Is Clair de Lune too hard for me?

[ShiroKuro]

ShiroKuro said:

the degree of difficulty I feel from CdL is inversely proportional to how tired I am.

Or just proportional, depending on how you read that…

The less tired I am, the easier it feels. The more tired I am, the harder it feels.

Whatever. That’s why I only do qualitative research.

[kluurs]

You can definitely play it - I'll send you everything you need. DM your email and I'll send you a marked up score - with fingerings and other suggestions.

[jon-nyc]

You can absolutely play it. It’s no more difficult than many of the things you’ve recorded.

In m27 just work on the arpeggios first and add the right hand melody after. And even then practice slowly.

[ShiroKuro]

@jon-nyc @kluurs thank you guys!!

@kluurs I'll DM you now, thank you so much!!!!

[ShiroKuro]

So thanks to @kluurs I had a very productive practice session last night, with much less frustration! I was working from a Henle edition score, which was fairly high quality. The nice thing about the Henle app is that you can adjust the size, but on the CdL score, the only thing you can change is the number of staves per page. This helps, but you can’t change the number of measures per staff line.

The score I had has five measures in the first line. The score Kluurs shared with me has three. All the notes are the same of course, but this score is just so much easier to read.

Then of course his score has tons of info, fingerings and more, so that is very much appreciated.

Yesterday I focused my practice on the first 26 measures, and it just felt like I made so much more progress.

Yay!

My next lesson is Monday and I’m hoping to have looked at some of the @kluurs !!

[AndyD]

Looking forward to hearing you learn & play it Shirokuro. I'll struggle along beside you.

Suddenly I miss my old (literally) piano teacher. She was in her 70's, and would occasionally demonstrate what she wanted by taking the seat and playing, always so beautifully. How, musically, would she have played it...

I realise there are very good players here and I'd really love to hear any of you (by my count at least 4) who know it, if you can spare 5 minutes for a quick recording please.

[ShiroKuro]

@AndyD said:

Looking forward to hearing you learn & play it Shirokuro.

thank you!!

I'll struggle along beside you.

Yay! It's good to have a partner! (Partner in crime in struggle)

[ShiroKuro]

@kluurs in measure 26, for the last rolled chord, are you moving that low C into the right hand, and then having the lowest note be the Gb?

[kluurs]

@ShiroKuro said:

@kluurs in measure 26, for the last rolled chord, are you moving that low C into the right hand, and then having the lowest note be the Gb?

If I understand you correctly, I play all 4 notes of the bass in the left hand - and the top 3 in the right.

[ShiroKuro]

Perfect, that’s what I wanted to know! (There was some direction on the score I didn’t understand. )

It’s rolled so I will do it that way as well. (First four notes w LH)

[kluurs]

After answering I looked at what Bavouzet actually does - and he does it the same (4 bass notes in left hand) - see his video at around 16:34 - though he plays it a bit more straight forwardly than I do. Both Bavouzet and Debussy would probably hate that I introduce a ritard there - but then I'm not playing for a jury.

[ShiroKuro]

@kluurs said:

After answering I looked at what Bavouzet actually does - and he does it the same (4 bass notes in left hand) - see his video at around 16:34

thanks!

Both Bavouzet and Debussy would probably hate that I introduce a ritard there - but then I'm not playing for a jury.

Me neither!

Oh wait, conceivably, I could end up playing this for a jury...

(It would be my choice though)