Take a look at the left side of my piano desk! These are my plans.
I have a Brahms rehearsal coming up with a violinist, violist and cellist, to play the great Piano Quartet in c minor in three weeks. The piano writing is as demanding as either of the Brahms piano concertos, or any solo piece. I want to play my best, and this is music I have yearned to play for years and years. So that is a high priority!

I have a talk-and-play book party coming up in the Fall to celebrate my new book on November 1st at Steinway, where I will play the Bach Prelude and Fugue in G major from Book One, that is excerpted on the cover. I had never studied that fugue,– quite a virtuoso piece of writing! So I have been learning it now…. one more in my pilgrimage through all 48.. both volumes of which are permanent fixtures on my piano.

Ideally I would like the program to include something, (however short), by every one of the eight composers discussed in my new book. So I am fishing around in my library for new ideas. I never want to fall back on pieces that happen to be under my fingers. If I have the time, I would always prefer to learn something new. The Schumann-Liszt Widmung is open on the piano at the moment.

Additionally, I have been working on the Brahms-Handel Variations, a hefty project, but too long for the party, so that has to be set aside; and I have the Mozart Concerto K. 488, which I am working on with a student. (In that toppling pile, I probably have a copy of anything a student is currently working on that I might want to demonstrate.)

My secret desert-isle music are both books of Debussy Preludes, which I NEVER seem to have enough time for in my “mainland” life. In that stack you would find both volumes; and somewhere there, are also the Gershwin arrangements of his songs, for possible party favors. On about the tenth layer down, is the Bartok Suite, opus 14, high on my must-play list, and the Mendelssohn Variations Serieuses which I am reviving.

It’s a juggling act to find the time , even a small piece of time, for even a fragment of this piece or that. I am not usually as disorganized, in my house, or my thinking, as this stack might imply. It’s more a matter of voraciousness; and even more a sense of racing time. So much to accomplish, and how fast the day, the weeks, the years, seem to fly by……….