Practice Notes

I ran just the opening section, then got busy working out the fingering on mm. 33-40. I still haven't gone on to the fourth page and that very difficult passagework. One thing at a time!

25 minutes

More rework on El Fandango. At the end of practice on this tonight, I challenged myself to see if I could play it under 7 min. I was at about 7:45 last week and at 7:15 tonight. That is real progress on such a difficult piece like this!

I really want to get a decent recording of this by the end of April!

1 hour 35 minutes

Most time spent on El Fandango. I am pushing myself to pick up the tempo to concert level. Shaving one minute off this piece, from a very comfortable 7:30 to 6:30 is really tough. It requires certain passages that I worked out at a slower tempo to need new work, sometimes even new fingerings or gestures.

I was able to roughly play the entire piece in 6:35, with some areas of errors like fallen leaves in the Adirondacks, but others where I was indeed able to pick up the pace without casualties! Even though my broad tempo model is Aldo Ciccolini, I dislike his disregard of the Spanish style.

I also did some listening to Los Requiebros, and found a student pianist at the University of Denver who played it with quite a lot of style! I also listened to an early Alicia recording. Still wow! Tonight was the first time I've made it through the entire piece. Some of the difficult spots that absolutely freaked me out earlier don't seem as difficult any more. However, the piece will still be plenty difficult to get to tempo.

I still pinch myself that I have the chance to learn beautiful pieces like these on my favorite practice piano.

3 hours 20 minutes

Reviewed El Fandango, but the bulk of time today was spent pushing forward and learning a good deal of Los Requiebros, including most of the hardest material. There are two separate interior sections that still need fingering.

This was my longest single-day practice session in quite some time!

4 hours 50 minutes

I don't remember the breakdown in time spent on the two pieces, but a good amount of it was spent in El Fandango. I need to take better notes as I go! I was concentrated on trying to find the places where I needed to work technically to get passages faster. A great example is the sextuple sixteenth notes in the left hand of the recap that break down. Granados throws in fingerings here and there, including this section, probably because he realizes that these are especially difficult!

Another example passage is using the thumb for the low note in the middle section where there are fast 32nd note arpeggios in the LH against some rough ornamented double forte RH figures. Granados gives the suggestion of using the thumb on these low notes, a technique also used by Claudio Arrau, not in this piece, but in a similar passage in Los Requiebros.

Lastly, I did some practice where I really listened, and even closed my eyes, in order to get myself away from the score. I really might need to memorize these pieces because reliance on the score does detract from some of the very difficult passages.

I spent much less time on Los Requiebros where I was just getting to know already fingered passages better, not moving on to solve the two sections still unfingered.

2 hours 15 minutes

I spent so little time on El Fandango that I didn't even mark it in the heading. Today's work was really on Los Requiebros. I am still having huge problems in the first couple of pages, and even that hard place with the incredibly difficult RH filigree against the LH melody 2/3 way through.

I did move forward into some of the easier passages to finger one of the two untouched areas. I think I even trimmed down the second area, so only about 1.5 pages remain unfingered. Again, I need to take practice notes, with specifics to make sure I'm efficient!

I'm really starting to feel gallardo, but that's worrisome because the first 3.5 pages still are rough!

1 hour 50 minutes

The first hour was spent on Los Requiebros, going through the whole thing a couple of times. I'm in that intermediate stage where I can play some of it at tempo, some of it at a slower than performance tempo, but still struggle with a couple of parts that are incredibly hard. I need to make a practice strategy so I can get it to where I could make a rough recording and not be totally embarrassed. Then, I would be able to schedule this to be played. Perhaps May or June?

The last 15 minutes were spent on El Fandango. It's still on track to be finished by the end of April. That said, there are some passages that I'm going to have to work through again, and I'll have to set a metronome so I can understand what my goal actually is. That would also help me to reconcile disparate difficult passages against each other.

1 hour 15 minutes

The goal today was to try to get all of the remaining unfingered passages in Los Requiebros fingered. I got really close, with about 10 measures in two systems on one page left to go.

I stayed focused there, and not on playing some of the fun parts!

35 minutes

This practice session started after midnight and was not close enough in time to be considered a true continuation of yesterday early evening's practice session. I didn't have a watch or clock nearby and was a bit aghast when I saw the time on the iPhone I retrieved from the car.

My main goal was to finish the portion of Los Requiebros that was unfingered, and to do a quick review of the 3 pages or so that I started fingering last night. However, that evolved into a full-blown session of working on all of the difficult sections. I really got a lot done.

Best of all, this was on Megumi, my own Yamaha U1, not one of the several church grands on which I usually practice. I now have to put a financial plan together to get her tuned AND the action regulated and voiced.

2 hours 30 minutes (approx)

I have the idea to try to learn and record the 5 Spanish Dances in April that I'll play in May for Piano Postludes. I'm not sure whether it will be 4 or 5.

25 minutes

I continued to work to smooth out Los Requiebros at the beginning of practice. I worked through a few passages in El Fandango but resisted staying there to do more. I played for the first time Coloquio en la Reja. It was just two pages; I wanted to get started.

I spent almost 45 minutes of the time fingering/refreshing Quejas. I want to transfer all of the existing fingering between editions, but first want to make sure it's what I'm actually doing. I was surprised at how some of my earlier decisions changed!

1 hour 55 minutes (approx)

I listened to Coloquio en la Reja played by Larrocha. So beautiful. Love the flow of the piece with the parallel beginning and end, and all of the drama in between, including quotes of the other Goyescas.

15 minutes

Sometimes practice has little to do with practice, in the conventional sense. I want to have all of my fingerings in one edition, not spread across the original French edition and the new Henle one. It takes time, as all good things do.

Just begun, got about a third of the way.

20 minutes

Sometimes practice has little to do with practice, in the conventional sense. I want to have all of my fingerings in one edition, not spread across the original French edition and the new Henle one. It takes time, as all good things do.

Since I did this work at the piano, there was also a tiny bit of practice too, but only in support of finding if I had the right fingering.

FInished what was remaining.

40 minutes

Most of the time was spent working out difficult passages in Los Requiebros, but began practice and spent some time in El Fandango.

At this point, I think Los Requiebros is almost up to the level of El Fandango. As a performance vehicle, my ONE difficult piece, I like this a lot more! The difficulties are in sections, not in almost every single measure as in the fandango.

2 hours

I don't remember the exact division of time, but practice on both pieces was geared towards those sections that have technical difficulties that need more work. I'm sort of resigned to the fact that El Fandango is just a bear and it's not going to get much better now. I still have some opportunities on Los Requiebros. It's a much more varied piece - lots of moods in under 10 minutes - and some chance to take a breath between difficult passages.

2 hours 5 minutes

I have the breakdown of my practice time per piece today, but basically, it was the same as the last few days. I discovered a few tricks on Los Requiebros that might help and even rethought some end-of-piece fingerings on El Fandango. Quejas was little work on top of a run through.

1: 1 hour 45 minutes
3: 20 minutes
4: 10 minutes

2 hours 15 minutes