This isn’t a standing start. I began learning the piano at 8, and had made good progress by the time I decided to focus my undergraduate studies on mathematics. (The right decision? I’m increasingly doubtful – the subject of a different, as yet unwritten, blog.) I had been on the way to a teaching diploma (LRAM), though I didn’t get as far as the exam.
So the Op. 10 Études aren’t new to me. I had begun to study them, albeit only a couple, but enough to show that – then, anyway – I had it in me. That’s one reason I am hopeful that the present project may not be a fool’s errand.
And I know that the discipline and patience required to practise these pieces is something that the 18-year-old me possessed in zero measure. Study – to use the term loosely – at a British university in the late ’70s was about a lot of things, but not those. One edge this me has on that me is the comparative lack of distraction.
I have plenty of time – I hope – and no deadline.