After the mini-holiday yesterday, today was back into practice. If anything, I felt a bit sluggish after the rest day, and was surprised by how quickly my embouchure seemed to tire. I still need to develop a better approach to Reichert No. 2 and 4 so that I’m not always frustrated with trying to memorise them. However, the sequences were a lot better today. It seems that I play them best when thinking about the tonic of each arpeggio but then leaving my fingers to deal with the rest of it.

The sight-reading material I was prescribed on Monday isn’t easy! It may be “nineteenth-century crap” (Trevor’s words, I agree), but it’s full of turns, sequences and little catches for the unwary eye. I need to work at not stopping when I make a mistake, the ability to plough on is key!

The two Moyse melodic studies I’m preparing this week are both melodic and very lyrical. My focus with them today (of course) was playing really beautifully and expressively, but I’m making sure to pay attention to wide dynamics, intonation and the ends of phrases in aid of this. It would really make my Monday if I could play them in a way that’s expressively satisfactory!