Go Play Project – Week 3
Like many piano teachers I rely heavily on the compositions of Dennis Alexander, Melody Bober and Robert Vandall to light a fire under my students. Their music is fun to perform and has a big sound. It’s very approachable music and the musical patterns make much of it relatively easy.
However, I realize it’s also necessary to challenge my students with some meatier classics. I remember performing the Ravel Sonatine in high school and having a heck of a time hearing all the inner voices, let alone trying to isolate them and “bring them out.” But this week I realized how lucky I was that I could pull out the Sonatine and whip it into shape for tonight’s “Go Play” upload. Hard to believe, but it was still in my fingers (wrong notes and all) but this time around, it was so much easier and more enjoyable to play.
Let’s make lessons fun for our students, but let’s not forget that they might sit down at the piano thirty or forty years down the road and want to be able to play a Chopin Nocturne, a Bach Fugue, or a piece by Debussy or Ravel.
You can hear this week’s Go Play installment here – Ravel Sonatine II: Mouvement de Menuet.
