Unfinished Business Challenge: Week One!
Welcome to the First Week of the "Unfinished Business" challenge!
- Choose an piece that you have started to practice but never fully committed to finishing. It could be a an iconic masterpiece, a technical challenge, a sweet little miniature or a piece that you played a long time ago and always wanted to refresh! You're encouraged to experiment with pieces from composers you're not accustomed to or push your boundaries with a technically demanding work. If you haven't already done it, share with us in the forum which pieces you're going to work on! 馃幖
- You might like to think about how you will structure your practice over the next four weeks and share that in the forum: is the piece in clear sections so you can devote a week to each section? Are there particular technical passages that you need to spend extra time on? Is there something in particular you'd like help from me with?
- Commit to regular practice (whatever that means from you) and share a video of how it's going so far at the end of the week!
Inspiration:
* If you are looking for some inspiration for this challenge, why not try to learn one of these pieces using the course from tonebase: Rabaud's challenging Solo de Concours as taught by Cecilia Kang or maybe one of the movements (I'd start with the first!) of Saint-Saen's Sonata, as taught by Anna Hashimoto!
* Or you could take on more technical exercises: why not try the studies by Rose or Cavallini (you should be able to find the PDFs on IMSLP)
* Or if that doesn't suit you: how about some chamber music repertoire (perhaps some great wind quintet pieces?) or something you've got to learn this year to play with your band and you've been putting off. Stick around for lots of motivation here on the forum!
16 replies
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Hi everyone! Since this challenge is a bit more open ended, I'm going to join you and complete some of my own "unfinished business". A piece I always wanted to learn and never quite finished was Jean Francaix's Concerto for Clarinet. Extremely challenging but fun piece - the piano transcription is extremely difficult and playing with an orchestra is not really part of my professional life so there was never any vehicle for pushing myself to learn it but I'm going to use this challenge to "finish" the first movement.
For me that means by the end of the month posting a video of myself playing all of this movement (I think this will be challenging since I also have three other concerts this month!)
So there are three parts to this movement, the opening, the big cadenza, and the end. My plan is to start with the cadenza this week, since it's the hardest part and my habit is to always work on the opening! -
I'd like to work on Weber's Concertino. Sharon Kam has a great video about it already on tone base so that's a good place to start. And also an amazing performance of her playing it with the Berlin Philharmonic on Youtube. My goal is to do a zoom audition for my concert band by the end of August. :)
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Hello, I'd like to revisit Bela Kovacs' "Hommage a Manuel de Falla." I started it a few years ago during my COVID quarantine and wanted a challenge. It was still way too difficult for me, so my teacher wasn't that enthusiastic about it. Since then, I've picked it up every now and then. I want to focus on some of the passages that give me difficulty and concentrate on the last page. I particularly like this guy's interpretation. https://youtu.be/6vSxS6sedo8?si=PC_0KeOS-s_OFqA6 Unfortunately, I only have until August 21st, as I'm going on vacation for three weeks.
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I'm going to challenge a few people in the community to work on something this month.... let me see, who do I know who is working on some repertoire who might like some gentle encouragement over the next few weeks...
We also have a new community member this week, maybe would like to join in? :) -
Hi everyone! I am posting my first progress video. This is the long cadenza from the first movement of the Francaix concerto!
Just to say:
* please keep in mind I am your teacher here but also working on my own things - so this is quite an advanced piece of repertoire and you might not be there (yet!) but I hope it doesn't make you feel intimidated, I and the rest of the community are here to support you wherever you are in your clarinet playing! I just really wanted to join in on this challenge :)
* I am going away for the weekend for a mini break in the countryside so I had to post early, but I feel like I really could have used a few more days with the cadenza - that said, the video went a LOT better than I expected. I'm looking forward to comparing it with the end of the month!
* I'm not happy with my posture in this video, the angle doesn't help me but I think when I get really tired this is what happens, so I'm looking forward to my weekend off to reset :) -
Hi everyone, I started with the last page and just watched how it went. I think I need to practice it slower and more precisely now. This is my plan for the next days
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I watched Sharon Kam's tonebase course on Weber's Concertino and am chunking It down into similar segments for practicing. Here's the first technically challenging moment so I'm working slowly, thinking about it as a scale in thirds. It needs to go about twice this fast!