Kabalevsky Variations in D Major

It's time to show more of my work. I put this piece together in the past four days so I could play it at the Unitarian Church on Sunday, and my goal (as it was with the Ravel Sonatine, which I played at church two weeks ago) was to get the entire thing to a point where I knew precisely what result I would achieve if I played in a specific, replicable way.

I got the Ravel to that point, if you're curious –

and I very nearly have the Kabalevsky –

except –

and you can't quite see this because my hair swings in front of my face in the video –

I smile right before the last variation.

This takes me out of the piece. It turns the work away from the work and towards my feelings about the work, and then the work stops working.

Note how relaxed I am prior to that final variation (before my pleasure at my own accomplishment prevents me from accomplishing it). How much control I have over everything I am doing, and how that control expresses itself through the music and not through pianistic flourishes and other kinds of theatricality or showboating.

My thoughts, up until the very end, are on each individual note as if I were composing the piece as I play it.

This is how I want to play everything from now on.

Also, I'm beginning to suspect that there's an acting technique that I was never taught in school, and that perhaps nobody ever teaches but somebody should –

the idea that when you are acting, your only thoughts should be the character's internal monologue.

This seems linked to the idea of discovering a piece of music as you play it, even if you know the piece so well that you have a fundamental understanding of how to achieve the result you want – and you may only be able to discover the music, in this sense, after you know it precisely that well.