December 11, 2019--Practice Blog

A long day. It is finals week, and students are frantically trying to get me to squeeze one more point out of their work in order to get a better grade. For the most part, it is not working. The day began by giving an exam to a single student who needed to leave town earlier than the time the exam was supposed to be given. That was fine. I graded it, and dealt with some emails before finally getting some piano practice in. I gave the full fledged final at 12:30, and the last student turned in their exam at 1:30. I then proceeded to grade them all. The goal was to get it done before 2:30. I didn't quite make it. I sat through an organ jury and then went back and finished grading. Then, I practiced piano for a little bit before I gave a piano lesson to one of my private students--a wonderful 9 year old who is starting Clementi's C major Sonatina, Op. 36 (not sure which number right off the top of my head. I picked up my wife and we went to the other side of town for dinner (burgers and onion rings) and organ practice. Choir practice happened from 7:30 until 8, I then ran to another church and arrived just in time for a second rehearsal for a concert coming up this Sunday. Afterwards, my wife let me pick up a bottle of scotch and we came home. And that brings me to now.

On the organ, I practiced stuff for this weekend. I am playing Brahms' Es ist Ein Rose Entsprungen for the prelude on Sunday and will play Willcock's Postlude on Mendelssohn for the postlude. I also worked on Dupre's Il est ne le divin enfant--made sure the majority of the piece was in my fingers and up to speed. The fugue at the end is slightly under speed, but I will work on it more in the next two days. I finished my practice with the fugue from BWV 536. Still way under speed, but feels comfortable.

At the piano, I worked mostly on accompaniments for this week and weekend. Tomorrow, I will be playing for a high school's choirs. The music isn't all that bad, but there is just a lot of it. And the conductor likes faster tempi. I finished my practice with Op. 10 No. 4 of Chopin. Got it up to qn=100.