After hunting around for a while for a piano piece that suits my current abilities and tastes, I decided I’ll learn this Brahms piece next. Finally, after an unreasonably long initial struggle, I’ve found the finish line on Claude Debussy’s La fille aux cheveux de lin. Learning that piece was much more difficult than I expected, and I can only say that the difficulty had something to do with the key (G-flat-major), six flats refusing to all stay mapped in my head as I read (I particularly blame C-flat), and a couple of other conventions in the printed music that kept tripping me up. At any rate, the more I memorized the piece, the more straightforward it became to play.
Also I must admit that a combination of real-life crises and an overwhelming if temporary addiction to the game RimWorld severely squashed my practice discipline for a couple of weeks. I mean, my scientist Tomato died after a nervous-breakdown-induced-walkabout in 130 degree weather! And this was brought on by a combination of heatstroke treatment in my ugly hospital, plus my heartlessly ignoring the warning in his personal needs menu that he was greedy for an impressive bedroom! Well, there went my piano practice motivation for a while. Poor Tomato.
Tomato, prior to his demise. “I’m greedy. My room is pathetic! I want a really impressive bedroom.”
Thankfully, I myself have mostly recovered, from laziness at least. However, when someone around here makes unreasonable demands, we now say they are going to “die of greedy for an impressive bedroom.”
The opening section of this piece reminds me a little of an Astor Piazzolla tango, although this one was written in the 1850s. Then the middle section, like a chorus of little bells, before the reprise to a lighter version of the opening theme.
Brahms Ballade Op.10 No.3 – Score (from freescores.com)
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