It was nice to be able to plug back into this world amidst the weeks of opera (and Firebird rehearsals for Sunday’s upcoming Carnegie Hall Concert with the orchestra). I prepped a bit in the afternoon, starting with the last section (return to d minor). The location was somewhat overly resonant, so tempos had to be scaled down accordingly. Today I explored pulling more directly (harmonic rhythm) from the 3rd beat into the 1st beat of the measures in a number of the variations. I think one could organize this sort of treatment (and others) into a distinct vocabulary…all part of an in-the-moment set of creative options.
The first two dotted rhythm variations were good (where balancing each line as an independent voice with its own continuity) – they seem to have developed on their own without a lot of additional attention from me in practice.