I’ve been really lazy about piano challenges in the last three years. I have concentrated on Chopin etudes and nocturnes (emotionally easy) and I made myself “get back” the 1st Bach partita and in recent days, because I haven’t been biking or walking, I am spending more time at the piano and am reviewing more pieces.

Sophie Feuermann, my venerable piano mentor, member of a premier musical family of the 20th century, has been gone since late 2007. I saw her last earlier that year and for the first time ever, she could not give me a lesson and was being cared for by aides. A difficult loss. She died in November 2007 and would have been 100 in January 2008. I’m so sorry she didn’t make it. She would have been tickled.

When I was with Sophie in New York, I did not polish to performance level the pieces we worked on. She would drag me, sullen and difficult, into tackling some esoteric Bach, the 6th Partita, for example, and get me to where I could understand what was wanted, and just as I was getting into it, she’d push me into something else, equally inaccessible to the unmathematical mind and heavy with dotted 64th notes and hemi-semi-demi quavers. Oh, Oh, Oh, my brain is breaking. And she would explain, “You know what to do with it for now and you don’t need me for that. We have to go on. We can check it in a few months and I will take you to the next level with it.” She said it was best to work and focus on a piece, then put it aside and it would develop in your mind and would be better when you tackled it again, even without practicing.

I can remember working with heavy focus on certain Bach pieces and also the Beethoven Tempest and coming close to a nervous breakdown because of the intricate subtle changes at high speed where accuracy is supreme and you can’t forget the feeling and dynamics. My dreams were troubled. I am reminded of a book, “The Code Breakers” about the people who broke the Japanese code in World War II, and how a few of them collapsed from the mental strain.

When we moved down here and I only saw her two or three times (if that) a year, I dove into improving the technique of the pieces I thought were most likely to please the average listener, so most of that was Chopin. And I have a modest repertoire now of a number of things that people can ooh and aah over but I am feeling the lack of true musicianship. So I am reviewing more stuff.

I have decided to recapture the Liszt Harp Etude, a marvel (as all of his etudes are) of pyrotechnics, but not beyond me as I “had” it some years ago. So I am going over it and thinking, sheesh, did I ever play this? So it goes. But it’s coming back and the trick is to keep at it every day and soon something will click and my hands will say, oh, yeah, I can do this. Not quite like riding a bike, but close enough.

xx, Teal