16 Days Left: 2nd movement and parts of 1st movement

A lot of practice today! First I started off working on select parts of the 2nd movement (going to do 3 days in a row to follow Dr. Gebrian's schedule). I played the whole movement in the video since it's short. I'm back to doing mouth gestures because I don't have to look up to do that, but I had to decrease the sensitivity to get it not to do random page turns. For some reason winks still work on this setting and I'm finding myself doing a mix. Hoping I can get used to just doing the mouth gesture and abandon the winks.

Also with una corda the response of the piano feels different and stuff that's normally fine doesn't feel as controlled. This is very annoying.

And then I did lots of slow practice on the 1st movement. I think I've been so focused on the harder sections that I've neglected the easier ones and I really shouldn't be so sloppy. I am kind of a sloppy player; musicality has never been an issue for me but I am just not all that precise. It's not as embarrassing when I screw up on hard parts but when I keep missing notes on the easy sections? That's pretty bad. So I'm working on getting those parts to be second nature so that my fingers just know where to go and I'm not relying on semi-sight reading, which ends up being okay during practice but not when I'm "performing".

I plan to work on the 4th movement later today/tonight. I just did the yard work and am going to shower and take a break for a while. I thought I could practice all day but I'm too tired.

I practiced the 4th movement a little tonight but only because I want to work on it three days in a row and I can't practice this Wednesday. I'm really tired and it is not at the same place it was a few weeks ago. I did not bother to make a video but I'll do one tomorrow.

It's hard and I'm not playing it up to speed and I don't have confidence at all that it will be ready in two weeks. Hopefully tomorrow it'll be recovered from the recesses of my brain and will be better.

I haven't played much chamber music so I don't remember, is it very difficult to "cheat" your way through the piece? (Keep the salient melodies clean and improvise the other parts while staying in the accurate harmony)?

    Rubens haha me, improvise?? But I could cheat little things for sure. No one would care because it's just an amateur workshop. I might do that if some parts get too tricky, but the 4th movement would still be very/too hard. And it's so against my nature not to try to play what's on the page!

        twocats
        I see!
        I'd think that with such short notice it'd be easier to start with an approximate but still viable version of the piece (as in playable with the other musicians already) and then refine it gradually. That's what I did whenever a pretty soprano would ask me to accompany her for an upcoming recital on short notice. But maybe with chamber music it's better to just jump in and try to learn all the notes properly from the get-go. I don't want to corrupt you! (Nevermind my horns and tail!)

            Rubens I think accompaniment is different! In that case you're not an equal voice, you just have to support the other person and help them to shine.

            But with chamber music it would be like you decided to rewrite Chopin and take out some notes because there are too many. I mean, if there's a spot that's always a disaster I might cheat , but I don't like doing it 😂

            I am so exhausted and my husband said I need to take a mental break as well as a physical break. Maybe piano is not in the cards for me today.

            If the 4th movement ends up being a bit of a disaster, it just means that I got in over my head and we won't choose to play it at the final concert. I'll be a little disappointed in myself but it'll be ok. Last summer it was pretty clear that I took it a lot more seriously than everyone else and people were teasing me for practicing all the time!

                twocats
                Don't despair! It seems to be a low stakes affair anyway!
                Speaking of low stakes, I remember a teacher friend of mine who organized a year-end concert for her little students and wanted to play a rather challenging ragtime at that concert. As the concert day approached she felt too nervous about it, so we came up with a brilliant idea: play it together, as a four-hands piece! Preparing it was a breeze, and we played it, at breakneck speed! Instant success, the audience was impressed 🤣. I don't think you'll be able to do this with the Brahms though😅.

                    Rubens thank you! I'm too tired to despair 😂 I did put almost a year of work into it and the travel costs are a lot, so I do want to get the most possible out of the experience. Most of the participants don't live so far so it's not a big deal for them to attend.

                    My sister and I sight read when we meet up and we each take a hand. It sure makes it a lot easier! 🙂

                      14 Days Left: 1st & 4th movements

                      I am so, so exhausted today. I tried to sleep in but my stupid cat decided that today is an early alarm day. I felt like I could hardly even keep my eyes open, but I forced myself to practice.

                      This was Day 3 of alternating days of the 1st movement so I had to work on it, and then I'll take a week's break before coming back to it if I'm brave enough to stay away that long.

                      And then I worked on the 4th movement and it's magically better than when I last worked on it maybe 2 weeks ago! At the time I had taken a long break on the 1st movement and then come back to it. Now it's time to switch. I think I may cheat slightly on some little parts, plus on the fast parallel hands I tend to just drop out the left hand (my weak hand) and rely on the right if my LH can't keep up. I feel a lot more confident that it will be ready!

                      Today I did a lot of work on transitions between sections, especially in the fast section where there's a repeat and I have to do a different fingering the two times because of what happens next, so it can be confusing.

                      Who hears the "Shostakovich bit" and loves it?? Also if I can play the Molto Presto at the end really fast it'll be amazing. Last year for the Dvorak we only did it once during rehearsal but our coach was like "go go go!!" and we went! It was like we were racing down a hill and it was amazing!! We sounded like professionals (I hit all the notes right) and I have seriously never had so much fun playing before!! We never mustered up the courage and energy to accelerate like that again though, with our limited practice time. The Brahms is harder to play fast at the end, the Dvorak only had two bars of "pray for it" sections in the right hand with really fast octave jumps and there's more going on here but it feels achievable.

                      Also I think I never mentioned before but I have hyperhidrosis (genetically sweaty hands and feet), so they are either very wet or very dry. If dry but one of them starts to sweat then it's over, they're wet. I actually got used to having that little bit of extra traction with damp hands and I prefer that to dry. And thank goodness it's better than it was when I was a kid, and sweat would literally drip off my palms. So unpleasant and embarrassing!! But anyway, that's why I always have a dishcloth in my hands.

                        twocats
                        Did you talk to your doctor about your hyperhidrosis? Maybe there is a medication that could be tried. Maybe.

                            Rubens when I was in high school my mom sent me to a woman I call "the electrocution lady". She put electrodes on my temples and zapped me; it was supposed to improve my eyesight but I was way too near-sighted for it to make any difference.

                            But she suggested soaking my hands and feet in hot vinegar, so my mom made me do that. It shrank all my sweat glands so I couldn't have sweated even if I tried. And I stank of vinegar. It was horrible.

                            Honestly I'm used to it now and I actually like the feel of slightly moist hands now (and my aunt who had it told me it would get better as I got older, which thankfully has turned out to be true!). I'm not interested in anything that's going to dry out my hands excessively, either.

                            Someone once told me I could get Botox for it, haha.

                                twocats
                                Hahaha! Vinegar is nasty!
                                You could try isopropyl alcohol. I like its aroma much more than vinegar, but I'm strange.

                                    Rubens I just don't really care about it anymore 🙂 But it was definitely a source of stress and embarrassment for me when I was a teenager!

                                      12 Days Left: 2nd & 4th movements

                                      I took yesterday off. I am finally feeling rested and it made all the difference in the world toward seeing progress during my practice! The 2nd movement is almost ready and the 4th is coming along surprisingly well. I may actually be prepared by the time we leave 😃

                                      Split screen (thanks @Sgisela!) has been extremely helpful in practicing some of the page turn transitions.

                                      Still struggling with the long sections of una corda in the 2nd movement and feeling like I don't have control on my piano, possibly because of heavy hammers. The face gestures are going well in general. I really like not having an extra device to worry about!

                                      The 4th movement is coming along better than I'd ever expected. I had been practicing it for several hours by the time I made a video and it was less clean than it was in the fast runs partly due to tired hands/wrists. I noted at the beginning of the video that the iPad does not capture dynamic range so the forte and fortissimos sound pretty much like piano, so pretend that I'm playing very loudly and intensely, because I am! When I started this piece I had been worried that the 4th movement would "make my hands fall off" but it's surprisingly ok. Parts of it would definitely be easier if my hands were just slightly bigger though... 😭 I think by the time I leave I will be about to play a satisfying Molto Presto at the end.

                                      Wow, side benefit to making these recordings is that I listened and realized I need to change up my pedaling in places! And there are some other things I noticed that I want to do a little differently.

                                      A little horrified at just how many times I made a mistake or stopped during the 4th movement. I can get a lot done in 11 days though. I am very highly motivated right now!! 😂

                                      But my cadenza in the 4th movement was pretty amazing! It's not hard but I had to learn the note sequences. Plus the plain scale runs (aside from a false start) were solid. I hope I don't get tripped up later.

                                      11 Days Left: 3rd movement

                                      It's been an exhausting day but since I am running out of time I forced myself to practice the 3rd movement. I had put it on hold for a while and I completely forgot that there are hard parts and was very unpleasantly surprised at how hard they still are.

                                      Oh also the face gestures were all over the place today, to the point where I was getting mad because it kept flipping the pages when I didn't want them to! Maybe tired face looks like a gesture? Yawns trigger a page turn.

                                      Anyway, the practice was not good, the video was not good, I'm going to sleep early and practice more tomorrow. I hope putting in a couple of hours today will help. I also find that after a break you need to play it once or twice to retrieve it from long-term storage. Hopefully that will happen by tomorrow.

                                      Pallas awwwww thank you! But the dedication is 99% due to the impending deadline 😂

                                        10 Days Left: 3rd movement

                                        The cramming continues, but I actually have energy and focus today! 😃

                                        The 3rd movement is coming along, still needs work on getting some parts "under my fingers" but I think a couple more days of very focused (and rested) practice on the trouble spots may do the trick. Unfortunately I also have three other movements to worry about and only about a week of practice remaining. Panic panic! I may skip my exercise classes this week to practice instead, since they take up so much energy.

                                        I am giving up on face gestures because not only does it sometimes not flip when I want it to flip, but will also randomly flip and I have no idea what's triggering it! Back to the good old reliable foot pedal.

                                        I have plans this evening but when I come home maybe I'll do some quiet practice on the trouble spots just to give it another session to get in my brain.

                                        I practiced for two hours very quietly after I got home, because it was already 10pm and now it's midnight. I worked on the 3rd movement with lots of repeated practice on any spots that have been giving me trouble (which hopefully will ferment in my brain tonight) and then went back to the 1st movement, which had already magically improved from when I last practiced it.

                                        There are so many tricky parts that I had focused on all these months while pretty much sight reading the easier parts, which meant that they always got sloppy the minute I hit record. Today I practiced every single note with intent.

                                        I think it's going to be acceptable by the time I go but none of the movements are feeling great. The Dvorak quintet was in excellent shape last year both technically and musically; the 4th movement was weaker but still ready and I could be proud of how I played the rest. The Brahms doesn't feel remotely close to that. Well, this quartet is famously difficult and it was a bucket list piece! All I can do is see how much better I can get it in the next week. Maybe all this late night desperation will pay off 😂

                                        9 Days Left: 3rd movement

                                        Single digit days left 😭😭😭 I have never felt so desperate and unprepared for a piano deadline before.

                                        But I'm really glad I practiced late last night because I see progress. There are a couple of pages that need more memorization to play fluently and then a few spots here and there but I think the 3rd movement is going to be ok. I'll take a little break from it for the next few days to focus on the other movements.

                                        Back to working on the 2nd movement before I have an appointment.