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).