I had been in a pretty bad mind-set to start practicing last night. I was working on the technical elements of my piece, but in a bitter way.
Long story short, I ended up talking for a while with one of my practice buddies who wanted to hear me play my Beethoven. She listened to it and aside from circling a few problem areas, she told me that it was really good and that if we hadn't talked beforehand, she would never have had any idea that I was struggling with the interpretation. Basically, she made me feel really good about how I played - something I haven't felt a lot of in preparation for this recital.
Now my new method of practicing involves securing the tricky bits, but also actively thinking and applying my interpretation of the piece while I play it. I want my relation to the interpretation to be that close, and blatant in the recital, but thinking while playing isn't something I can just do once in the recital; I have to prepare myself to do it successfully.
Anyway, one of the morals of that story is that my Beethoven went really well last night. I have now played all of my pieces for other people, and the response has been that I am recital ready. Now it's just repetition so that I get even more comfortable with everything, as well as tidying and securing the memory even more.

I know my readers must be getting sick of the excessive talk about practice and recital, and so am I. I promise that once I am done with this recital, I will have some fresh perspectives on blogging and some crazy, zany topics that I'm sure everyone has been missing. Maybe even some more ranting... gosh it's been a while since I was able to devote time to ranting...