Just got back from my lesson. For the little amount of practice done through the week, it went tolerably well. Learning to sight read from left hand to right is helpful - was doing it back to front.

Had to laugh after the first two pages of the Scarlatti sonata. It's the Longo 325 (K98 in E minor). It's supposed to be allegrissimo but my version is dirge-issimo - about a hundredth of the appropriate tempo. Oh well, slow is better than not at all.

I was snooping around Wikipedia and saw the Bisson photograph of Chopin, possibly taken in the year of his death, 1849. He looks very unwell. He's bulked up with several layers and a coat. He has the hollowing of the cheeks, typical of someone with chronic hypoxia. I wonder if he had "clubbed" finger tips as he looks to be almost trying to hide his hands.

What a wonderful link to the 19th century is this photo. Just like the recorded snippet of Brahms speaking over an early telephone and recordings of Rachmaninov playing his own works, it brings the man alive in a way the oil portraits, death masks and busts cannot.