Jan 3 (Aria + Var 1)

Aria:



Variation 1:


Moving on. There is a mistake in the Aria - I'm still freezing up when i hit 'record'. I'm happy with how well I can play it, and I'm going to treat the nerves as outside the bounds of the project, at least for now, so there's your final version of the Aria and on we go...

To a really great variation, right off the bat! This movement is so joyful, both to listen to *and* to play. It's jumping all over the place, it's got stylistic contrast. The hands jump over eachother, too, in more than one place! The main idea of it, I think, is to put smooth 16th notes against shorter 8th notes; the hands take turns with each role. This one also lays bare the idea that Bach is playing around with variations; the two parts of this variation are mirror images of each other. It's a lot like an inverted chord or arpeggio, but stretched out to the length of 60 measures.

We're already reaching the limits of what I've done previously. As you can hear, the first part of this variation is already pretty well under my fingers, but the second is not. I'm leaving in my mistakes and restarts for these recordings. I'm not trying to fool anybody here; my goal is to document the process of learning this piece. I'm hoping it will provide extra motivation for me to get over my recording anxiety as well.