[Journal] Brahms g minor piano quartet performance readiness
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.
9 Days Left: 2nd movement
I'm about to have my appointment but I recorded the 2nd movement right before I left and saw that it finished uploading. It's pretty good! I realized that during the una corda chords if I hold my wrists higher and have flat fingers the tone is better and more controlled.
I know what bits I have to work on and I need the Animato to be a consistent tempo (either start it slower or play the rest faster) but there aren't any really big things that I have to work on. Yay!! Now back to the 1st and 4th movements, which are the hard ones.
- Edited
@twocats
I love the series, the music, the drama, the everything.
Btw I find it quite puzzling that you feel the action of your piano is so different when playing una corda as opposed to tre corde, because all the una corda does is shift the entire action few millimeters to the right. I feel zero difference in the action on my piano,.only a difference in sound. Maybe you can describe in what way the action feels different to you? Or maybe I misunderstood and you don't feel any difference in the action.
Pallas Sending you good thoughts.
Thank you! I am not actually freaking out, I'm just being dramatic 
But I am cancelling what I can this week so that I can practice!
Rubens Btw I find it quite puzzling that you feel the action of your piano is so different when playing una corda as opposed to tre corde, because all the una corda does is shift the entire action few millimeters to the right. I feel zero difference in the action on my piano,.only a difference in sound. Maybe you can describe in what way the action feels different to you?
So maybe this story will explain it. When my tech brought back my new action and hammers from his shop, I could not play pp. I literally could not play softly; I would try and nothing would come out. He's not a very delicate player and could not replicate it. I told him I've never had this issue with any other piano. After a bunch of thought and discussion he had a theory that the hammers needed to be voiced down. After he left I realized that I could easily test the theory by closing the lid! I did that and suddenly I could play softly again!! 
What was happening was that the piano was so loud that my touch was instinctively light, so to play softly I was lightening my touch to the point that I was only playing ghost notes.
Not sure if that's related to the una corda issue but I suspect the new hammers are too heavy and it already takes more effort than I'd like to play pianissimo. I'm used to my piano now and I can do it (it helps that the regulation is very dialed in), but it's not effortless. I think my touch is different because of the softer sound of u.c. and the heavy hammers are more obvious and I can no longer "fake it" with the control as well.
I think lightening the hammers and doing a key rebalance will be expensive work if it needs to be done and I might wait a year or two, let the regulation deteriorate a little first. My new tech said he won't have time to check the weights with his equipment his next visit since I want him to voice down the whole piano and it'll have to be during a future visit. So it's more of a long term plan...
twocats What was happening was that the piano was so loud that my touch was instinctively light, so to play softly I was lightening my touch to the point that I was only playing ghost notes.
So then I don't think the una corda makes the action feel different to you. It seems the issue is that it's difficult to play pianissimo on your piano without hitting ghost notes. This is intriguing because I'm not sure if I'd say this is just because your piano is too loud. For example, my piano IS loud, in the sense that it would be difficult to play pianississimo (making it produce barely audible sounds) on it. However, what happens when I try to play too soft is that the keys sometimes wouldn't even go down sufficiently to engage the rest of the action. This is different from true ghost notes, which happen when the key is pushed down with such a low velocity that the hammer does not hit the strings even though the key went down sufficiently. So whenever you try to play too softly and no sound comes out, would you say that you are getting true ghost notes on your piano, or are you just not pressing the keys deeply enough to produce sounds in those instances?
Rubens It seems the issue is that it's difficult to play pianissimo on your piano without hitting ghost notes.
Oh that issue is long resolved. He voiced down the piano a lot and no more ghost notes. I have no idea whether they were true ghost notes or not. He did a concert regulation (3 rounds of regulation) so I have no problems playing softly in a controlled way, but because of the assumed heavy hammers I have to have a certain touch and minimum amount of force to do it.
- Edited
8 Days Left: 4th movement
No video today, but I practiced the 4th movement for about two hours, very slow and focused on accuracy and getting the notes to feel intuitive and to get solid transitions. There were a few places where I changed fingerings and it is a lot better but hopefully I don't get confused once I speed it up!
I don't think the fast parallel runs in the middle are going to be very good because my left hand just can't keep up, but I can just focus on the right hand and fake it. The rest is coming along and I think I'll be able to do a nice Molto Presto at the end! It's actually not super hard, just fast and loud. Sometimes I'm really amazed at how much better I've gotten as a pianist in the last 8-9 years from working on some challenging pieces. I think having a piano that is easy to play really helps as well, because I can practice for a long time without getting tired.
Anyway, feeling good today. I feel like now that I'm reasonably rested these days that my brain has come back. When I started this journal it was like I was in a fog, but now I can focus and see progress and improvement every time I practice! I've got one more week to pull this all together.
twocats Very much admire how well you can play this piece. Likely my comment was prompted by the penultimate practice session (on the Dr.Molly schedule) of variation 2 of Mozart's K331. I knew my tempo was slow but not by how much until I listened to recording. I was somewhat shocked. I'm wondering if it is worth starting a thread to enquire how PT contributers get their pieces up to a reasonable speed.
keff thank you! I have been working on it for almost 10 months now. At the beginning I could only get through a few pages in an hour and it was painfully slow. I find that unless it's all techniques that I know well from years of practice (scale runs, arpeggios, etc), it really comes down to being so familiar with the piece that your fingers just know where to land next. I'm only now getting to that point. Then you will find yourself naturally being able to play faster.
I think if you give it a few months to get note fluency the speed will come in the Mozart! Practicing scales and those kinds of exercises will definitely help as well, because then you'll already know the patterns.
twocats I think if you give it a few months to get note fluency the speed will come in the Mozart!
Thank you for this reply.
Today I reach the end of the first cycle in the schedule with variation 2 and I recorded my progress yesterday evening, the penultimate day. I concluded that it wasn't good enough to post into the members recording thread but your reply has changed my mind .
keff I'm wondering if it is worth starting a thread to enquire how PT contributers get their pieces up to a reasonable speed.
Dr. Gebrian also has some videos on how to work towards building speed. These are on my list but I have not watched them yet. So far I am very excited about all of her advice and looking forward to implementing it (just watched the video on blocked vs. random practice and I will be incorporating that soon!).
- Edited
7 Days Left: 1st movement
I'm down to the wire but feeling more confident that I will be ready right in the nick of time. A lot of spots in the 1st movement aren't giving me trouble anymore, although the minute I hit record I started slipping up in all the easy parts! So I went back afterward and really paid attention to some of those spots so that I don't just take for granted that I can sight read them under pressure. The hardest part is still not fluent but it's improving.
There are two bars where I significantly changed the fingering and it flows much better now, but I need to get it into my memory so that I don't trip myself up. I practiced those a lot after the video as well and then ended up running through two thirds of the 4th movement just to keep it fresh and really practiced the section where I changed the fingerings last night. I really feel like a huge part of my struggle while learning this piece was figuring out fingerings, because there's a lot of trickiness with legato phrasing and other stuff. A lot of the marked fingering didn't work for me or didn't make sense at slow speed but now it makes sense because there are just no good options but what they wrote is better than what I was doing.
Maybe 2nd, 3rd, and 4th movements tomorrow? I should really just focus on the trouble spots and not play them completely through. Although that's how I end up being sloppy in the easy parts...
- Edited
6 Days Left: 2nd, 3rd, and 4th movements
No video today because I'm wiped out but I practiced little bits of the 1st movement and then the complete other movements with lots of focus on trouble spots and transitions. I see stuff improving but there's still a lot to be done. Thankfully all the stuff that needs to be memorized seems to be getting there! Thank you brain.
The 4th movement parallel runs are still crap (right hand is great, left hand not so much) and I think it's just beyond my ability to play fast and clean. I'm planning to let my right hand carry the melody and the strings will be very distracting. Good thing I'm not a professional
@Rubens I am cheating in a couple of spots and it makes my life easier! One is a rolled 10th chord (rolling due to not having the hand span) that I think sounds dumb rolled so I changed the chord. The other is a series of quick octave chords and for one of them it's super awkward and I keep screwing it up, so I'm not playing the lower note for just that one. This allows me to play it with ease and no one will notice!
I'm planning to get lots of sleep tonight. Tomorrow is another big practice day.
Rubens haha the "CHEATING!!" thumbnail is a bit of a clickbait but that was a great video. I watched it while I was cleaning up in the kitchen 
Hands are tired today... I think I'm going to take it easy and not play anything too loud and fast. Will continue trying to get the notes "under my fingers".