Day 26 – October 26th – Dark evenings

The clocks changed today, and I was reminded of just how dark it gets in English winters when the sun set at 5:30pm. Looking on the bright side: it’s now lighter for my morning run, and as yet nowhere near as cold or dark as the year I spent in Helsinki!

I wonder whether my scales might be suffering from happening the hour after Practice Book 6 exercises? These last two days, with the exercises at a faster tempo, the hour of scales has felt sluggish and below par. The exercises, though, have felt good. Tomorrow we switch back to the Moyse interval exercises.

I spent a lot of time today on Andersen Op. 15 No. 4 – it’s hard! There are three things I’ve been trying to focus on:

– A really clear staccato, but always expressivo as Trevor says it should be.

– Internal dynamics, so making sure that the low notes are equally as loud (and resonant) as the higher ones. As a result, the lower ones have a bit more oomph in the staccato, while the higher ones are shorted with a bit more ping.

– Large-scale dynamics, played fully and as if it were my last ever performance (c.f. Davies book from yesterday). Fitting this in with the other two points is tricky.

Despite my work, I’m quite prepared to be asked to present this study next week as well, and in some ways would quite like another week to really get working properly.