Update

I took a trip to Lafayette LA to give a talk about Lorca at the University of Louisiana. It went well, though I wish I had been smoother in presenting the musical examples. I got interviewed on the radio by a very expert radio interviewer who made it easy for me to be (relatively) articulate. She was like a smarter version of Terri Gross. The talk itself was in a cool art museum space, and was attended by the dean and provost, who introduced me.

Presenting material to different audiences is always revealing. Each situation requires a different approach, a subtle (or sometimes not subtle) shift in rhetorical address. The radio interview actually taught me the most about how to frame things for a non-specialist audience.

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I'm learning Beethoven's sonata 20 in G major. It has only two movements (unusually) and is relatively easy. I started with the minuet, memorized it, and now I am learning the first movement, an allegro ma non troppo.  I found a very good version of it by Alfred Brendel. The way he plays the minuet is exactly how I hear the piece in my mind, though I myself cannot execute what I hear.  I alternate between practicing this and improvising over "Bemsha Swing."

This particular Beethoven is in a very Mozartian style. The difficulty is its transparency: anything wrong or not tasteful stands out very starkly. Harmonically, most of it alternates between G and D major, with some incursions into other related keys. Most versions of the first movement I've heard are too fast. Brendel gets it right, unsurprisingly.