In this month’s practice clinic, Graham Fitch answered questions on tips for practising a passage from Mozart’s Fantasy in C minor (K475), starting a new piece with Tchaikovsky’s Sweet Dreams used as a demonstration and bringing out the melody in an excerpt from Chopin’s Fantasie-Impromptu.
Practice clinic questions
- WA Mozart – Fantasy in C minor, K475 – I’m wondering the best way to learn and practice the Piu Allegro section is as I have no idea really how to go about it properly without making a mess of it!
- Learning a New Piece (Tchaikovsky Sweet Dreams from Album for the Young) – Your books are my first exposure to any type of practice or even the fact that there was a way one can practice other than sight reading and then playing the piece over and over! Can you suggest how I go about learning a new piece from scratch, including planning practice sessions and selecting which practice tools to use?
- Chopin – Fantasie-Impromptu in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 66 – I watched your walkthrough of this piece again and while your advice helps a lot, I am missing one detail concerning bars 17-21: what kind of movement and what kind of exercises do you recommend for bringing out the melody with the fifth finger? I have no problem bringing it out with the thumb, but 17-21 do not work well. Furthermore: in some bars of this section (16, 22-24) there is no melody (according to Henle), do you make these parts sound very different? And if so, how?
Next practice clinics
Our next practice clinic takes place on Wednesday 22nd September on our Facebook page at 12:00 BST. Please sign-up to our mailing list here for updates on future practice clinic dates.
Watch previous clinics
Recordings of past practice clinics are posted up on our Facebook page and YouTube channel shortly after each event. You can also view our full archive of previous events via these links!
How they work?
Online Academy subscribers can submit questions for practice clinics up to two weeks before each session. This can be done using the link provided on the Online Academy dashboard under “subscription benefits” (click here to sign-in and visit your dashboard).
Further information on how our practice clinics work is available here or please click here to find out more about the Online Academy.