Let's start at the very beginning

[rienzi]

Like Julie Andrews as Maria Von Trapp do you find the beginning of a work "a very good place to start" when you begin to learn a new piece or do you, as was recommended to me in my student days, go through the piece isolating technically difficult passages to master first?
I have to admit that, in latter years, I've reverted to my habit of beginning at page one and working through, except in the case of multi-movement works where I don't always learn them in order, but I wonder if the other method might be, in the long, run time-saving.

[sgearry]

Hi Rienzi, how are you? That's a very interesting method, but I can't help but feel that working from beginning to end adds a good feeling of structured progression. Moreover, the technically difficult passages would eventually be mastered in isolation, just in a different (but perhaps more satisfying) order. Are you a teacher too?

Stephen Gearry

[rienzi]

Hi, Stephen. I have taught in the past but am now at an age when I don't have to, if I so choose!
I'm taking the opportunity to learn some large-scale works that I've missed up to now and am working at the B minor Sonata of Chopin. I've found in the first movement that the work increases in complexity from the "development" onwards as the movement progresses and so I was wondering if I ought not to have started from that point in order to tackle the "pinnacle" of the movement first; the early part of the movement might have seemed easy by comparison and given a psychological boost  which might have helped me to dispatch the learning of the first part more quickly.
I'm certainly leaving the slow movement until last and am now working on the finale....again from the beginning! But then the whole of the movement is pretty demanding anyway.