Over the weekend, I put in two sessions on the Sonata. In the first session, I determined final tempi for each of the three movements. I put a metronome range on each of the three movements so I have a general idea of about how fast I'll be taking the movements. Please note that I rarely use the metronome all the way through a piece. In the case of the first movement, I checked two other editions of the Sonata (a Schnable edition, and a Polish edition) both of which give metronome markings. It is interesting to note that the Schnable metronome numbers are faster than the Polish edition, and that Schanbel changes metronome markings in the course of a piece. This has been a matter of some discussion among pianists for some time, as everyone says that a movement should be played at a uniform tempo. But if you try putting the metronome to a recording, you'll find that after a few beats, the metronome and the player rarely coincide! In fact, the metronome marking is a general guide to a “tempo band” that can vary as much as one marking up or down from the established tempo. If this is done with the musical properties of the composition in mind, the listener never notices. Quite the contrary, it will sound natural and musically logical. However, a mechanically strict tempo may sound a-musical. For further reading on the fascinating subject of tempo, I highly recommend the book Shaping Time: Music, the Brain and Performance by David Epstein. It's a lengthy book, and a hard read in places, but nevertheless revealing study of our perception of time. It goes a long way to prove what I've already felt for a number of years - that the metronome is of only limited usefulness in “curing” time problems.
Anyway, having establised general metronome ranges (and I promise to give you those in an upcoming blog) I then went through each of the movements, start to finish, not stopping to correct anything. This allowed me a chance to diagnose where I was in terms of progress in learning and memorization. I used the tempi in metronome range I had chosen for each movement. Obviously, this was of most interest in the third movement, which is the fastest. Immediately after playing each movement, I went back and worked out difficult or insecure spots. I did this on both Saturday and Sunday. By Sunday, things were flowing much better. So here is my progress so far.
1. all three movements are memorized
2. if push came to shove, I could give a 'performance' of the sonata today. It would be rough in spots, but about where it needs to be in terms of continuity.
3. the next week's practice will consist of
a. identifying 'rough' or 'trouble' spots
b. striving for musical continuity
So I'm looking for a balance between working details in the piece - concentrating on those places where things aren't going as well as I'd like, and playing the movments as a whole, looking for overall shape, listening of clarity of line, and direction of idea. I'll also start paying more strict attention to dynamics, and those pesky Beethovenesque subito pianos that dot his works like quite land-mines.