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July 30, 2005 at 9:59 PM

This week, my teacher is having me learn Bach's Partita No. 2. It is a lot of fun. I have not enjoyed practicing in a long time. My teacher would just give me a concerto, and I would think, oh great, this will be a lot of work, but still practice, but end up forcing myself to practice 2 to 4 hours a day.

The first day i worked on Bach, I must have spent 3 hours alone learning the Allemande. Then I began the Corrente. The next day, I finished the Corrente, and started and finished most of the Sarabande. The day after that, I worked on intonation with the chords in the Sarabande. And then Friday and today, I worked on the Gigue.

The Gigue is the hardest movement, besides the Chaccone, which I am not learning, because it would be too much for me to learn it this week.

The gigue is so technical. I started out playing it at 40 bpm. and then sped it up to 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 72.

And today, some parts were still giving me problems, so I went over those parts at 40, then 50, 60, 72.

It is amazing how hard Bach is. I went over all the movements again today, and I had trouble with this one lick in the Courante that I thought I had fixed.

I also am practicing Sinfonia Concertante by Mozart. There are no fingerings written in the part, so I'm having to come up with my own.

I bought the Bach S&Ps on CD, too. I wanted to get Szeryng playing it, but my mom won't let me buy CDs off the internet. I went to Border's, and all they had was Milstein's recording from the 50s.

I ended up buying it. It's amazing that is costs $22 for two CDs of a dead guy (no offense to Nathan Milstein).

I like it. I'm sure many people will disagree with me if I say it is a good recording. But, it is a perfectly satisfactory recording of one guy's interpretation of Bach.

Wow, so you're learning the S&P's in order? I learned Allemande, Sarabanda, Gigue, and now I'm learning from the first Sonata Presto...That is interesting. I have Szeryng's CD...couldn't you get Borders to special order it for you? Not that N.M. is bad...I don't know, I've never heard him...
Nathan Milstein's recording of the Bach S&P is just as good as Szeryng's, if not better.
Nathan Milstein, although a dead guy, is one of the greatest ever. You could do a lot worse than listening to him play the S&P. Some people believe his recording of them is the greatest ever. One can always learn something from a dead guy who played so beautifully.
I never caught on with Milstein's Bach for some reason, it just never interested me.
She doesn't seem to get much press on this site for some reason, but Lara St John's recording of the partita is, IMO, excellent in every regard. I have another disc by Elizabeth Wall-something that sounds like a robot is playing them.