01 05

OK, lads, (especially Ted), here goes.

I have been going after a relaxed, fluid, reliable, pain-free competent piano technique since about 2001, and it's never broken free. I'm really ambitious as you can tell from some of these past lunatic episodes:
'learn Ravel's "SCARBO"' (one of the most difficult pieces ever published)
'learn Debussy's "L'ILE JOYEUSE" in a week (Debussy himself confessed he could not master it)
'learn Ravel's "MIROIRS" and the Rachmaninoff Preludes op 23 and perform them'
'learn the Liszt B minor Sonata'

Oh, come on. How about: 'learn to connect yourself with the piano so you can have a joyous, creative, and productive experience'. That's where I am at now, perhaps becoming more of a realist and less of an arrogant and self-aggrandizing 20 year old trapped in a 55 year old frame.

So as this year's plan, I thought I'd give myself what Chopin gave his students - the Well Tempered Clavier. The fugues have these advantages, to me:

-each hand with its fingers is absolutely identical in its task, so LH can teach RH
-they sound equally elegant (to me) at any tempo
-I think I can do a Victory Dance if I pull this off. I want to impress myself!

Yesterday I played the E minor from book 2 to a friend over the phone and it went well. I'm also on the C# from book 2, and the A major book 1, which I started yesterday. Hopefully this blog will turn into something interesting and useful.