Practice Session #3 with Cori
"Take 2" - Bach's Partita #1 Prelude
I always wonder how other pianists’ practice sessions look. What do they focus on? How do they think about music, and how do they make interpretive choices? What do they find difficult, and how do they work to overcome challenges?
My monthly Practice Sessions give you a behind-the-scenes look at how I work through technical and interpretive challenges at home with my beloved Vogel piano. In each 10-15 minute clip, I present the challenge(s) I am faced with along with strategies that I use to overcome difficulties and progress to mastery.
In this practice session, you will see how I am making progress on my trill work from Session #1 (without the aid of my dog, Jasper, this time!) using some of the same strategies I talked about last time: isolating hands, taking out the trill, and cheating the duration of the preceding note.
I also discuss how we can get Bach to sing by tastefully using rubato and dynamics to shape the phrase. Some of the ways I work on this are:
Making sure the first chord of the piece has “presence”
Paying attention to the entrance of different voices and making space for them dynamically
Identifying an arrival point in the phrase and shaping toward and away from it
Deciding whether voices are working together in collaboration or in competition with each other
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