Easter Break

No lesson this past week, and in fact my wife and I split for up-north for few days to get away from ringing phones and such. Of course, this meant leaving the cats home by themselves to contemplate what manner of destruction they might wreak had they been blessed with thumbs. And, of course, it meant no piano for a few days.

Not that I didn't think about it. We visited our favorite music store out of town and found that it had fallen on hard times--still open, but with vastly reduced inventory. So, none of the music I was searching for was available, but I was impressed with what they did have. I concluded that I have enough music for now anyway. While it might be nice to have large collections of sight reading material to work through, I don't have as much time as I'd like to for that. I think I'll stick with the Alfred Level 2 collection and the Hymnal.

I took today off from work and did a lot of playing to make up for the weekend. In a way I think the time away helped to clear my head. I didn't lose much coordination, and in fact found that Soldier's March picked right up from where I left off and got better as the day wore on. Clementi too is coming along nicely; I have almost the whole thing memorized now. Even after discovering how much rust had accumulated on the first movement, I found that a few run-throughs were all I needed to get it back into shape. I still have to take all three movements at a pretty slow pace, however I get much less frustrated with myself now that I've acquired that discipline. A couple of weeks ago I was feeling like I was in one of those fever dreams where you keep repeating the same thing over and over and it never changes. I think I've broken out of that.

I picked up that Snell collection of Haydn--"Six Easy Sonatas." They're not quite as easy as the title makes them out to be, but they're probably a lot easier than his later work. They're later intermediate level--just beyond my grasp, but within visual range at least. The first couple might even be doable now. However, I might give the Beethoven Sonatina a go first. I like that one, and it has some technical issues I'd like to work through.

I think after playing fairly well today I starting to get that "I can do anything" feeling, which can be delusory. All it takes is one bad practice to bring me back down to earth! That's fine as long as it doesn't kill the momentum. It hasn't yet. What might pose a greater threat is the distraction of so much music. I was looking at the Snell collection of Scarlatti Sonatas today thinking "I could play these!" and I had to force myself to put it back--one step at a time! Maybe someday, but for now I need to master what I have in hand.