November 21, 2009

Today I approached the Christmas music for the first time. Pretty much all the music I got is a complete fail. David Lanz is way too 'new-age' (read floral and off-the-mark entirely in many cases), Amy Grant does not have the melody in the piano part, it is accompaniment, and since I have no singers amongst me, this is not flying. Jazz at Christmas was a little unreadable to Classical-me.

The only thing that worked was an original copy of The Christmas Song that I have. It has a few complex minor chords to work out, and is a little jazzy in the rhythm I think, something that I'm not super strong at. But the melody was clear and it sounded pleasant...something seemingly hard to find amongst Christmas music.

And back to Granados... today I played only Fandango and Oriental. Not much to report, just working on the parts I've already mentioned, getting stronger all the time. The Lento Assai part of Oriental has me a little perplexed, I'm just going at it really slow, trying to manage the movement of the left hand.