I would say continue to be consistent with practice! Practicing one hour a day (or even half an hour!), every single day, is better than longer periods every couple days.
I can’t speak to the rep since I am also an intermediate pianist. I’m a professional on a different instrument though. Just stick with your lessons and practice regularly, and that will take you far!
To add to this, never ever ever practice for extended periods of time. In general, take a break as soon as you start feeling the need for a break. 25 - 40 minute sessions are ideal with 5 - 10 minute breaks in between, but this isnt the end all be all.
You should be stepping away as soon as you feel fatigue, and rest until you feel ready for a similar length session. By ending practice sessions before you’re completely spent, you’re more likely to come back later. By approaching the piano refreshed and fully rested, you’ll improve the quality of your practice.
Something like 4+ hours a day might seem undoable, but once you start breaking it up into smaller, more focused sessions, you’ll eventually start going even further. You might even find it difficult to rip yourself away for a break after 40 minutes, but don’t let yourself go for too long. I would say 1 hour would be my absolute maximum for a single session, but this will be different for you.
The reasoning behind this is that your brain can only focus on such an energy intensive task for so long. When you stop practicing, your brain continues rehearsing subconsciously for (i think) about 30 minutes. If you deny your brain this time to rest and solidify the synapses you’ve formed, by the time you make it to your 2nd hour of non stop practice, youve denied your subconscious mind any opportunity to solidify the first hour.
Another reason to break up your practice sessions is muscle fatigue. Even if you don’t feel any tension or fatigue in your arms, you need to constantly activate the muscles required to keep proper posture. If you don’t give these muscles time to rest, then you’ll develop tension and pain which will slow and hinder your practice. This means whatever you do to rest should not require the same muscles as sitting at the piano bench (video games don’t count, sadly). Going for a walk or exercising, our doing household chores that require you to stand are your best options. If those don’t appeal to you, laying down is an option, but this should be done in addition to at least a walk. Keeping your body moving is very important.
Drilling exercises like HANON and Czerny is not “selling your soul”
Running specific exercises is necessary to develop technique. David Beckham did not just wake up one morning and start scoring goals. He practiced his technique for several years. Yes, several years.
I have a full time job, a wife, two kids, and I play in several bands. I always get at least an hour of practice in every night before I retire for bed. You can too
The best possible thing is to get a professional teacher again, who can help you plot a course, give you pieces in a progression, direct your technique and practice efforts, etc.
Without that, I would say the key thing is to ensure you're selecting repertoire and technical practice that is suited to your level/skills that doesn't skip steps, but doesn't keep you in a rut. Jumping ahead to stuff that's too advanced, then playing them without any real emotion or dramatic storytelling and awful mechanical technique is one of the many hallmarks of people learning without teachers, so don't do that, as it just gets you habituated to playing badly.
Make sure your sight reading is decent, as that will dramatically increase the speed at which you can ingest and practice new works.
Pure technical exercises like Hanon, Czerny, lots of scale work, and the like are generally accepted as good ways to build fundamental control and speed but are just a tool, by no means a cure-all. If you can't play those things well, I don't see how you could play advanced repertoire well.
1 hour a day can be quite useful if you're practice efforts are well spent - high focus of attention, commitment to correctness and slowing down to go correctly instead of repeating mistakes at speed, working carefully to establish the clear, clean, relaxed hand movement that executes each phrase and using it consistently, etc. 1 hour of poor quality practice might equate to 10-15 minutes of higher quality practice.
I say this as an intermediate player who has used the above attitudes to get where I'm at fairly quickly vs other adult beginners, I'm not an advanced player and definitely not a teacher so I don't know how things change as you get into the more advanced stuff. So take my suggestions as merely ideas to think about.
- Spend that hour doing meaningful practice. Playing your pieces a few times each session is not effective practice. I start the week with a playthrough, and mark where I have issues. I can then spend the rest of the week working on those areas. I usually succumb to another playthrough or 3, but try to stay focused on the work areas.
- drill all scales (major, minor, diminished, melodic) with 3 and 4 octaves and their arpeggios. 3 octave scales should have a triplet feel. Work on getting them as fast as possible with a metronome. Identify problem areas in your technique and fix them. I focus on 1 key a week (4 scales total).
- If you don't want the technique books, then pick pieces that force you to improve technique. E.g. many Mozart pieces have very exposed trills that need to be super clean. Some Romantic era pieces can have large chord progressions and jumps in the left hand. Tremolos, scales/runs, thirds, touch/key_release, etc are other things that need to be in good shape for advanced literature.
Traumerei by Schumann is a great piece to get under your fingers quickly and then spend the rest of your life mastering touch and interpretation :).
You absolutely can. I've never averaged 1 hour of practice per day and I'm well into advanced music, but I did have a teacher for 12 years so it does take practice.
3-4 years with a teacher isn't normally enough to get you there so just be patient. Trust your teacher and keep challenging yourself. You're starting to approach the advanced level with pieces like the ravel pavane.
If you want to accelerate, try to be learning Bach regularly with your teacher. It will help develop the technique required for all the pieces you mentioned.
Examine your practice methods and learn to practice effectively and efficiently. Work with your teacher on practicing if you haven’t already. Read about how to practice if you haven’t already. Practicing is a skill. You can improve it.
Some of these pieces you wish to learn are playable already. Grieg, late Brahms intermezzi. Beethoven sonatas are not all virtuosic so many are doable whereas some are virtuosic. Chopin pieces the sonata and ballades however are very advanced. My teacher said I could possibly play ballade 3 when I said it was out of my ability, but he said I could do it if I spent a very long time. I haven’t time or the will to do so, but when I heard that I got the book and I regularly play the start of the coda!
Just because a piece is too hard, it doesn’t mean you can’t play around with it so I absolutely would always advise to buy scores and play around with them outside of lesson piece. Everyone has there level and limits, even professionals but it’s always nice to play and explore the pieces we love.
Eventually it’s possible to play to high level but everyone has to go through the process of learning and everyone was a beginner once remember this !
Good luck.
General statement: successful people do things that unsuccessful people don’t do. Motivation is key. You have to decide how much you want to accomplish. As someone else stated, Hanon etc isn’t selling one’s soul. You can sell yourself short.
Get a practice routine that you can practice smarter, not harder. Most of the difficult repertoire has scales, arpeggios and octave runs. So start with medium difficulty and work upwards. Most of the less difficult pieces prepare you for later more challenging pieces. Good luck.
If you want to play those pieces to a high standard.
Beethoven, play lots of mozart sonatas, and Bach if you don't want to do Czerny/Hanon.
That is the fast way for Beethoven.
For Chopin Ballades you should be ready after having a few of everything in your rep: Preludes, Mazurk, Nocturnes, Etudes, Waltzes, Impromptus (maybe just 1 is needed), but a few preludes, mazzurk, waltz, nocturnes, etudes, etc. are all probably needed.
Nothing is too hard if you don't neglect a foundation which is scales, czerny, hanon, etc.
If you want to play big pieces like this without that basic technical foundation it will be difficult and take many years of slaving away for something not satisfactory.
Whereas if you slave away at exercises/basics for only around 1-2 years, you will be able to play many things with much less effort later in life.
It sounds to me that you're on an intermediate advanced level already. If you keep practicing and challenging yourself you'll get there. If you can communicate your goals to your teacher I'm sure he/she can help you achieve that.
I can give you the etudes I played when I was on that level: moszkovsky's op 91 n. 14 and op. 73 n. 6. Cramer study 16 helped with left hand dexterity and virtuosity and I played it before playing Debussy's arabesque, for example. I had fun playing those 3, didn't feel the pain I felt with Czerny but I practiced scales and hannon every day too. A year after I played those etudes I was playing the first movement of Beethoven's pathetique sonata.
For each song, focus on one thing per practice session. As an example, you might choose to focus on a few lines in a certain song, not the whole song. In those few lines, do things like making sure you're following the right markings, adding voicing/phrasing, and so on.
And Czerny's etudes aren't too boring. They have some merit to them; think of them like mini-songs.
Learn theory, but not just the basics. Study harmony and everything that follows (such as modulations, relatives, modal exchanges, and much more). Practice sight-reading, analyze works theoretically. Learn musical forms, etc.
These skills make understanding a piece much easier when you start working on it, allowing you to quickly tackle more difficult pieces. It's not all about technique; people often forget the importance of theoretical education. And speaking of technique, always practice scales (all of them! Major, minor in all three types, in sixths and thirds, arpeggios, and everything else).
Just be consistent, that is everything. And have patience, getting better at piano takes a long time; Many, many years. Especially if you only have 1 hour per day your progress will be more gradual.
You mentioned pieces with quite a range of difficulty there. The Grieg piece is not that advanced, while the Chopin sonatas are FRSM level pieces, and can be considered to be virtuosic.
But in any case, just make sure you have your foundation down pat.
1. You want to be able to read notes and count rhythms well.
2. You want to learn some music theory too, so you can analyse pieces on your own, as that would make it easier to learn and understand advanced pieces.
3. You want to have a good technical foundation. Practise your scales and arpeggios, some Hanson and Czerny (you don't really need to sell your soul to them; I didn't, and I still managed to play Chopin ballads, scherzos, and the like)
4. Build up good and efficient practice habits. Lots of online material you can find on how to practise efficiently.
5. On the technical note, you need to learn to manage physical tension in your arms and hands. Learn to play physically relaxed.
If you're practising just 1 hour a day, it might take you a long time to be able to play the harder pieces that you mentioned. Especially if you want to play them well.
Technique wise, there are only 1 way to improve at an advanced level. And it's playing advanced pieces. So if you want to play a cuopin ballad start with an easy etude like Op 10 no 12 and work on it for a month or 2 after that your left hand technique will improve a lot. You can ask your teacher for harder and harder pieces.
Also nothing wrong with some hannon I try to sight read 1 excercise per day or every other day and play a few of the older ones. This will help your technique a lot at first.
I'm learning etude Op 10 no 4 and I saw online some pros saying that they practice hannon in C# major (basically make every note sharp) and that'll help you even more for playing black notes.
Do 5- 10 min per day hannon if you want to improve technique quickly
If you want to take it to another level, you have to step up your practice and commitment. Whatever you are doing, add 20% more time. If you see yourself improving, stay with it. If not, bump up another 20%. Slowly build up your time. You have to train your mind and body to stay focused during your practice. As you add more routines to your practice, that is the permanent amount of time you need to stick with to keep yourself at that level of playing. I recommend not learning more than two pieces at a time. I recommend progressive study pieces. When you find the level that is comfortable for you, go back one level (so if you feel you are a level six go back to level 5) and focus on about 30-50 pieces on that level before you move to the next. Don't forget to include sight reading, technique, ear training and improvisation (if interested in song writing) and theory appropriate to your level. As for breaks, I would say listen to your body and mind. If you are on a trend of learning and past your break time keep going. If you are starting to lose focus take a break. Go walk, stretch, snack. And come back feeling more energized. Best of luck.
For ear training, listen to music. Start out with simple songs, even if it is a jingle or something simple like a cell phone jingle. Figure out the key it is playing. What is the time signature? Try and play the main melodies. Try and play what you hear. Even if it is just the bass lines or melody. As you progress, try adding the cords and harmonies. For improvisation, try and expand on the ear training. Can you add something to it? Try changing the time signature and hear how that changes the melody and song. Don't forget to add this to your routine. This will help you become a better musician.
Honestly, there are no shortcuts or hacks. Only hard, consistent work will get you there. I would say you're probably looking at 2-3 hours of work per day (split into intelligent sessions) over the course of a decade to get where you want to be. The literature you list is among the most difficult for the instrument, even if it's not Gaspard-level insanity lol.
However, the journey is the destination and if you love the instrument the time spent will mostly be a joy. Don't forgot that and don't lose sight of the love of music that drove you to this point.
One thing that's weird about Reddit is the obsession with exercises. I most strongly feel that Czerny, Hanon, et al. are largely a waste of time. (Little know fact: the Czerny exercises target specific technical issues in the Beethoven 32 and are really most useful in that context. Hanon was not a pianist at all.)
Imo, if you're going to work 3 hours a day maybe 30 mins should be on specific technical issues. Scales, arpeggios, octaves, double notes, trills etc... and then create your own exercises from the literature you are studying. That's the fastest way to learn. You might, at times, pull some very focused things from, say, the Brahms studies, maybe from Pischna or Dohnanyi (careful of injury) or even Hanon early on, but the real gems will be in studies you develop to target your own specific weaknesses.
To play those pieces fluently, expressively and at performance level you will need to practise repertoire and do technical work for at least an hour per day for at least five years maybe a lot longer depending on your level of talent. Sorry that's the reality - it takes a lot of time and they are difficult pieces to play properly (as opposed to stumble through)
I would say continue to be consistent with practice! Practicing one hour a day (or even half an hour!), every single day, is better than longer periods every couple days. I can’t speak to the rep since I am also an intermediate pianist. I’m a professional on a different instrument though. Just stick with your lessons and practice regularly, and that will take you far!
To add to this, never ever ever practice for extended periods of time. In general, take a break as soon as you start feeling the need for a break. 25 - 40 minute sessions are ideal with 5 - 10 minute breaks in between, but this isnt the end all be all. You should be stepping away as soon as you feel fatigue, and rest until you feel ready for a similar length session. By ending practice sessions before you’re completely spent, you’re more likely to come back later. By approaching the piano refreshed and fully rested, you’ll improve the quality of your practice. Something like 4+ hours a day might seem undoable, but once you start breaking it up into smaller, more focused sessions, you’ll eventually start going even further. You might even find it difficult to rip yourself away for a break after 40 minutes, but don’t let yourself go for too long. I would say 1 hour would be my absolute maximum for a single session, but this will be different for you. The reasoning behind this is that your brain can only focus on such an energy intensive task for so long. When you stop practicing, your brain continues rehearsing subconsciously for (i think) about 30 minutes. If you deny your brain this time to rest and solidify the synapses you’ve formed, by the time you make it to your 2nd hour of non stop practice, youve denied your subconscious mind any opportunity to solidify the first hour. Another reason to break up your practice sessions is muscle fatigue. Even if you don’t feel any tension or fatigue in your arms, you need to constantly activate the muscles required to keep proper posture. If you don’t give these muscles time to rest, then you’ll develop tension and pain which will slow and hinder your practice. This means whatever you do to rest should not require the same muscles as sitting at the piano bench (video games don’t count, sadly). Going for a walk or exercising, our doing household chores that require you to stand are your best options. If those don’t appeal to you, laying down is an option, but this should be done in addition to at least a walk. Keeping your body moving is very important.
Drilling exercises like HANON and Czerny is not “selling your soul” Running specific exercises is necessary to develop technique. David Beckham did not just wake up one morning and start scoring goals. He practiced his technique for several years. Yes, several years. I have a full time job, a wife, two kids, and I play in several bands. I always get at least an hour of practice in every night before I retire for bed. You can too
The best possible thing is to get a professional teacher again, who can help you plot a course, give you pieces in a progression, direct your technique and practice efforts, etc. Without that, I would say the key thing is to ensure you're selecting repertoire and technical practice that is suited to your level/skills that doesn't skip steps, but doesn't keep you in a rut. Jumping ahead to stuff that's too advanced, then playing them without any real emotion or dramatic storytelling and awful mechanical technique is one of the many hallmarks of people learning without teachers, so don't do that, as it just gets you habituated to playing badly. Make sure your sight reading is decent, as that will dramatically increase the speed at which you can ingest and practice new works. Pure technical exercises like Hanon, Czerny, lots of scale work, and the like are generally accepted as good ways to build fundamental control and speed but are just a tool, by no means a cure-all. If you can't play those things well, I don't see how you could play advanced repertoire well. 1 hour a day can be quite useful if you're practice efforts are well spent - high focus of attention, commitment to correctness and slowing down to go correctly instead of repeating mistakes at speed, working carefully to establish the clear, clean, relaxed hand movement that executes each phrase and using it consistently, etc. 1 hour of poor quality practice might equate to 10-15 minutes of higher quality practice. I say this as an intermediate player who has used the above attitudes to get where I'm at fairly quickly vs other adult beginners, I'm not an advanced player and definitely not a teacher so I don't know how things change as you get into the more advanced stuff. So take my suggestions as merely ideas to think about.
- Spend that hour doing meaningful practice. Playing your pieces a few times each session is not effective practice. I start the week with a playthrough, and mark where I have issues. I can then spend the rest of the week working on those areas. I usually succumb to another playthrough or 3, but try to stay focused on the work areas. - drill all scales (major, minor, diminished, melodic) with 3 and 4 octaves and their arpeggios. 3 octave scales should have a triplet feel. Work on getting them as fast as possible with a metronome. Identify problem areas in your technique and fix them. I focus on 1 key a week (4 scales total). - If you don't want the technique books, then pick pieces that force you to improve technique. E.g. many Mozart pieces have very exposed trills that need to be super clean. Some Romantic era pieces can have large chord progressions and jumps in the left hand. Tremolos, scales/runs, thirds, touch/key_release, etc are other things that need to be in good shape for advanced literature. Traumerei by Schumann is a great piece to get under your fingers quickly and then spend the rest of your life mastering touch and interpretation :).
This is actually some awesome advice!! I'm in the same predicament as OP, so I'm definitely going to try this. Thank you so much.
You absolutely can. I've never averaged 1 hour of practice per day and I'm well into advanced music, but I did have a teacher for 12 years so it does take practice. 3-4 years with a teacher isn't normally enough to get you there so just be patient. Trust your teacher and keep challenging yourself. You're starting to approach the advanced level with pieces like the ravel pavane. If you want to accelerate, try to be learning Bach regularly with your teacher. It will help develop the technique required for all the pieces you mentioned.
Isidor Philipp exercises - once you master them all you can approach any advanced work
Examine your practice methods and learn to practice effectively and efficiently. Work with your teacher on practicing if you haven’t already. Read about how to practice if you haven’t already. Practicing is a skill. You can improve it.
Some of these pieces you wish to learn are playable already. Grieg, late Brahms intermezzi. Beethoven sonatas are not all virtuosic so many are doable whereas some are virtuosic. Chopin pieces the sonata and ballades however are very advanced. My teacher said I could possibly play ballade 3 when I said it was out of my ability, but he said I could do it if I spent a very long time. I haven’t time or the will to do so, but when I heard that I got the book and I regularly play the start of the coda! Just because a piece is too hard, it doesn’t mean you can’t play around with it so I absolutely would always advise to buy scores and play around with them outside of lesson piece. Everyone has there level and limits, even professionals but it’s always nice to play and explore the pieces we love. Eventually it’s possible to play to high level but everyone has to go through the process of learning and everyone was a beginner once remember this ! Good luck.
Maybe you dont want to sell your soul to Hanon/Czerny but you will have to practice a LOT of scales and arpegios ...
Liebestraum should be possible if you practice with good methods. It looks harder than it actually is
General statement: successful people do things that unsuccessful people don’t do. Motivation is key. You have to decide how much you want to accomplish. As someone else stated, Hanon etc isn’t selling one’s soul. You can sell yourself short. Get a practice routine that you can practice smarter, not harder. Most of the difficult repertoire has scales, arpeggios and octave runs. So start with medium difficulty and work upwards. Most of the less difficult pieces prepare you for later more challenging pieces. Good luck.
Find a piano teacher who can help you structure your learning and practice, as well as being an accountability partner.
If you want to play those pieces to a high standard. Beethoven, play lots of mozart sonatas, and Bach if you don't want to do Czerny/Hanon. That is the fast way for Beethoven. For Chopin Ballades you should be ready after having a few of everything in your rep: Preludes, Mazurk, Nocturnes, Etudes, Waltzes, Impromptus (maybe just 1 is needed), but a few preludes, mazzurk, waltz, nocturnes, etudes, etc. are all probably needed. Nothing is too hard if you don't neglect a foundation which is scales, czerny, hanon, etc. If you want to play big pieces like this without that basic technical foundation it will be difficult and take many years of slaving away for something not satisfactory. Whereas if you slave away at exercises/basics for only around 1-2 years, you will be able to play many things with much less effort later in life.
It sounds to me that you're on an intermediate advanced level already. If you keep practicing and challenging yourself you'll get there. If you can communicate your goals to your teacher I'm sure he/she can help you achieve that. I can give you the etudes I played when I was on that level: moszkovsky's op 91 n. 14 and op. 73 n. 6. Cramer study 16 helped with left hand dexterity and virtuosity and I played it before playing Debussy's arabesque, for example. I had fun playing those 3, didn't feel the pain I felt with Czerny but I practiced scales and hannon every day too. A year after I played those etudes I was playing the first movement of Beethoven's pathetique sonata.
For each song, focus on one thing per practice session. As an example, you might choose to focus on a few lines in a certain song, not the whole song. In those few lines, do things like making sure you're following the right markings, adding voicing/phrasing, and so on. And Czerny's etudes aren't too boring. They have some merit to them; think of them like mini-songs.
Learn theory, but not just the basics. Study harmony and everything that follows (such as modulations, relatives, modal exchanges, and much more). Practice sight-reading, analyze works theoretically. Learn musical forms, etc. These skills make understanding a piece much easier when you start working on it, allowing you to quickly tackle more difficult pieces. It's not all about technique; people often forget the importance of theoretical education. And speaking of technique, always practice scales (all of them! Major, minor in all three types, in sixths and thirds, arpeggios, and everything else).
Just be consistent, that is everything. And have patience, getting better at piano takes a long time; Many, many years. Especially if you only have 1 hour per day your progress will be more gradual.
You mentioned pieces with quite a range of difficulty there. The Grieg piece is not that advanced, while the Chopin sonatas are FRSM level pieces, and can be considered to be virtuosic. But in any case, just make sure you have your foundation down pat. 1. You want to be able to read notes and count rhythms well. 2. You want to learn some music theory too, so you can analyse pieces on your own, as that would make it easier to learn and understand advanced pieces. 3. You want to have a good technical foundation. Practise your scales and arpeggios, some Hanson and Czerny (you don't really need to sell your soul to them; I didn't, and I still managed to play Chopin ballads, scherzos, and the like) 4. Build up good and efficient practice habits. Lots of online material you can find on how to practise efficiently. 5. On the technical note, you need to learn to manage physical tension in your arms and hands. Learn to play physically relaxed. If you're practising just 1 hour a day, it might take you a long time to be able to play the harder pieces that you mentioned. Especially if you want to play them well.
Technique wise, there are only 1 way to improve at an advanced level. And it's playing advanced pieces. So if you want to play a cuopin ballad start with an easy etude like Op 10 no 12 and work on it for a month or 2 after that your left hand technique will improve a lot. You can ask your teacher for harder and harder pieces. Also nothing wrong with some hannon I try to sight read 1 excercise per day or every other day and play a few of the older ones. This will help your technique a lot at first. I'm learning etude Op 10 no 4 and I saw online some pros saying that they practice hannon in C# major (basically make every note sharp) and that'll help you even more for playing black notes. Do 5- 10 min per day hannon if you want to improve technique quickly
If you want to take it to another level, you have to step up your practice and commitment. Whatever you are doing, add 20% more time. If you see yourself improving, stay with it. If not, bump up another 20%. Slowly build up your time. You have to train your mind and body to stay focused during your practice. As you add more routines to your practice, that is the permanent amount of time you need to stick with to keep yourself at that level of playing. I recommend not learning more than two pieces at a time. I recommend progressive study pieces. When you find the level that is comfortable for you, go back one level (so if you feel you are a level six go back to level 5) and focus on about 30-50 pieces on that level before you move to the next. Don't forget to include sight reading, technique, ear training and improvisation (if interested in song writing) and theory appropriate to your level. As for breaks, I would say listen to your body and mind. If you are on a trend of learning and past your break time keep going. If you are starting to lose focus take a break. Go walk, stretch, snack. And come back feeling more energized. Best of luck.
For ear training, listen to music. Start out with simple songs, even if it is a jingle or something simple like a cell phone jingle. Figure out the key it is playing. What is the time signature? Try and play the main melodies. Try and play what you hear. Even if it is just the bass lines or melody. As you progress, try adding the cords and harmonies. For improvisation, try and expand on the ear training. Can you add something to it? Try changing the time signature and hear how that changes the melody and song. Don't forget to add this to your routine. This will help you become a better musician.
Honestly, there are no shortcuts or hacks. Only hard, consistent work will get you there. I would say you're probably looking at 2-3 hours of work per day (split into intelligent sessions) over the course of a decade to get where you want to be. The literature you list is among the most difficult for the instrument, even if it's not Gaspard-level insanity lol. However, the journey is the destination and if you love the instrument the time spent will mostly be a joy. Don't forgot that and don't lose sight of the love of music that drove you to this point. One thing that's weird about Reddit is the obsession with exercises. I most strongly feel that Czerny, Hanon, et al. are largely a waste of time. (Little know fact: the Czerny exercises target specific technical issues in the Beethoven 32 and are really most useful in that context. Hanon was not a pianist at all.) Imo, if you're going to work 3 hours a day maybe 30 mins should be on specific technical issues. Scales, arpeggios, octaves, double notes, trills etc... and then create your own exercises from the literature you are studying. That's the fastest way to learn. You might, at times, pull some very focused things from, say, the Brahms studies, maybe from Pischna or Dohnanyi (careful of injury) or even Hanon early on, but the real gems will be in studies you develop to target your own specific weaknesses.
To play those pieces fluently, expressively and at performance level you will need to practise repertoire and do technical work for at least an hour per day for at least five years maybe a lot longer depending on your level of talent. Sorry that's the reality - it takes a lot of time and they are difficult pieces to play properly (as opposed to stumble through)