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Is there any good competition repertoire from these two composers? Like between 6-10 minutes in length, technically astounding but not too difficult, etc. Something that can compete with Liszt et al?

(By "not too difficult" I mean... you know... I can play most of Chopin's Ballades and Scherzi... but I'm not Hamelin-level)

I mean I love these two composers, but I'm not going to by any means take on a piece like the Sonata Romantica or the Concerto for Solo Piano!

Thanks in advance for the suggestions.

From Alkan, you could try Le Tambour bat aux champs, a rather bitter anti-war piece.. for Medtner, I absolutely love the Theme and Variations Op. 55, one of the few pieces of his I still can listen to any time, even though I'm pretty tired of his mawkish style in general.

Hahaha. Sorry, that made me laugh.

I think Busoni played some Alkan in his concerts - perhaps you could find out what worked for him in public?

I don't know much Medtner... But for Alkan, you could do one of the Scherzi from Op. 16; Scherzo Focoso Op. 34 (it is NOT impossible or near impossible... do NOT listen to what people on Youtube say! I practiced it for maybe three weeks and was able to comfortably play about half of it accurately!); from Op. 35 Nos. 3, 9, 11, or 12 (I wouldn't use 7); from Op. 39 Nos. 2, 4 (Symphony 1st movement); a couple movements from the Sonatine Op. 61.

If you're really up to the challenge, try one of the Trois Morceaux Op. 15 (preferrably Aime-moi, No. 1).

Mattardo, Busoni played En Rythm Molossique (39/2) and Alkan's cadenza to the first movement of Beethoven's 3rd concerto. The cadenza was interesting, but personally I wouldn't play it if I were performing it with an orchestra. (Well, maybe in 2013... but that's it!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsWqoBLzIG0
The etude sounds interesting, I'll have to find an actual pianist recording at some point, for this recording is only a digital version - midi maybe?
That should turn some heads...

Thanks, King - I knew there would be someone here who kept a list of Busoni Alkan pieces next to their monitor! That's weird.. >:)

Bernard Ringeissen made an AWESOME recording of En Rythme Molossique: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31cFnuyr5N0. Gibbon's is good too, but it sounds like he was playing to a metronome the whole time and I don't think his tone color is quite as varied in that recording as it is in Ringeissen's here.

Did Alkan intend it as an anti-war piece? Lewenthal, writing in the atmosphere of the late '60's, seems to think so. But I always thought anti-war sentiment didn't really jell and reach any type of critical mass until the 20th century, following the horrors of the Great War.

Ronald Smith writes that Bartok most likely heard Busoni play Alkan's Allegro Barbaro in Berlin.

It certainly makes intuitive sense...

Oh wow. I've never heard that, but I've read that Bartok most likely knew of Alkan's Allegro Barbaro before writing his own.

Halfway off topic: I wonder why that piece is one of Alkan's most known. There are PLENTY of Op. 35's that are much better (although No. 5 is easily the most entertaining). Is it because of Jack Gibbons' video on Youtube? Gibbons said on his Facebook page not too long ago that when he first uploaded that video, he said it was just for a bit of fun and humor, and he would have never guessed that it would have gotten that many views, comments, and stirred up so much discussion. Hehe.

I play a lot of Medtner. It tends to be much harder than it sounds, and I don't think of them as competition or show-off pieces...

The sonata Tragica (the last piece of Op. 39) is relatively easy and runs at a little less than 10 minutes. It's also not too hard on the listener, though they might fall asleep if you don't make the lyrical part interesting. And since you seem "Hamelin sponsored", I definitly advise against his rendition of that piece, which is really waaaaaay too fast and blurred in my opinion.

There are also plenty of fairy tale with good lenght and varying difficulty ; I'm not really sure if any are "technically astounding though". There is one in Csharp that isn't too hard and sounds pretty cool, Op. 35 n°4.
There's also one that has a few passages like the sonata Romantica, and that amply quotes the Dies Irae, but I can't remember which one it is ; it's pretty tough to play though, and underwhelming for audiences I guess.

I'd put Medtner closer in its "type of difficulty" to Bach than to Liszt ; to me that also means they are both very fun to play because there is SO much going on.
Medtner is also very lyrical and poetic, though it's strangely not obvious at first listens.

Hard to say. It's just one of the many Esquisses, so really who knows, but the content seems quite prescient of what would happen in the World Wars..

Try the famous Skaza in B flat minor op.20 no.1 by Medtner

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2Qez1WB4hQ

I've looked through it....difficult, but if you can do those big Chopin works, this should be fine...


If you want technically astounding but not that technically difficult....you have to look towards Liszt who makes stuff look tremendously hard, but is actually nice on the hands/arms.

Although it is subtitled "esquisse", it isn't one of "the" Esquisses (that is, the group of sketches published under that name as op. 63). It is linked with another "military" piece in op. 50 called "Capriccio alla soltadesca" which has a fairly satirical flavor, to my ear. I can see that Alkan might have had the folly of war and militarism in mind when he wrote them.

Alkan also wrote another military send-up called "Musique Militaire" that actually is one of "the" Esquisses; it is number thirty-five. It seems to be making a joke about military music, doing some amusingly daft variants on a deliberately inane tune.

Thanks for the suggestions! Most of the major competitions in the world cannot get away from their Beethoven-Chopin-Liszt mindset and these composers tend to get a bit mundane when you have 10 performers playing the g minor ballade and another 10 playing Liszt paraphrases. Even Bach is not very well accepted - and though I would love to play him, I think it would be very cool to try Medtner or Alkan and see my results in public.

Quick Question-

Does anyone know how difficult the Sonata Reminiscenza is? I'm willing to go for 15 minutes and sneak in something like the Toccata from Le Tombeau de Couperin as my second piece. It was the first piece by Medtner I loved and probably Medtner's most well-known and accessible composition.

The Sonata Reminiscenza is pretty light when it comes to technical demands, probably the easiest of all his sonatas.

I have not competed with Alkan yet, but I have made public performances with the G Major Etude, and almost all the people I played it for said it was their favorite piece out of my program (Beethoven Sonata in F Op 10 No 2, Chopin Ballade 2, Ravel Le Tombeau de Couperin mvmts. 3-6, and the Alkan Etude).

I think competing with nonstandard repertoire only works if you can really play the piece well. But then again, you should be able to play everything really well, right?

Oh quite the contrary! I was forbidden to play the Waldstein/Appassionata for that very reason.

Alkan: Any op.35/op.15/16/1st movement of the sonata, very
good piece!/Chant op.38-1 very, very good piece!!
Medtner: Danza Festiva/Primavera/Sonata op.11-3, so beautiful!

Check out Medtner's lovely Mood Pictures, Op.1 No.1 Prologue:Andante cantabile, played by Geoffrey Tozer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEnXwRrE27c

Score:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Medtner,_Nikolai_Karlovich

It's one of my very favorite Medtner pieces.


As for a non-standard rep sonata, I highly recommend Josef Rheinberger's Piano Sonata No.3 in E flat, Op.135:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Rheinberger,_Josef_Gabriel

It's certainly among the finest of the post-Beethoven sonatas.

The piece seems to be filled with joy.

And does any piece contain a finer Beethoven Scherzo?


Mel