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1 december....

Mmmm......today time to polish my christmas music.....perhaps we have a small covid proved family X-mas with a few familymembers......music must also be covid (without mistakes) proved....

Best regards,

Johan B

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Here I go:

Finale by Tansman
Prelude by Tansman
Fin des vacances by Tansman
'Sull Aria, piano transcr of Mozart aria from the Marriage of Figaro
Sonatina in C, mvmts 1-3, Clementi
Un Larme (A Tear) by Mussorgsky
Berceuse, Shostakovich

Some of these I have not played in a while as I recently moved and did not yet have my pedal assembly affixed to my piano stand. So, the pedal was sliding all over the place, making piano more of an athletic/acrobatic exercise trying to keep it in place while playing. But, it's fixed now!

Mainly play-throughs today (partly to keep the works fresh in memory, partly for pure relaxation and enjoyment):

Beethoven: Moonlight, first and second movements (the third one is far away still)
Chopin: Prelude no. 6
Brahms: Waltz op. 39,15
Schubert: Three dances from D783
Schumann: Kind im Einschlummern

And briefly I worked on:

Beethoven: Für Elise
Debussy: The little shepherd
Gershwin: Prelude no. 1

Mozart's E-flat sonata 282, third movement for me and will be doing a short session on Schumann's Traumerei as well in a few minutes

QuasiUnaFantasia, very impressive that you managed to work through all that!!!

For the last month I have been concentrating on Christmas Music:
an arrangement of Carol of the Bells for Clarinet and Piano
and Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride"

Sam

I'm away from home with a portable keyboard and connecting with my teacher through Zoom. At the time when few people would travel I have some family business to take care of. Had to go through a 14-day quarantine and practiced music during the 2 weeks in isolation.

I'm working on a short piece by Rimsky-Korsakov with the teacher and an old Pop song from the 1970s on my own.

Not sure about Christmas tunes. There are holiday decorations in public places but with the lockdown in my city, not many people are in the mood to celebrate.

Beethoven op 54 2nd mvt
Beethoven op 57 1st & 2nd mvt
Beethoven op 79 all 3 mvts
Scarlatti k.141
Scarlatti k.180

I won't be learning any holiday music (no time to do so). I've been fighting k141 seemingly forever but the rest have been added over the last several weeks. What I'm trying to do is play with no pedal save for 2 or 3 passages where the urtext says to use it. It's actually extremely difficult to forego the pedal esp for someone with small hands.

Santa Baby; Grandma's Killer Fruitcake; Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer; The Man with the Golden Gun.

Yeah, one of these things is not like the others....

These lists for what you all played today are inspiring and impressive. Didn’t play any songs through but did get December off too a good start with 2hr 5min total practice at the piano today. Soon enough I’ll be posting to a thread like this with some songs listed out.

God rest ye merry gentleman and Carol of the Bells.

Silver Bells ( I found a lovely score for this one )
Christmas Dream ( Andrew LLoyd Webber )
En Reve ( Liszt...a two-pager )
Six Ecossaises ( Beethoven )

Getting very close to Christmas. A lot of local shopping malls and other shopping areas are playing recordings of seasonal songs.

Last Christmas I joined a group of musicians in Church. There was a Korean hymn that is popular with the congregation. The other piece we played was "Mary's Boy Child". It's an arrangement of the piece by the Pop band Boney M from the 1970s.

Nothing too remarkable today, played several James Scott rags, fixed a couple of tricky patches in my own pieces and recorded an hour of improvisation in the evening. Just listening to it now to see if it was any good.

Re the pedal, are you talking about the Scarlatti or Beethoven? My guess is the Beethoven since an urtext version of Scarlatti wouldn't have pedal. OTOH I think Beethoven only indicated in very special places where a pianist might nor normally use pedal or might normally use it in a different way. So I'm not sure your idea of not using pedal except where urtext indicates it makes sense.

Yes.......I like it. The thread is working. Some years ago I did the same and yesterday I restarted it.

It’s usefull for all of us and in this way we can inspire each other.

An hour again I started with Bach Preludium E moll bwv 555 arranged for keyboard/piano, some of you will know that I love baroque music.

The most important is that you tell us what kind of music you love to play.

Kind regards,
JohanB

I have a secret method, mwa ha ha ha ... at least as far as the first movement of the Moonlight is concerned: I play it relatively fast (about 5 min 15 s).

I would concur. I think there are plenty of places where it makes sense to use the pedal in Beethoven. In particular the first mouvement of opus 57.

I once attended a Mannes master class by a teacher who specialized in early and late Beethoven. (Can't remember his name but he was quite famous and I think he has passed away). Anyway, the student played some Beethoven Sonata and only used pedal where Beethoven marked it. The teacher smiled when hearing this explanation, but told the student basically what I said in my earlier post about pedaling in Beethoven.

Just download and play....

And here’s the sheetmusic, page 3

Kind regards,
Joahn B