STEVEN 5/4: Happy Star Wars Day! (May the 4th)
I love this fugue. The first subject is stately and majestic, the second subject adds some great energy, and the re-introduction of the first subject is epic and carrys through all the way to the end of the piece. If only there weren’t a few measures that require an extra hand or two. The prelude is fun, too, though I chalk at least some of that up to the fact that it’s easy enough I can play a lot of it at or near tempo.
I’ll see how I feel when we finish the book, but there’s strong potential for me to try again on learning this piece.
HELEN 5/4: Bravo, Steven, for keeping me on schedule here, and for this excellent summary of today’s Shostakovich. May the fourth be with you, as well.
I’ll start by saying that I utterly butchered yesterday’s offering. Loved it, but, whoa. Today’s went better for two reasons: 1. It’s easier than yesterday’s, and 2. I was shocked to turn eagerly to the fugue and find the measures numbered, and some tricky sections with fingering that I’ve written out. I then thought, ah, I must have worked on this with Steven some 11 or 12 years ago. As I played it, I remembered it well, and yes, it is wonderful, and yes, with extremely difficult sections that do seem to require an extra hand somewhere.
Today’s Prelude has definite Grace-like qualities. Just . . . saying.
This is a momentous undertaking! How is it going? Sabrina is expecting her scores any day now. She’ll have an interesting story to tell about that. I’m hoping the rest of you are enjoying the difficulty. Really, you can’t think about much else, except maybe (in my case) the home health aide listening to the butchery from the next room, and muse, “I wonder what she thinks I’m playing?”