Beethoven Op. 110 1st movement for Tonebase June 2024 Recital

I played the first movement of Beethoven's Opus 110 piano sonata live this afternoon for Tonebase's June online recital. Even though I was super nervous, I'm glad I did it :)

I decided a few weeks ago that I would play this first movement from memory, but it wasn't until two days ago (at my piano lesson) that I committed to playing it live (vs pre-recording). There's always anxiety involved with playing "live" from memory, even if not in person, but it helped to remember to breathe whenever I had a moment to mentally regroup. After playing it for my piano teacher on Thursday, I also felt relatively comfortable with being able to recover from mistakes instead of getting completely stuck, which definitely came in handy during this performance. Fortunately, my fellow Tonebase pianists are always so encouraging and supportive, that really helped me avoid freezing and instead be able to skate on.

Opus 110 is a true work of art of a sonata, and I started learning it about a year ago, then set it aside in the autumn because I was getting stuck on the 2nd and 3rd movements. I picked up the 1st movement again in mid-May in anticipation of today's recital. Having taken a several-month break from the piece helped me have a better understanding of timing, and discover patterns and nuances I'd overlooked the first time.

I'm just starting work on the second and third movements again, but those will take a good while. I can't fathom playing the entire work from memory (2nd movement's tricky trio! two fugue sections in the 3rd movement! tricky tremolos in the finale!), but I guess that's Future Judy's problem ;-) I'll have to keep in mind that doing the score study and harmonic analysis of the 1st movement really helped mitigate several almost-memory slips today.

[Recorded this on my Pixel 6's internal mic concurrently with the Zoom performance where I used an AMT40 mic inside my piano. Portrait view for those who like to see the pedal action!]