Florence and Fanny
Dispatches from the Imperfection Lab
No matter how long I’ve been at this, I continue to be astounded at the basic premise of practicing. One day it feels like I can barely play something, and then the next day…I can??? You mean sustained incremental work over time actually works?
I was feeling kind of down about feeling like I could barely play Florence Price’s Fantasie Nègre No. 2 despite working on a small bit each day, and then one day this week just played it through and…huh. There are so many bumps and hairy moments, and I haven’t even gotten around to drilling any of the passages for accuracy but…it’s coming together!
Then, I had limited time this week to work on the Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel concerto, but I was determined to make some progress, so I picked a passage, sat down, drilled it for a bit, and less than an hour later went from “I can barely sight-read this thing that technically was my idea” to “Holy crap, I can play this at tempo!”
Practicing! What a concept.