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Being positive is highly overrated. Especially after a bad experience, there is nothing like a well-placed barb. We all need
My harp’s name was revealed to me as I watched the phenomenal Erica Goodman perform upon it: Scintillation. Three people have performed Scintillation on my harp: Heidi Lehwalder, Erica Goodman, and me. Pretty good.
My cure is doing lots of LaRiviere-type exercises: every possible fingering pattern. It ends up toning and relaxing the fingers very much, so they are much more comfortable doing more. Any pattern you play in a piece, if you have done it thoroughly in an exercise, it is much easier to play.
Well, there are different types of hand-breakers, as you put it. For length, it would be Daquin’s Le Coucou. For athletics, it would be Salzedo’s Ballade or Recessional. For gymnastics, it would be Salzedo’s Variations. For endurance, it would be his “(Flight)”. For sheer speed, his Whirlwind. For performance, it would be the Pescetti Sonata or the Harmonious Blacksmith. For all of the above, it would be the Sonata by C.P.E. Bach. And then there is Halffter’s Danza de la Pastora, in a class by itself.
What is most puzzling for me is the slurs over the left hand in the second section. Is it a tie? It connects two Cs, I think, the bottom notes.
Gut strings will be worse, not better. They sustain even less. The strings might be old or poor quality. It may be the acoustic environment in which you are recording. High notes need high ceilings in which to reverberate. Oddly, in my experience, it is the bass that supports the ringing of the high notes. How fresh are your wire strings? And, I would buy that bionic 23 I hear about.
With nylon strings, the tone is greatly affected by the condition of your skin. Have your callouses developed a hard surface? You need to sand them lightly every week if you are practicing three hours a day or more. Use a very fine sandpaper, then rinse off your fingertips before playing.
Your harp is relatively young. They used to take 15 years or more to develop in the top. Compensate for it, but don’t worry unless it’s just dead.
Can you request a library to order it for their collection so you can study it? I had to pay extremely high shipping to get music from Fuzeau, from di-arezzo, so it is the same here. I made the best of it by buying as much music as I could to go in the same package. It was fun and worth it. I hope you are not opposed to spending on music. The Mozetich is a finely crafted piece. There are other pieces you could get from the same source, like those by Milton Barnes.
If you are playing, or going to be playing professionally, then you should certainly have the best possible instrument. Our first instruments are often only the first and not the only or last.
Perhaps you can find collections of Bashkir folk songs and see if any match. Otherwise, you might have to find someone from Bashkir to see if they know any of the songs. There’s nothing very particular about the Nocturne, it is typical of its time. You did ask who recorded the works.
For middle school, I would suggest a simple demonstration of the acoustic properties of strings, the overtones and harmonics,
