the nitty-grittyof trills is more complicated, but yes, this is the main idea. trill from the top unless it's written otherwise (or it sounds really, really bad). Ornamentation is a Pandora's Box, just ask Frederick Neumann.
I, like DFG, also think you should have more of a curve in your fingers here. I think you'll find it takes less mechanical force to "relax into the string" than to push it down with a straight finger.
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Baroque music's my "thing" and even though this piece is on the whole much more romantic than it is baroque at this point, it's useful to look at it through a baroque lens. Here's my thoughts.
Baroque composers loved to give emphasis to some notes over others. Some quick and dirty things to experiment with:
- if it has a # or b, give it some more weight. Example, the cadential trill in the first and second endings.
- if it's a held dissonance, like a sus 4, or a note that isn't in the chord, give it some weight. Dig in. Tension, to release. example, the E natural in the 5th bar of the second half of the movement.
- Baroque music is made out of "sentence-like" phrases. It's much more like prose than song when it comes to its musical phrasing. Ex. The pickup, and the first bar say one thing, which is then responded to immediately by the second phrase. This is a pretty clear one, which is why this piece is so nice as a teaching tool.
As a final note, if you don't like a bowing then change it. None of the bowings in Zimmerman's edition have anything to do with the bowings in the
1720 edition. Indeed, some of them are totally contradictory, such as the bowing in bar 3 of the 2nd movement, which so separated from reality as to actively emphasize the wrong notes. Of course, modern players also play the first movement much slower than a baroque musician would too! There's a lot of Gary Karr in the modern bass interpretation of this piece.
Have fun! this is a very enjoyable piece to learn and play, and a great baroque sonata to learn from.
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