Still here

I'm still here, still practicing the piano; I just don't have much to say.

I had a pretty good lesson this weekend. We worked on the First Arabesque and touched on both musical and technical points. We also looked at the dreaded Beethoven Op. 2 No. 3. Conclusion: it's hard.

I'm hoping to be able to record both Arabesques at some point, but I'm certainly not satisfied with them yet.

I've been toying with the idea of getting a video recorder. On the one hand, I kind of like being in blissful ignorance about how dorky I possibly look when I play, but on the other hand, isn't it better to know the truth? Also, I've heard it is very helpful to see what you're doing physically from an objective point of view. The camera doesn't lie, so they say.

On the cello, I've been browsing through my rather large collection of music and pulling out pieces at random and playing through them, to see if anything piques my interest. There's stuff there that I didn't know I had and don't know why I have it. Did I actually buy all of it, or what? In addition to the standards (all the usual suspects -- Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, Haydn, Elgar, etc.) are pieces by Klengel and Romberg, Boellman and Reger, Dohnanyi and PDQ Bach. It makes me appreciate the piano repertoire.

I had a conversation with someone a couple of weeks ago about why I was playing the piano so much rather than the cello, and I said one reason is the solo music for cello is limited; for most you need supporting players, who are not so easy to find. He said, "But there's Beethoven, Brahms . . . "

I: "But that's not solo."

He: "Oh. Right."