Jan 10 (Var 2)

Worst recording yet, mostly because I was just. done. Not upset or anything, just finally a little burned out on practicing. It's been a long, stressful first day of classes! Still, I have some commentary for you! I will always come through for you, reader, even when I'm tired and would rather be doing something else. Take a look at this nonsense:

It's the little 4 followed by the little 5 over 2. Those are fingerings. That 4 is sharp, so it's higher, and 4 means ring finger. So you play a D# with your ring finger, and then you play a B with your pinky?? not smoothly, you don't. Or, at least I don't. Maybe you do, if you're Glenn Gould or whatever. And of course it's not just the pinky, you *also* have to use your index finger (the 2) at the same time, as part of a legato run that isn't the same, and also isn't the opposite of what the left hand is doing. 

*This* is finger gymnastics.

By the way, this one feels old to me. Like, there's some chords that sound antiquated; you might overhear them wafting gently from a royal court through a stone hallway kind of antiquated. Parts of this variation really do that for me, how about you?

Let me leave you with some positive commentary, too. Here's some more really cool parallelism. Take a look at the left hand (the bottom staff) right at the beginning:

G-F-G-E then the pattern repeats down a step, F-E-F-D, and again E-D-E-C. Here it is again a little later the middle, but this time it climbs!

Now look again two images up, this time at the top staff. The long E followed by a stutter, then a desceding line. That's the first measure. This theme returns, again reversed, at the end of the piece, and in the *left* hand:

I don't care who you are, that's great stuff.