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!

          twocats Wow! I can comfortably play a ninth and with a lot of work I can play some tenths, but if my hands were as flexible as yours are I think the tenths would be easy. I'll have to look into hand stretching exercises!


          !<

          My hands don't have biceps either. I've got to get them to the gym!

              rogerch I did the exercises as a teenager, never did them after that but I think playing all those octaves automatically stretches my hands. It's never too late to start! 🙂

                rogerch oh I should probably explain how to actually do the hand stretching. Aside from stretching out your hand as wide as it'll go, use your other hand to spread each pair of adjacent fingers apart. It might be slightly painful but just be gentle and don't overdo it. Over time you should become more flexible!

                    twocats
                    Thanks for this tip. Before reading your post I would have said I could play a ninth. With regular hand stretching a tenth may be possible.

                      @twocats Strong looking hands. Look like they could squeeze real tight. And open foreign beer bottles. And yet still ladylike.

                        I'm really enjoying your practice sessions! It seems kind of odd to say that but there's something enjoyable about the music making process especially when you are playing great music and you have a really good approach.

                          Pathbreaker I'm really enjoying your practice sessions!

                          Thank you, and nice to have you all following along! It feels like my little project has become an online social gathering of sorts 🙂

                          I think I'm going to go back to the 1st movement today and tomorrow since I'm planning to play it at a piano gathering on Thursday. Someone suggested I just do it "Quartet Minus Three" since I said I don't have time to work up a solo piece. Hopefully hearing the same stuff over and over in the next 3 weeks doesn't get old for all of you!

                            twocats 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.

                            @Rubens I'm practicing and just realized I can also do slow 1-3 octaves! Super useful to have options for legato octaves 🙂

                                Rubens I've been doing it already, I just forgot! I realized it when I looked down, haha.

                                  21 Days Left: second half of 1st movement

                                  Better than the first recording, but I blame the continued profusion of mistakes on lack of sleep and will try much harder on an earlier bedtime starting tonight. I feel like my brain is in slow motion 🙁

                                  Trying to relax right hand more and memorize some sections where I can't read the score and hit the correct notes at the same time. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be fully rested and can focus better!

                                  20 Days Left: full 1st movement

                                  I went to bed at a reasonable hour last night and while I haven't fully recovered from the last couple of weeks, I feel alive and competent again. Today I've been trying to devise ways of making sure I don't go to bed late, including setting a bedtime alarm and setting up my phone dock outside the bedroom (a friend's suggestion).

                                  This video is less disastrous than the last few and I didn't feel very nervous with the camera watching me! I'm playing the entire first movement and the second half is noticeably better. However, I forgot how difficult the first half is (I had worked on it a lot over the past 9 months, which is why I put it away for a little while to focus on the other movements). Hopefully with a few more days of focused practice it'll be much better.

                                  Part of me is panicking because I have less than three weeks left and still so much work to get it all to performance level (and the piece is so freaking long! Recordings are ~40 minutes). But part of me feels like I'll manage to pull it together.

                                  19 Days Left: full 1st movement

                                  It's a lot better after getting another night of adequate sleep! I still don't feel fully recovered but hopefully in a few days. Sleep makes all the difference in the world for my playing, which shouldn't be surprising.

                                  I still got a little bit nervous at the recording and things that were great during my practice were suddenly not. But there was a surprise place that wasn't solid during practice and it just magically worked during the recording!

                                  I'm playing this at a casual piano thing tonight. Tomorrow I'll do more work on the first movement before getting back to the rest of the piece. I think I practiced for about an hour today.

                                  Last night's "performance" went ok. Not awful but also not great, pretty much as expected given that the first movement is not performance ready. Luckily the piano (a 1918 Steinway O) was in better regulation than I remembered from last time I was there. Turns out that my new tech has been the host's tech for a decade! The host plays well and she also seems to be pretty knowledgeable about piano maintenance. There were actually two vintage Steinway options in the room, and she has a Mason & Hamlin in storage.

                                  Today I'm going to work more on the first movement and then I'm going to do the three alternate days according to the neuroscience schedule. In between I can work on the other movements. Luckily the second movement is short (thank you Brahms for small reprieves) and there's a fast section but it's not that difficult and is just a matter of learning the notes. My biggest struggle is playing the marked una corda with using a Bluetooth page turner. I may switch to doing facial gestures, maybe I should look into a 30-day trial today? It would be nice to have one fewer battery-operated gadget to worry about.

                                    twocats My biggest struggle is playing the marked una corda with using a Bluetooth page turner. I may switch to doing facial gestures, maybe I should look into a 30-day trial today?

                                    I'll start a 30 day trial tomorrow! The program final concert is on July 7th and that should give me exactly 30 days, but I have a suspicion that I'll love face gestures and immediately abandon the Bluetooth pedal. Luckily the iPad I'm using is a 3rd generation iPad Pro 12.9" which is the first model in the lineup that started supporting face gestures (I bought the iPad used and would bummed if I had to upgrade again to try this).

                                    Also forScore Pro gives you more customer support? I couldn't figure out how to use the bookmarks like MobileSheets but ended up using flags but I can't label them. I'll look into it again but hopefully it means that they would actually respond to me.