30 min
Day 6. Breval alone. I am not sure what is more exhausting about working this way - the mental or the physical effort.

Before starting practice today I sang through Breval in the shower. I suppose where I sang may not seem important, but there is something about the shower that is especially conducive to concentration and truth - if I don't know something, it becomes clear that I don't. I was not surprised to find that I can't sing those widely spaced alternating chords in the A section (need to sit down and work those out vocally), but I was rather surprised that there is a detour near the end, somewhere in or around those last set of triplet, and I couldn't end the piece.

So on to the cello work. I started by playing through, not from memory, but exploring some of the heavy-light. Spent a short focus on the end, so now I "know how it goes". Then I didn't work especially systematically, but phrase by phrase really tried to hear how I wanted it to be shaped and what I needed to do with the bow to get that shape. Sometimes it was a bow distribution issue, sometimes speed, especially variable speed, sometimes articulation, sometimes weight, but usually more in the form as a sort of leaning on the note rather than pressure.

Performed the piece from memory in the last 3 minutes, incorporating as much of the day's work as I could, and realizing how many more repetitions on small parts of each phrase I will need to do to get *this* into muscle memory. It's not just learning the notes.

I'm exhausted.