The other young man of comparable age with whom I work is extremely sensitive, has a highly cultivated ear and a powerful sense of logic. We have been working on sight-reading as an act not of facile pronunciation but in order to experience understanding of the piece.
He reads well enough now that he can hear right away when a piece is amusing. So, on his choice, we have moved to Beethoven. D major, Op.10, No. 3--one of the most difficult sonatas in Book I. (He likes D!) This is a piece I had always shied away from because, though I could "play the notes," I had no grasp of articulation or metric subtlety. What a different experience to hear the music without an assumption that facility is the point of playing / sight-reading.
Detail. Content. Substance.
