Beethoven in 15 Minutes a Day: Day 2

Only on day 2 and I'm already doubting myself...

"Erica, what were you thinking?  15 minutes a day?  That is not going to be enough time to whip this together! You're crazy.  Just forget about it.  Go eat some ice cream instead."

Ah, the power of my mind and emotions to completely mess me up.  

"Self, be quiet.  An experiment is an experiment.  Let me be!"

So with that little psychological exchange out of the way, here is my practice session from last night, officially day 2 of my "Beethoven in 15 Minutes a Day" challenge.  My strategy for this session was to start with the first movement cadenza this time since I started with the third movement on day one.  I'm working backwards in the cadenza and only had time to deal with a handful of measures since the texture is quite thick in this particular spot and I remember having trouble with it when I first performed it a few years ago.  You may hear me playing a "wrong" note repeatedly when I'm practicing the right hand at the beginning of the clip.  I'm doing that on purpose.  When there's a note that keeps surprising me I will play what I expect several times in a row, really listening to what that sounds like and then I'll play it correctly, listening carefully to what makes that better than what I had expected.  Often times that is enough to get me playing and expecting what's really on the page.  After reviewing what I worked on in the cadenza the night before I then spent the next few minutes in the next section of the second movement, focusing on patterns that I could find and listening to sound.    You might notice that I picked a really bad tempo to start with but thankfully I saw the error or my ways and figured out a better one that would allow me to fit in more of the notes.  Last but not least I began work on the coda of the last movement.  For some reason I find the patterns at the beginning of this section very tricky and kind of hard to lock into so I spent much of my time just dealing with that.  I'm not sure if I made much headway but it's a start I suppose.

So with all that said, here is day two's practice session:

20 days remaining.  I have a feeling I'm going to have a few battles with doubt along the way.  We musicians just love that, don't we?

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


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