JAN 10-12, NADINE SAD THEN FRIENDS & FRENCH FRIES. INTENSE PIANO PRACTICE FOR ME

On January 10th, Nadine felt very wistful and sad about stuff. She'd really wanted to go to the orchestra rehearsal, but her counts were so low that it wasn't safe, even though we'd contacted her section members and none of them were sick.

She cried -- it was the first time I'd seen her cry in a long time. She was missing her old friends who'd gone off to college, and on top of that she couldn't visit the people she knew here. It was a long, hard night.

I did run into Betty, and Claire was in town -- Claire would be over here the next day (Monday), and the timing couldn't have been better.

FRENCH FRIES and FRIEND VISIT FOR NADINE
Claire was in town, and came over on Monday -- she and Nadine sat on the couch and watched videos and it was a treat for Nadine after all the misery.

I'd gotten what I thought was a "brilliant" idea for food to help Nadine gain weight. I made home-made French fries, dumping the potato strips into a deep saucepan of oil (at least the potatoes and oil were organic). Claire and Nadine sat together on the couch with the potatoes. I have to say, Nadine ate a lot of them.

INTENSE PIANO PRACTICE FOR NADINE'S COMPETITION

This was a period of intense piano practice for me for Nadine's flute competition on January 13th, and after about a month of struggling along, I finally started to "get it". I don't think I've practiced anything like I did this one. I was determined that I'd get this one right -- if I didn't, it could look like Nadine had made the blooper. Besides, darn it, I wanted to do something well. The piano part was SO hard -- I was practicing about 2, 3, and maybe more times a day, trying to get the benefit of multiple days of practice. It wasn't even the technique -- the passages just didn't seem to "lie" well on my fingers.. Every now and then, I'd ask Nadine to play it with me at my painfully reduced speed, so I could co-ordinate it with her and understand it more. One day we watched Emmanuel Pahud's version on YouTube, which helped with both coordination and interpretation -- I liked his accompanist's staccato in one part.

Then, after drumming through slow interminable metronomes and repeated passages I eventually got (most of) the passages up to metronome 69 (it needed to be 80). Then, I started to "get it" a few days before The Time. I couldn't do it on the "first try" but if I did a run-through first, I could actually do okay. It got better. It became more fluid. I had energy to listen to what Nadine was playing, and started to "hear" her part in my head when I practiced alone. There were parts with breathtaking pauses, and finally we got them into sync. Never mind the house getting messy and chores not getting done -- I was going to get this. I can say that it did wonders for my technique if not my ego while I worked on it.

I remember calling Ruth Fuller and warning her about how it might or mightn't sound. I still felt sick and the last day or two I had a hard time even sitting at the piano.

But at least I'd had a few nice run-throughs, and the tempo, finally crept up to 80, Nadine's speed. Nadine decided to speed it to 84 -- okay, I got it to 84! We were really sync-ing some of the pauses. It would have been SO nice to have another week to consolidate it all, but at least I hadn't had to play it in public the previous week.

Nadine was in a reasonable mood. We had much packing to do for leaving for the week-end after the competition, To bed, and off for the next day.