Technique you may have, sincere you are (Yoda would have said).

By the way, I've just realized that my signature is all the way wrong, now it should be "Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try."

I think Chris just gets bored easily when he practices, and therefore feels the need to move on to new stuff before he's perhaps ready. So, "compulsive pianist" is a rather good description. I'm probably better described as an "obsessive pianist", since I play the same repertoire for years, trying to improve it over time by small increments. I can't even bring myself to familiarize myself with the entire WTC by listening, much less by playing. I get obsessed with certain pieces and neglect the rest. But I've done that with Chopin as well, and eventually familiarized myself with pretty much his entire repertoire (I've spent longer listening to Chopin than to Bach).

Monica, I somehow missed this post:


In the Mikuli edition, the fingerings are almost always Chopin's - especially the tricky ones. But, there are a few places in the 25/6 where you will find different fingerings for different tricky spots, and for stuff like that, Mikuli is reputed to have invented his own in a couple of places (I'm not a scholar on it so I can't tell you which places). I've often used different fingerings just because everyone's hand is different and sometimes it just doesn't work for me the way it's written.

But most of the fingerings in the 25/6 simply cannot be done any other way. Just read through it, and try to imagine doing it a different way. But I think that this etude is a lot easier for people with smaller hands - the less finger you have to get in the way of the other fingers in that complicated fingering, the better. It makes it difficult to reach a few things in it, but I think overall, the smaller hand is an advantage. I had a discussion with Pete about that once.

Actually, recently, I rather enjoy practicing and polishing, and I do believe it shows. Of recent recordings, it can't be said I was not ready for them as has happened in the past. Of course, one could always do better yet - but is diamond perfection all there is to music ? And yes, I do need to move on as well. I can't get obsessed by one piece and neglect another.

Yeah, I suppose I was talking in the context of the WTC recordings, of which I have only listened to a few (and perhaps the wrong ones). But we've had this conversation before, about your approach to practicing, so you could say I was quoting you.

And I remember your polish of the b minor sinfonia. You sacrificed a tad of tempo and maybe a few hours more of your time (probably less), and made a huge difference.

Actually I am satisfied with few (if any) of my WTC and KDF recordings and will need to redo them at some stage. But such an enterprise is not to be undertaken so lightly as I did

That's ok. I just 'elved' you! (see seasons greeting thread in general forum)

Could be because your attitude towards yourself seems to be pretty masochistic, and unless your name is Richter, you rather cannot afford this . Have you tried to inflate your ego a bit and blast around how great you are? it could help

Oh, dear....I don't think inflating my ego is a good idea! I'm pretty critical of myself when it comes to piano playing, but I have a tendency to be pretty arrogant otherwise.

I sense a good deal of coquetrie here, that's a good beginning
Besides the way we do perceive ourselves has very little or nothing in common with how others perceive us. There is no valid reason to share this precious knowledge. I noticed also that as long as things are not verbalized they tend not to exist, so what we are actually talking about is an effective way of mixing a semantic and non semantic means of communication. This just cannot work, I guess we should stick solely to the music,stay faithful to ourselves and let the "critics" do all the otherways invertive talking

So avoid writing "étude" in the beginning of a sentence.
French capital letters does not need any accent. it's frustrating to write Etude instead of étude. hehe

haha, thanks for the tip, Felipe!