My passion is to help others in the community, young, old, and everyone in between, find relevance and joy in learning, performing or listening to classical music.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Beethoven in 15 Minutes a Day - Day 4

Phew.  I'm playing single mommy right now while my husband is out of town so I'm going to keep this post short but I wanted to make sure that I posted last night's practice session.  I don't have too much to say about it although I want to confess that even though I absolutely love Clara Schumann's cadenza, I find it a bit intimidating.  I have a feeling that shows in my practicing these past few days - I'm moving through it as slowly as a snail.  I think it's the dense texture in the middle section that's getting to me.  Oh well.  I'll keep taking it a little bit at a time and perhaps it will just click one of these days.  I'm also thinking I may just devote tonight's practice session to the cadenza.  

In the third movement I had a bit of an odd struggle at the very end of the main passage I was practicing.  I kept tripping over my fingers in the left hand.  Thankfully I figured out pretty quickly that it was a simple fingering issue.  Hopefully that will clear things up from now on.  You'll hear me practicing using lots of rhythms.  I do these rhythms pretty religiously as a way to test the strength of all of my fingers - the different rhythms tend to reveal weaknesses.  They can also expose where any doubts about notes are.  

And a final note, this time about practicing with metronome or perhaps I should say not practicing with the metronome.  I know it's simply terrible that I rarely use this incredibly useful tool but in all honesty, these days I don't have the time it takes to fiddle around with one.  When I literally have 5 minutes or 10 minutes at a time to practice the repetitions that go hand-in-hand with metronome practicing are impractical.  I know, I know...horrible.  But that's the reality in my life right now.  I guess we'll see how I fare at the end of all this.  Perhaps I'll end up running back to the metronome and apologizing for my gross negligence.  Or maybe not.

So here it is...day 4.  And now only 16 days until recording. 




Pulling a concerto out of my hat
Beethoven in 15 Minutes a Day: Day 1
Beethoven in 15 Minutes a Day: Day 2




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