For the better part of the last decade I’ve been doing the Brahms 51 Exercises as technical warmups, and I have hated them. They’re tedious and demanding, but I do have to admit that they do wonders for my dexterity.

Recently I had the rebellious idea to try doing something different (gasp!) as part of my warmups, so I put a call out on Twitter to see what other professional pianists were up to.

DJ @JalbertDavid

@doodlyroses Marc Durand would make me learn the first page of most Chopin Études instead of doing exercises; I still think that’s a good idea generally, less dreary 🙂

12:12 AM ∙ Sep 28, 2022

David Jalbert—whose album of John Adams and Philip Glass I was once obsessed with—gave me the suggestion of running through the first pages of Chopin etudes, which is frankly a brilliant idea. Each etude in its entirety is a whole piece in its own right that demands actual practicing, but the first pages are generally musically consistent and just technically demanding enough to be challenging but not impossible warmups.