This year’s recording for my mom’s birthday is the first movement, Modéré, of Ravel’s Sonatine in f# minor.
I purposefully didn’t listen to my 1980 recording of this same piece while I was re-learning it. When I did hear it, I had changed more than other pieces I’ve re-learned. I use more pedal than before, but I think it’s more consistent. I also didn’t speed up in the middle part like before, but when the piece returns to the main theme, I was faster in the 1980 recording than the beginning of the piece, then seemed to gradually slow down to match the first part. The speed-up was interesting, but today I would have returned to the original tempo.
As always, I didn’t play this anywhere near perfectly, but that was also the case of the previous recording.
You can look at all of the birthday piano posts.
