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

twocats · 2024-07-18T18:02:03+00:00

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...

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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!

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Dvořák Quartet 3rd mvmt - Day 2 (Dr. Molly Schedule)

An extremely delayed Day 2. Should I even still pretend that I'm trying to follow the practice schedule? 😆 I ran through the piece once, added a bunch of fingerings, some awkward because Dvořák did not make this intuitive to play.

Well, I found out that the horrible crunchy chords that didn't make sense are several wrong chords in my Bärenreiter score. I went to the score in the YouTube video and they were correct there! I'm very annoyed; Henle would never make such an error but they didn't publish this piece!

This movement continues to be annoying and I have to be very rhythmically precise. Hopefully it'll get easier as I can play it faster!

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

Hard to believe it's only my third day of practice on this but I am definitely not strictly following the "three days in a row" for the first three days so it's very stretched out.

I actually ran through it twice before recording it today and it's getting better! The rhythms and counting are still super annoying and I will have to start using the metronome at some point, but I can't throughout the whole piece because the time signature changes. Also a lot of it needs to be played much faster but I still have plenty of time to get it up to speed.

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Beethoven Cello Sonata in G minor (Week 4)

I'm calling this Week 4 even though it's been three weeks since I last played this. Didn't have time to run through and then record, so just wanted to see where I'm at now. As far as I can tell, it hasn't gotten better but also hasn't gotten worse. Next time I come back to it I'm going to have to use my bookmarks and focus on the trouble pages.

Also, can you hear the tuning starting to go out on my piano? My tech isn't coming for another month.

keff

twocats Also, can you hear the tuning starting to go out on my piano?

I noticed my piano was a little sharp this morning. Hoping it will shift backwards once the humidity drops.

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Dvořák Quartet 1st mvmt - Day 7 (Dr. Molly Schedule)

It was supposed to be 7 days from my last practice of the first movement but it was 10 days. And it's better! It's generally feeling more confident under my fingers and is coming together, though it needs much more confidence to play the fast parts at speed. I thought it would be easier than it is, but I'm still very much on track for February. I always give myself a very large buffer to learn new music!

Last time when I listened to the recording there was some pedaling that I didn't like so I'm playing it slightly drier now. Recording and listening back is really a great exercise because somehow you can't hear certain things while you're playing.

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keff I usually run a dehumidifier in the summer but somehow I never got around to setting it up this year...