From Beethovenian assholery to Romeo and Juliet basicness

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Happy Barbie movie premiere day to all who celebrate! When I went to buy my movie tickets this morning all the reasonably timed showings in the area were more or less sold out (I say “more or less” because for the sake of my neck I am simply not going to sit in the farthest corner seat in the front row, so to me a showing where that’s the only seat available is, for all intents and purposes, sold out) so the hype appears very, very real.

I am taking all the rewards and treats where I can because this week I have been painstakingly relearning the original Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel G Minor piano sonata.

For those of you who haven’t been tracking my personal workload closely: I worked on Fanny’s piano sonata for three-ish years (thanks, pandemic), getting it embedded deeply in my muscle memory, before performing it a few times in 2022. Then I had to switch gears and learn an all-new concerto version that Patricia Wallinga arranged, which despite having the exact same melodies and harmonies uses completely different notes and textures, so I had to practice the concerto version really intensely this year to overwrite the muscle memory of the original solo version.