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Thursday, July 11th, 2019
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I am working on "new" pieces these days. When I say "new," I mean pieces that I have already played in the past, but may not have completed to a comfortable performance level. These pieces at the moment are "Un Sospiro" and "The Entertainer." I have gotten the Entertainer to a good performance level, but I have not gotten to the point in Un Sospiro where I can play it without any large mistakes.
Thankfully, it was easy to jump back into Un Sospiro. It only took me a few days to remember all the notes and refresh my muscle memory, so now I am at a point where I would like to play it without looking at my hands so much. I have confidence I can do it since I have been able to play the slower section in Prelude 5 without looking at my hands, and Un Sospiro is similar in it's arpeggios. I am only concerned with the jumps in the right hand with the arpeggios being split between the two hands, giving the right hand more than one job. Hopefully I will have time to write a practice entry later this month with a positive update.
The Entertainer is a lot of fun to play because it is different in style than most of the pieces I play. Ragtime is a lot of fun and not so difficult for me to play since it incorporates a lot of elements from my "classical" pieces. These elements include a lot of jumps, since the left hand of ragtime is constantly jumping from bass notes to chords and back again. In my sightreading practice I am also playing through "The Joy of Ragtime," noticing a lot of the pieces sound similar and have similar structure.