All of the dream, how does it mean

During the summer I find it really hard to do pedal-to-the-metal hardcore practicing, even though in theory summer is an ideal time to cram in all the new rep learning while other things are going more slowly. I suspect this is a vestigial cycle from when I was in school (my teachers would give me my new rep at the end of spring in hopes I’d use the summer to get a head start, but I never actually did that—who does?) but it’s also just harder to be ultra disciplined during a season that inherently feels lazy and laid-back.

I’ve been feeling pretty guilty about the fact that my daily practicing isn’t as productive as it typically is, and that honestly I hardly want to practice at all right now. Then I read this in the latest post from Sarah Fritz’s Clara Schumann newsletter this week:

A summery fun tidbit—I thought I’d share Clara’s usual patterns in the summer. For the most part, she played almost no concerts from mid-June through mid-October. She stopped practicing and played piano only for fun for months. […] She wouldn’t restart her technical and performance prep until September when she began preparing for the season, which did not begin until the last week in October. Eugenie Schumann accounts in her memoir the sound of the piano filling the house when her mother would begin practicing again at the end of the summer. It’s a joyful recounting, as though when Clara began her practice again, she undertook it with relief and excitement.
 
I suspect these months off were an essential secret to the longevity of Clara's career—to maintaining joy in her artform, to staving off jaded feelings for over 60 years.

Clara Schumann didn’t do hardcore practicing in the summer either!! (You hear that, all my past teachers?!?!) This makes me feel a lot better. (I also recall that when I did a report on Yo-Yo Ma in elementary school, I read that he takes at least a month off in the summers where he doesn’t touch his cello at all.)