Jack learned his music pretty well at first, making progress really quickly. "Wild Horseman" is fast and intense and right up Jack's alley. He started learning "Sonatina" first, though, and loved playing the first page with its quick finger movements. Unfortunately, the second page of "Sonatina" is just a variation of the first page, with the same themes arranged a little differently and in a different key, and he ended up getting confused in the last few weeks as he finished learning the whole piece. So unfortunately, that one wasn't as good as the other one.
The interesting thing was, though, that his performance for the judge was one of his best ones. Even though he was shaky on "Sonatina" he really did about as well as he could. I think he might have Cat's natural performance ability, doing well under pressure.
Eliza learned a simple piece called "Allegretto 2" from her Suzuki book, which only gave her trouble because of the sixteenth notes/eighth notes and it was a little tricky to remember which part she was in because it was so repetitive. The other piece, "Lullaby" had some tricky parts but it helped that the opening theme repeated three times with the notes being identical.
Eliza was pretty solid on both pieces and I was hoping she'd finally have a really great showing for the judge. But, alas, nerves to got to her, and she had to start over a few times. I guess not everyone can be blessed with calm and presence of mind during a performance. Hopefully practice and maturity and experience will help.
I made the above videos Saturday morning, just before the festival. Eliza's time slot was first, then we had extra time before Jack's judging, so we got our post-performance treat a bit early. No complaints about that. Then when we arrived at the store where Jack would be performing (they have a recital hall in the store) they were about 25 minutes behind, so Jack had lots of time to play his pieces on the various pianos on the showroom floor.
Bravo!!
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