize!
You can't see but in the fourth movement the violin just dropped out at a place where I always have trouble with my entrance and I count off her ornaments to enter. And suddenly she wasn't there! So I entered at approximately the right place (I don't even know if it's exact, I haven't counted) but I think maybe it was one beat off and our coach (the violist) was smiling and leading and a few beats in the cellist and violinist were able to follow him and come back in at the right place. If we didn't have our coach in the group I think it would have been a lot more obvious whenever we were off.
I also enjoyed sharing with you all; it was a great exercise to have to say out loud what my problems were and my plan for them, and also to have so much support as I got ready for the final concert! I think my next journal will be far less dramatic but hopefully is a much better test of Dr. Molly's schedule
Learnings
I think my biggest learning in this piece was use of una corda pedal from the part that was explicitly marked (previously I never used it at all) and finding out when it's an appropriate place for it, and being able to play with una corda while also using the Bluetooth pedal! I also started noticing more when pros use it and I decided to use it in a spot in the fourth movement even though it wasn't explicitly marked. And thinking back to this other piece where the piano part was supposed to be an ethereal accompaniment, it now seems like such an obvious place for una corda.
I also think my practice will look different going forward, lots of slow accurate practice for the hard parts and hopefully earlier and improved identification of optimal fingerings (I changed them so much over the course of 9 months). Also actually paying attention to what I'm playing and not just essentially sight reading all the time.
This was the hardest piece I've ever learned and my playing was still so far from where I wanted it to be (I think I'm putting it away; I don't have the energy to continue with it despite the cello coach saying that I'm just at the beginning of my journey with it), but I think I'm a better pianist now and hopefully these lessons will serve me well for the future!
