A few weeks ago, my piano teacher and I looked at Clair de Lune and she said she thought I was more than ready to tackle it. I now have a new teacher (that’s how the uni music school works) and she agrees, so last night I started working on it. But I’m worried it’s too hard..

I was looking at the score for Arabesque No 1 and Reverie and they both look easier than CdL… and the patterns look quite similar to other things I’ve played.

So here’s my question: would playing either (or both) of these pieces, Reverie and Arabesque No 1, before starting CdL make CdL much easier to learn?

When I spent some time last night working on CdL, I felt like it was much harder to read through than I’d anticipated. One thing that felt challenging was making fingering decisions, especially in the section that starts in measure 27 …

It’s not that I felt the piece is beyond me, but more that it felt like I would have to devote so much time to it that I couldn’t really work on much else… which is not how I want to spend my piano time.

OTOH maybe I just need to spend a little more time with it (I was exhausted last night and didn’t get to the piano until after 9pm, so that didn’t help). Maybe working through fingering choices for a few key sections would make the rest of it easier to get through.

Anyway, so my core question right now is, would Reverie and/or Arabesque No 1 act like stepping stones to Claire de Lune? And if yes, which one would you recommend to start with?

Or is it possible that neither of these pieces would necessarily prepare me for CdL because CdL has challenges that are a bigger jump? (metaphorically speaking, not literal keyboard jump!)

TIA for any comments or advice any of you can share!