[Journal] Dvořák Piano Quartet 2 & Beethoven Cello Sonata 2 & Chopin Ballade 1

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I had a journal to document my final stressful weeks of preparation of the Brahms g minor piano quartet for a chamber music workshop. It was fun to document and share, and also I think it forced me to really pay attention to my trouble spots and helped me to focus better on them. I'm starting a journal for my next projects!

The Brahms was the hardest piece I've ever worked on (and at the end it wasn't fully ready) so the next piece will be like a vacation! I'm switching to the spring chamber music workshop next February and will be playing Dvořák's Piano Quartet in D Major, Op. 23.

Dvořák wrote two piano quartets, an early one and a late one. The early one is simple and charming and has a lot of the folksy feel that we associate with his work. The late one is far more complex and it's one of the "great" piano quartets. I am planning to play it in Spring 2026 (yes, I like to plan ahead!) and will start reading it ahead of time to get a head start on getting it into my brain. I also have two Beethoven cello sonatas that I'm learning for "fun playing".

Dvořák Piano Quartet in D Major

From the score, the piano part looks pretty easy and 6 months should be more than enough time to prepare. Unfortunately Henle did not publish this (so no digital edition 😭) and I have the Bärenreiter score on order and will have to scan it. I have about 6 months to prepare and am planning to experiment with practicing using Dr. Molly's neuroscience-based schedule in a much stricter way than I previously have.

This is a nice performance, although I think all the repeats in the second movement are too much and I think we might play them without:

Beethoven Cello Sonatas in g minor and A major

I also promised my German cellist friend that I'll prepare the second and third Beethoven cello sonatas (my favorites of his five) for us to play for fun in February. I know a very good local cellist who has performed the second and wants to learn the third, so maybe we'll actually get to perform it somewhere locally if I get them to that level! I've prepared the second sonata for a couple of weeks in the past, sight read it last summer with a cellist at the workshop, and again this summer with the same cellist. My playing improved noticeably from last year to this year, which was a nice surprise! I think I'll run through these maybe once a week and hopefully that will be enough?

Beethoven's Cello Sonata in g minor, Op. 5 No. 2: absolutely love the way the first movement is played in this recording but the second movement is much too fast. Listen here for 1st movement:

Couldn't find a recording that I really loved of the Rondo second movement; this one can be a little heavy-handed on the loud concert grand but it's otherwise nice:

Beethoven's Cello Sonata in A major, Op. 69: have been obsessed with this performance by Sol Gabetta and Seong-Jin Cho ever since I first heard it. I especially love the second movement Scherzo and it gets stuck in my head sometimes!

Dvořák Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat major, Op. 87

I'm learning this for Spring 2026 so am getting a head start on familiarizing myself over the next six months before I start to seriously work on it. So far I've read through some of the first movement and Dvořák loves complex rhythms that will be challenging to learn and also play with others! In a few places there are also triplets in one hand and quadruplets in the other, which I can play fine if it's triplets in the LH and quadruplets in the RH but struggle if it's the other way around... I think I'm much more used to playing accomplishment patterns in my left hand.

I really enjoy this recording except for the second movement where I feel like the cellist is rushing and weirdly unbalanced with his melody phrasing. The other movements are played extremely well and I would like to use the pianist's performance as a reference for myself:

This recording with score is actually one I mostly dislike, feel like these musicians don't understand the spirit of the work (especially not a fan of Isaac Stern's thin sound and Emanuel Ax's phrasing in various places, although I do enjoy how he plays the second movement) but I absolutely love Yo-Yo Ma's interpretation in the second movement and think it's very much worth listening to as it brings tears to my eyes:

Wish I could just mix and match the movements to make a favorite video 😂

My tech just voiced down my entire piano a few days ago and it really needed it after all the abuse from the Brahms! It sounds great and will sound even better after the voicing breaks in a little. I've been prepping my digital scores (added buttons for repeats in the cello sonatas) and will start posting videos again as I get back to practicing!

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I ran through the second Dvořák piano quartet (the hard one; still waiting on the score to be delivered for the easy one) and it took the entire afternoon. I kept thinking "this is so hard". There are so many tricky rhythmic bits (and rhythm is my weakness) and the harmonic structure is all over the place plus there are a lot of key changes, and when you're playing it slow without context it makes no sense at all! That makes it so hard because I can't fall back on familiar progressions. After three movements of feeling like I will really need coaching help I finally got to the last movement and it actually makes harmonic sense and I was able to sight read it comfortably at a slow tempo! All I have to do for that movement is to get the notes under my fingers and play it fast, which will not be a problem.

I think maybe this is the piece that is really going to force me to improve my rhythm skills. At first I thought that I'll definitely need professional help to get it right, but then I realized that I know what I need to do, which is very slow counting and starting with separate hands. I have so much lead time on this piece that if the other projects are easy, I'll have time to chip away at it, one page at a time.

rsl12

twocats one nice thing about rhythm practice is that you don't have to be at a piano to do it. If I'm walking, I let my walking pace be the beat and then I try to tap out the rhythms with my hands.

Do you have a mnemonic (mantra?) for 3 against 4? "pass the tea and butter" was the one I learned.

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rsl12 oh that's right, I actually do rhythm practice without the piano (but usually much later in the learning process on specific trouble spots). I ran through a LOT of Beethoven today and the 3 against 4 where triplets are in the left hand come so naturally! Maybe with some practice I can get it the other way around, where my hands just know to play evenly across the beat. I think part of the issue is that my left hand just isn't as capable as my right, so maybe fast quadruplets take effort. And the bass keys are heavier, too! I'll see if the mnemonic helps in all the complicated rhythms ones that include rests 🙂 I've never used one before!

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Beethoven Cello Sonatas - baseline recordings

I played through both of the cello sonatas today, including all the repeats (the second time was always a little better). The videos are over an hour each, yikes!! 😮 It includes all the breaks that I take to mark up the score. Not sure if anyone actually wants to hear my slow and clumsy sight-reading but I always think that seeing the progress from the beginning is interesting. I think in the future I probably won't practice with repeats but I thought it would be good to test the repeat buttons that I put in forScore and also to get the extra practice. Maybe every day I practice I'll go through one or two movements, because playing the two entire sonatas takes too long.

If my piano sounds different, it's because I had the whole thing voiced! I think the voicing needs to break in a bit and then it'll sound really good. There's a few bright notes in the treble that have already brightened back up and I'll have my tech work on them next time.

I included timestamps for the movements in the video descriptions and I think I'll start doing that in videos that contain more than one movement.

For the g minor sonata, I worked on the first movement for a few weeks many years ago, so I'm somewhat familiar with it and am not starting completely fresh. I also read through it once with a cellist this year and last year. The second movement Rondo is pretty new to me and I've only read it a couple of times and fudged my way through with the cellist last month. In the first movement there are some phrasing and pedaling decisions that I have to make.

The A major sonata is my favorite and all of it is fantastic! The first movement is beautiful and the Scherzo second movement is so much fun; Beethoven is playing around with rhythms and emphasizing off-beats and doing all sorts of unconventional things. I love it!! I've only read through the first two moments twice before, and the (very short) slow movement and the final movements are me sight-reading for the first time. So it's pretty much sight-reading, with lots of mistakes as I figure out the notes (and repeatedly miss G sharps haha).

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I listened to some of my practice recording and I realized I want to change some of my tone and approach for the Adagio of the g minor sonata. Plus I think I was playing some of the 32nds too fast. I'm studying the Rostropovich recording (which I think is really a perfect rendition of this movement) and I was thinking that the pianist is pretty fabulous and looked in the description to see who it was. It's Sviatoslav Richter!! Why isn't his name in the video title?! Anyway, it's filmed so that I can see his hands really well and in some views I can see his pedaling as well. I'm also realizing I'm playing some of the ornaments wrong, or at least differently. So I should study more and internalize those.

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Worked on the Beethoven G minor sonata first movement and spent some time listening to the recording while following the score and marking down all the places where I had read the rhythm wrong. And then I ran through it once and added a lot of fingerings.

Tomorrow I'll be in better shape and maybe I'll record it 🙂

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Beethoven Cello Sonata in G minor 1st movement (Week 1)

After a couple of sessions of practice, and most importantly, writing out fingerings. I had worked on this for a few weeks years ago, so not starting from scratch. It's still much better than it was from the baseline recording! Still need to figure out pedaling details but other than that I think I just need to keep running through it and getting familiar with the notes.

I think for the Beethoven cello sonatas I'll focus on a different movement every week. My Dvořák score arrived but I have to scan it.

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Beethoven Cello Sonata in G minor (Week 2)

It's the second week-ish? I've been sick and ran through the first movement a couple of times. It's getting more familiar. I also seriously practiced the first two pages of the Rondo (second movement) so that's the last couple of minutes at the end of the video.

Going forward I'm going to do proper practice of the trouble spots in the first movement instead of just sight reading it, and slowly work my way through the second.

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forScore Scanning Function

I "scanned" the Dvorak paper score! The pages were too big for my actual scanner so I used the forScore scan function where you carefully take a photo in the app and then crop as best as you can, and it takes care of any perspective tilts depending on your crop and also corrects the color to black and white. Pretty great functionality! However, the pages were not lying completely flat despite my best efforts. It was a lot of work. forScore only allows you to scan 24 pages at once so I had to create three files and then merge them into a single file. At least I'm figuring out how this all works.

I will have to also scan the string parts at some point for the other quartet members but I'll do it later, and it shouldn't be that bad.

Next time I practice I'm going to run through the whole thing and see how difficult it is and decide how I want to set up Dr. Molly's schedule.

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Dvořák Quartet Practice Plan

I read through the Dvořák quartet and I think I always get overwhelmed when I start learning a new chamber work because of the sheer length-- it took hours just to read through it! But thankfully it's not technically difficult and will be a vacation after the Brahms. I think the biggest challenge for me is to figure out how I want to pedal. It really changes the feel of a passage and can often be difficult to tell what's being done in a recording, especially since sometimes it's just a bit of half or quarter pedal. I guess I just have to follow my instincts and try to listen harder to the recording I like.

The first movement will probably take the most work, so I'll start with it with Dr. Molly's schedule. Then I'll practice the third movement using her schedule. The second movement is easy enough where I can already pretty much sight read it at speed so I'm not planning to practice it on a schedule.

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Dvořák Quartet 1st mvmt - Day 1 (Dr. Molly Schedule)

Theoretically I'm trying to make progress on two Dvořák piano quartets simultaneously but I won't blog about the difficult one until after February when I start to seriously practice it. I did run through it today and it seemed significantly easier than the first time I read through it about a month ago! I think getting my brain familiarized with the piece way ahead of time is a great plan. I should start looking at all challenging works 18 months in advance 😆

Anyway, I need to learn the easier Dvořák piano quartet for February and it's going to be totally fine. It's really nice to feel confident this time, after the Brahms. I'm even going to have enough free time to learn one (if not two) Beethoven cello sonatas as well! That is exciting because I'll actually get to play with my cellist friend here who is an excellent musician. We pianists can be so lonely!

This is Day 1 of practice after sight-reading the Dvořák Piano Quartet in D Major for the first time yesterday and then running through it once today. There's a very long repeat that I'm not including in the video but I'll be practicing it since there's a first ending and a second ending and they're very different.

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Dvořák Quartet 1st mvmt - Day 2 (Dr. Molly Schedule)

I ran through the first movement once this morning and practiced some stuff in a little more detail, and kept adding/changing fingerings. In a couple of places I am using my left hand to assist in some notes so that I can play a better legato right hand line. Then I ran through it again for this video, just didn't have time to post until now (late).

@Rubens forgot to mention that last time my tech was here I mentioned about the una corda control issues and he did an adjustment! He said it was moving the hammers over too much, and all he did was twist a little screw on the cheekblock and now it's fine!

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Dvořák Quartet 1st mvmt - Day 3 (Dr. Molly Schedule)

I practiced for a few hours today and I'm playing fewer mistakes and it's starting to come out from the awkward sightreading phase. I worked a lot on the pedaling and phrasing at the very beginning of the piece. Still figuring out and adding fingerings. Tomorrow is my day off from this!

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Beethoven Cello Sonata in G minor (Week 3)

I've been forced into spaced practice of the Beethoven because of the Dvořák and it seems to have helped! The first movement feels easier already. I really want to play it at speed because that's how I hear it in my head, so the tempo is inconsistent because some places I can and some I can't.

The Rondo still needs a ton of work but it's a little better. I flagged a bunch of pages that need a lot more focused practice so that I'll start on those next time instead of at the beginning. It's actually great that I'm making videos because I try to make time to listen back and see what I'm doing, and fix things based on that. The pedaling is always a work in progress. There's a rhythm fairly early in the Rondo that sounded fine to me when I was playing it but just sounds totally off in the video, so I have to figure out what's going on.

Timestamps for the movements are in the video description.

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Dvořák Quartet 1st mvmt - Day 4 (Dr. Molly Schedule)

I was only supposed to take one day of break but it turned into four, partly because I decided to participate in the recital at the last minute and partly because life got a little away from me and I needed a break. So much for attempting a strict schedule 😂 But I'm back to the Dvořák and it's magically a little better! I always naturally did spaced practice because of how my schedule worked out but now I'm very aware of the specific improvements.

Annoyingly I started the video upload before we left home around 5 hours ago and I guess my iPad went to sleep and the upload stalled. But now it's finally done!

keff

twocats Sounding very nice indeed. I like Dvorak!

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Dvořák Quartet 1st mvmt - Day 5 (Dr. Molly Schedule)

This "strict" schedule is not going so well. I was supposed to skip just one day but it ended up being two. I got busy and am also a bit sick. Today I did practice but going through the first movement (focusing a lot on spots where I just don't know the notes) took me 90 minutes and I don't have the energy to run through it again, so there's no video today.

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Dvořák Quartet 1st mvmt - Day 6 (Dr. Molly Schedule)

Strict schedule is not happening 😂 I'm exhausted a lot of the time but today I forced myself to practice. I ran through the first movement once and practiced spots and then did the video. It's better than it was before-- thank you spaced practice!

Next session I'm going to start working on the third movement since I'm now supposed to take a 1 week break. The second movement is not difficult so I play through it once in a while and I'm not learning it on a schedule.

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Dvořák Quartet 3rd mvmt - Day 1 (Dr. Molly Schedule)

I started the third movement today and I don't like it. Except for a couple of little sections that I enjoy, I find it trite and boring. The good news is that it is shorter than I expect and I'm always surprised when I get to the end because it seems to come out of nowhere. This is the opposite of trying to learn the long and complicated pieces where I'm like "am I not done yet?!" and look to find that there are a full six pages to go.

This movement not difficult but I'm also not playing the fast parts close to speed. Hopefully after the 12 days of following Dr. Molly's "strict schedule" (who am I kidding, I can't keep a strict schedule) it'll be close to ready; I guess we'll see!