So, that piano lesson didn't go badly at all. He was quite happy with the fugue, and seeing how thats the big movement of the entire Bach, he's not worried about me getting the whole piece together at all. Being able to maintain concentration through 30 minutes of Bach is another issue...
That wil be the big challenge of my recital this year.... all my pieces are signifigantly long! and the comment on my recital last year was that I lost concentration on my mozart which was only 20 minutes... this year, I have 2 pieces longer than that....
the bach portion of the lesson did last about 40 minutes... and then I suggested that we do intensive practicing on the hard sections of my music. He said he'd need a little break before that so he made tea and went to the washroom while I was to choose what section we'd work on. I chose the passage of parallel fourths in the middle of the fugue in the fourth movement of Beethoven. We worked on it for just over an hour - 4 bars of music. It was a great refresher of how to approach practicing. It was incredibly productive....we basically got the prep work done so now I can practice that section in the same way as I practice everything else.
Lessons this year are going well!

I haven't posted much lately cause it's a busy life at the moment. Mostly, I have been practicing at the school at nights despite my hope to avoid doing that... But it's been good.
The theory is that if I do my practicing during normal waking hours - ie the day - then I can do my composition work at home at night. Most of the work is with the computer anyway, so I don't have to worry about the time or waking people up. Thus, I can work at home and not have to spend extra gas money. The problem with this theory is that I haven't had time during the days to practice, so I've had to do it at night. The other shortfalling was that I didn't practice all last weekend, or really during the week either.... oops.
This week will be different. I'm going to come earlier to school and make use of my reserved practice room time to get my practicing done during the day and then I will have my nights for composition.
I've been busy with a performance with the WSO this last week. Tonight is the last performance, and then I can have my life back. It has been an interesting experience, New Music and the like. Great piece and it's been fun performing it, though vocally tiring.

I REALLY NEED TO FINISH THE PIANO VARIATIONS, ARGH!!!!!!!!
I should have them done by the end of the week if I reasonably want Diane to learn them for November sometime. The theme and last variation are done, and she has them to start learning. Two fo the variations just need to be photoshopped a little and then I will have them done this weekend. One of them, I need to figure out an approach to doing it in photoshop... so just basically decisions and then doing the actual editing. The other one, I need to actually write... I have monday off... so I'm going to do a heck of a lot of work this weekend!!!