The Appassionata Project

[rachmaninoff_forever]

You are worried about 4 notes in a separate voice in the right hand? Try to play Op. 111 and come back at this, you'll think it's child's play.

Okay so I sent this to my former teacher and he was like, 'yeah man, you're not supposed to hold the notes.  It's not a freaking fugue!!!  Anyways you're already playing so fast that nobody's gonna notice if you sustain the notes or not.

[j_menz]

How the heck are you supposed to play this? 

The right hand melody in the middle bar.  The tied notes.

545

The rest is entirely managable with 12 & 3

And yes, people will notice if you don't hold them.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

545

The rest is entirely managable with 12 & 3

And yes, people will notice if you don't hold them.

Come on dude!!!

[j_menz]

Come on dude!!!

LOL. More Bach for you, I think.    It shouldn't be that difficult.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

LOL. More Bach for you, I think.    It shouldn't be that difficult.

I think I can get away with it using middle pedal.

[j_menz]

I think I can get away with it using middle pedal.

Just do the fingering, it isn't that difficult and will be more useful long term.  Save that middle pedal for your first Bach/Busoni. 

[austinarg]

I think I can get away with it using middle pedal.

It is remarkable how far are you willing to go in order to stay away from Bach.

[birba]

How the heck are you supposed to play this? 

The right hand melody in the middle bar.  The tied notes.

Those slurs are a musical indication - to bring out that motive that alternates in the two voices.   Certainly not a legato sign!   On the contrary.  You have to "ping" that b-flat and IMMEDITATELY relax the hand. 
I see this appassionata project - starstruck's little gem - really infected a lot of us!

[starstruck5]

Those slurs are a musical indication - to bring out that motive that alternates in the two voices.   Certainly not a legato sign!   On the contrary.  You have to "ping" that b-flat and IMMEDITATELY relax the hand. 
I see this appassionata project - starstruck's little gem - really infected a lot of us!

I am just saddened I didn't complete the sonata myself -I think a lot of pianists underestimate the stamina and determination and hours needed -not to mention skill!  Another thing which counted against me was having so few hours to dedicate to practising!  Maybe I will get there one day -never say never -

[lotal]

Well, the other day I just stopped my own Appassionata project. It took me about 2.5 year to get it to this stage, while I never before learned any other sonata of Beethoven. Actually, it was a kind of unreasonable plunge for me to mess with the sonata, when it was way ahead of my technical abilities (I mostly self-study, 52 yo), but anyway I managed to get to some results after all. The performance is not as good that I would willingly demonstrate it among general public or publish on YouTube, but I am not ashamed of it when it is being inspected on 'medical' reasons to compare or make any conclusions. I do not regret of all the time spent on practising it (I would buy a decent car if the time was converted into my professional activity as programmer), as it was a great learning experience and I started getting much fun and joy when I play the sonata just for myself. Stopping the personal project means that I will not practice the sonata daily, although I plan to return to it once in a while, probably in months, to check if I could further improve. Now it is actually a wall for me. Maybe not quite a wall, but cost of time is tremendous.
So, here is my recorded performance of the day, if anybody is interested:
mov.1: https://www.divshare.com/download/23687934-923
mov.2: https://www.divshare.com/download/23687935-27d
mov.3: https://www.divshare.com/download/23687936-d2e

[birba]

I really enjoyed listening to this. (Except at the end when you decided to do the repeat, and then for some reason it started all over from the beginning). This is a great example of what an amateur can achieve when they have the passion to persist.  Someone might say you should have chosen an easier sonata, you bit off more than you can chew, blah blah.  But i know what you mean about the appassionata bug.  It bit me, too, last year, and i lived with it, dreampt about it, hated it, loved it, gave it up, restarted...but i persisted as well, and i even finally performed it in a small concert.  You really accomplished a lot.  I don't understand why you have technical problems with some easier passages and yet have great finger facility.  I won't go into the details.  Just to say  there are a few misreadings that you can fix.  The main one are the trills at the beginning. And you play around  too much with the tempo.  That would have solved a lot of your problems actually.
But anyway, like i said, it was interesting listening to this. You definitely have a talent and i think someone who could follow and advise you would do you a lot of good.

[lotal]

Thank you, birba, for cheching and valuable critique. Yes, I miss a lot an intelligent teacher who would immerse him/herself into my problems. About a year ago I tried with a teacher, asking her to follow my play and advise on the sonata, but she was quite reluctant to do, prefering her own direction, so and we proceeded with another piece before we soon parted. Sometimes it seems to me that I might see my drawbacks myself, but during my play I share all my attention to various aspects, and I may handle just few of them at once, while some others (which seem of less priority at the moment) have to be left without control. For instance, I really hear all the lack of sync, especially in the 3rd movement. Since I could not manage all the aspects simultaneously, not all of them were laid into the subconscious, and I am aware of many of them, I could not bring the piece to the performance level. Thus, my thoughts on further improvement mostly are not on hearing and picking up my errors (again, it seems that I hear many of them), but on the ways how to handle all that mess (at an higher hierarchical level).
I used to play the beginning thrills longer, but as I started checking with metronome I found that I fell out of bars with the longer thrills, that was why I made them shorter...

[pfclassical12]

Oh boy, I really wish I had signed up and kept up with this thread sooner. I have a lot of reading to do, lol!

I just appreciate that this thread is here; a lot of great technical advice. This is exactly what I was looking for. I am a pianist out of school (out of work, lol - just saying my primary source of income is not music related). Anyway, not having had a private lesson in years has forced me to solve a lot o technical issues I am having. I have brought back my fingers to play the third movment at a recital I am giving in a month, so yall's thread will definitely help me in my preparations.

Much gratitude to you wonderful teachers and musicians out there   

There's a lot of junk on the internet, and it's comforting to know - that although google thinks that when I start to type 'beethoven,' I'm not nessecarily trying to find one of million videos for 'fur elise,' lol - it's just wonderful to know that a site like this is attainable! Keep on playin' ladies and gents