Pretty simple: link me to a PDF on IMSLP, I'll record it and post the results. My only conditions are that it should be a classical piece for solo piano. Also, if you give me Godowsky or Alkan, I'll try it, but don't expect great results.

Waltz by Liszt

A few candidates from my to-read list:

Irish Tune from Country Derry (Grainger)

Antiche danze et arie per liuto, Suite No. 1 (Respighi, trans. Respighi)

Tango, from España (Albeniz, arr. Godowsky)

and, finally,

Einzug der Gäste auf der Wartburg (Wagner, arr. Liszt)

Sorry about the last one.

Here's a charming but little-known piece by Schumann. The first of the "Sonatas for the Young", written for Julie:

To Julie

I remember reading that you're an impeccable sight reader, right?

You ask for Alkan? Here you go!!

-Nocturne in B Major: http://imslp.org/wiki/Nocturne,_Op.22_(Alkan,_Charles-Valentin)
-Cello Sonata (do the second movement!):http://imslp.org/wiki/Sonate_de_Concert,_Op.47_(Alkan,_Charles-Valentin)
-Trois Morceaux dans le Genre Pathetique: http://imslp.org/wiki/3_Morceaux_dans_le_Genre_path%C3%A9tique,_Op.15_(Alkan,_Charles-Valentin)

I'd be interested in hearing these!

Also, not Alkan, but Bach/Petri: http://www.scribd.com/doc/17674819/PetriBach-Cantata-9-Sheep-May-Safely-Graze

I want to learn that transcription.

OK, I've recorded everything I can with the battery life of my camera and laptop.. it was killing my neck too!!!

Albeniz-Godowsky Tango: http://www.box.net/shared/eo6rgv34pcr8jhedo7gb
Grainger Irish Tune from Country Derry: http://www.box.net/shared/p5x337e3q68m4dm9945n
Liszt Mephisto Waltz No. 3: http://www.box.net/shared/y5zdp48lkz0h2znop6ji
Liszt-Wagner Einzug der Gäste auf der Wartburg: http://www.box.net/shared/jqgcvhv4v8eqo55pdrq2
Schumann Sonate fur das Jugend, Op. 118, No. 1: http://www.box.net/shared/kn46l8yjpzavi6e41un2
Alkan Nocturne in B major: http://www.box.net/shared/m3ix0zy8u9vid5er5k01
Respighi Antiche danze et arie per liuto, Suite No. 1: http://www.box.net/shared/zb51e1vu7hy3o22fkkzz

Wow! You are what I'm trying to become. So did this reading ability come natural to you or did you have to work directly at it?

I don't know, but I have a cassette tape from when I was 8 sight-reading Chopin's Nocturne in F minor Op. 55/2. I couldn't tell you if it was good teaching in my formative years or if it was inborn. I used to say it was my eyesight, but I had an inflammation over the summer which has knocked it down and it hasn't slowed me down.

Wow you are busy. I wish a had this work ethic. (I know, don't wish - do)

Did you at least practise sightreading regularly throughout the years, or did you not but can do it fluently anyway?

Bravo. I haven't listened to everything yet...the Liszt-Wagner was a little mean to throw in, and you did a good job for sight-reading. I mostly mean to look at it to gawk at Liszt's genius at orchestration on a solo piano, and even then, the last part is rather over the top. I enjoyed how you carried the line in the Grainger.

What did you think of the pieces, for sight-reading or otherwise?

I spent most of my free time at Oberlin checking books out of the library and reading through them.. almost everything in the standard repertoire and a lot of pieces that were nowhere near it. Mostly I was trying to get into the 20th century avant-garde, which I never did quite manage. I'm a romantic beast at heart.

By the way, after listening to the Respighi that was suggested, I downloaded Audacity so I could change the file size and upload it. It's my favorite of the bunch by some considerable margin, with the Alkan probably second..

http://www.box.net/shared/zb51e1vu7hy3o22fkkzz

Most of it isn't my kind of repertoire, which would be why I hadn't played it before. The Respighi is my favorite out of what was suggested, but it's too thickly written. It doesn't feel like it was written by or for a pianist at all.

The Alkan is a gem. I found myself playing it like it was Chopin, but finding it needed more passion when I listened to the results.

wow! that's pretty good. i never heard most of these pieces either, i should also try sight reading them and see how i stack up to you :P but then i'll need to print them out which kind of becomes a waste of paper.

I put my laptop in full screen mode and put it on top of my upright, then a click of the button turns the page. It would be easier if I had a grand since I wouldn't have to look up the whole time.

It wasn't. What you've got is a piano arrangement of the orchestral suite.

It's my favorite of Respighi's works, and the piano version, while awkward in spots, is still effective. (I was actually reading through it a couple of weeks ago. It's really wonderful!)

Good God. Please add that Alkan to your repertoire. You are totally correct that it is a gem. That was freaking AWESOME. You even did a great job on those running 6ths!! What the heck??

What I like from the Respighi is the Vincenzo Galilei piece, but then I went to a performance of the Carnival D'Aix ballet, and I liked Milhaud's arrangement much better.

You had posted something you sight read before and it was great. One of the reasons I picked the Liszt was the odd way it changed key signatures going from F# to C repeatedly, apparently using the key of C to eliminate excessive accidental signs. What do you think of this piece? Too narrow? I've a strange attraction to that three octave melody.

Compared to Liszt's other late works, it feels kind of awkward and spare. Take for example the Hungarian Rhapsody #16, which has been a favorite of mine going back two decades. The material is quite simple, but the way it's presented makes it build an amazing amount of intensity. The Mephisto Waltz #3 doesn't have that drama and cohesion.

Can someone give JeffreyJones a piece that is impossible to sightread fluently, just to see how he does anyway? If he is willing, it would be interesting to hear, not expecting a perfect performance of course.

I should hope you're not expecting a perfect performance!!

Most likely what would happen is I wouldn't sight-read it fluently. I didn't even sight-read most of the original suggestions fluently. They were really hard.

Roslavets maybe? I keep seeing that name but haven't tried any of his music.

Okay, here's the most deceptively difficult sight-reading material I know of.

Two pages. Mostly 8th notes:

A little gigue by Mozart.

Oh, that one.. I have that in Henle urtext book I bought recently, but I haven't tried that gigue yet. Stand by.

OK, it was a crash and burn but the repeats were better, that's a tough little bugger! http://www.box.net/shared/jk72pfl3dd60fyjhsibx

I also tried a haunting little piece by Myaskovsky called Reverie while I was at it: http://www.box.net/shared/jucfvbon1159mv8vv138

wow! You are truly amazing! Bravo

Jeffrey, you're incredible!!

You should perhaps try to make some income from your sightreading. Set up a live video channel, and let viewers submit music sheets for you to play, and watch the ratings soar!

Great quick job on the Mozart Gigue!

To pick something like what MathTeacher said -- "Can someone give JeffreyJones a piece that is impossible to sightread fluently, just to see how he does anyway?" -- how about something from Ives' Concord Sonata, not "The Alcotts" which is almost normal but really that movement would be pretty darn impressive too....

I already studied The Alcotts in college, so that wouldn't be fair. I also have one of the Studies and I can't even begin to read through it.

Hey, folks -- he's human!!!

Was there ever any doubt about that? Though I wonder about Ives.

Bravo, Jeffrey. That was fun(for me at least)

Bravo! You are amazing! I especially enjoyed the Liszt-Wagner one.

I'll post a few pages shortly... It's going to be VERY tough Jeffrey, and not the whole work, because I simply can't post the whole work, but I can't resist a good challenge. (PS. It's contemporary... brrr....)

Some questions I need to ask you JeffreyJones, since I'm trying to become like you:

1) How many years have you been practising sightreading?
2) Do you count in your head as you sightread, and if not, how do you deal with a measure that has a very tricky rhythm?
3) How far ahead do you look generally?
4) How many outer and inner ledger lines do you have memorized by heart, and accordingly what range of notes can you play blindly?
5) What kind of piece is the most challenging for you to sightread? (e.g. heavy and frequent two-handed chords, scattered notes everywhere, polyrhythmic, etc...)

I bet he'll say something like he

There you go Jeffrey:

www.nikolas-sideris.com/AGS/Jeffrey.pdf

I, personally, think it's VERY difficult for various reasons, but I'd like to view on it. It's part of a score, not the complete score unfortunately, due to copyright reasons.

Thanks!

Holy moly! Well, we have up to 6 outer ledger lines, which he says he knows by heart.

Love this thread and kudos galore to jeffreyjones. He gets my vote for the all-time Piano World "put up or shut up" award. We should establish such an award and call it the "jeffreyjones cup" or something. Well done.

I have to get to work, so I'm not going to look at Nikolas' score yet. You have my word I'll record it later!

Heh... I know!

There is one good thing about the score, though... It's all 16ths and nothing else. Very little pedal and nothing else. (I'm mainly interested about the 2 and 1/2 pages, rather than the second half of the third page, btw... That part should be 'easier' (but under no accounts "easy" per se").

Thanks Jeffrey: Really looking forward to your take. I'm very interested exactly because I want to see how you fair with something like this, see if you understand "what's wrong" with it and tell me if it's as difficult as I think it is...

It's incredibly difficult to read because it requires so much redistribution between the hands. All of that has to be planned in advance. (Although I'm sure some 20th century specialists would be able to dispatch it rather easily - someone like Oppens, Crossley or Aimard.)

Fortunately, the tempo isn't too terribly fast, so it seems completely playable to me.

(Though I don't know why anyone would want to - it seems to suffer from a common problem among contemporary composers, it sounds cool in Finale, but nobody actually wants to learn it because it's awkward and just not worth the effort. I've seen a dozen versions of this same kind of writing in the last 5 years; it seems to be very much in vogue right now.)

There are ways to get that same effect without abandoning idiomatic writing - for example, in some of Carl Vine's sonatas or the Babadjanian poem.

The reason the notes were distributed as such was because of the lack of any real pattern in the single melodic line. It would be unfair of my big hands distributing the right-left hands, where someone would feel very differently. Contemporary scores quite often leave this issue (as well as fingering) out exactly because it becomes very personal.

And I should note that I don't compose with the aid of Finale. In fact some times I don't compose with the aid of a piano either! This chunk that you see remains a part of a much bigger score. And of course it has been performed (that specific part in one go) so it's perfectly playable thank you! Oh! BTW this work was composed 6 years ago in 2005!

When I was putting the notes in Finale, I pondered exactly for the reason you mention (the distribution of the hands), and I decided for the above reasons to go with the version you see here. Of course later on, I decided to proof read the score and I asked a composer friend and a couple of pianists here to 'have a look'. I'm quite open to suggestions, so I'd appreciate any info, or sample page you have on that style of 'semi-random' streams of notes and the distribution of the hands... In public or private, I don't mind either.

Could you perchance play some of Dvorak's 6 Mazurkas? I am interested in what they sound like.

Here is the link.
http://imslp.org/wiki/6_Mazurkas,_Op.56_%28Dvo%C5%99%C3%A1k,_Anton%C3%ADn%29

Edit: Scratch that, I found recordings on Pianosociety.com.

How about a Moszkowski etude?

Jeffrey, I'm really impressed by your sight reading skills, but if you don't bite for this one, I will still be impressed.

Op. 72, No. 11, A flat major:

http://erato.uvt.nl/files/imglnks/usimg/7/7a/IMSLP09192-Moskoswki-etOp.72-11.pdf

I was just gonna say, make him sight read Bach's fugues

I have tremendous trouble with fugues in general. 2 parts are relatively okay, but my LH technique gets in the way.

Some of the 3 or 4 parts in 48 P+F are almost sight-readable, but the fingerings are next to impossible to figure out.

My sightreading abilities are surely nowhere close to Jeffrey's, but it's pretty good considering how little time I actually play the piano. One of my teachers routinely ask me to accompany her students in concertos without prior warning. Of course, in concertos accompaniments, you are free to simplify some things and most are well-known concertos. The Ravel concerto, however, I have a devil of a time accompanying. Not so much notes, although that isn't exactly easy, but counting is way more difficult. Maybe I'm just unfamiliar with the rhythm.

Inspired by this thread, I started sightreading Beethoven's sonatas starting volume I. Not too bad, but Beethoven's stuff again are never easy, and whenever he goes polyphonic with non-trivial LHs, I mess up. Do you have the same problem with LHs Jeffrey?

I'm curious, when it comes to polyrhythms, can you sight read something like this:

http://216.129.110.22/files/imglnks/usim...in_Eb_Major.pdf

2nd movement, 2nd line, starting 3rd measure. there's a bunch of similar syncopated polyrhythms the rest of the piece, some even trickier than this one.

i was reading some music with a violinist friend and when i got here, i'm like, what on earth?

after much practicing, i think the next time i see something like this i would be better prepared.

EDIT: indeed, this time as i'm trying it it's very easy.

the ones on 4th page, 2nd line (still 2nd movement) are tricky too, but not quite as bad--but 1st measure, 3rd line i think is impossible to sightread accurately unless you've played something exactly the same before. maybe it's my ignorance, but i'm curious, can you sigttread that?

EDIT: tried it, still impossible!

No can do Lingyis, one of my conditions is it had to be solo piano. If you don't follow the rules you don't get a recording from me.

Nicolas' piece: http://www.box.net/shared/o4dcavaifigvcgodbps6
Moszkowski Etude: http://www.box.net/shared/hn3dyj83fd7vixjd1cyz
Dvorak Mazurkas: http://www.box.net/shared/f906ihxt1pzskrr6j7uj

Jeffreyjones, you are phenomenal! By the way, I think the 2nd link is the same as the 1st... Look forward to hearing the Moszkowski.

Looks like a pretty good idea to me....

Great job! Thanks a lot. Really liked the final Mazurka, I like all of Dvorak's piano pieces.

Fixed it, thanks!

Thanks Jeffrey! It's quite interesting that you're able to latch on pitches, without any other aid really.

I'll explain it to the other thread as well, but that specific part (the 2 and 1/2 pages) was composed with one thing in mind: to have no repeated patterns, to have nothing to latch on. Thus the notes are all over the place, the octaves go up and down like nuts and there's no fixed place for the hands. And that's why I never distributed the hands. It's not random in the sense of "whatever comes next", but it's random in the sense of "Yikes! No idea what's going on here", which was my main point on that part of the score.

I won't derail the thread any longer. Again thanks Jeffrey!

On the one hand, I was looking at the music and thinking 'this makes no sense,' but then I was instinctively doing pushing and pulling, broadening and contracting without even realizing it. I dunno. It was a strange reading for sure.

That's okay, I'm sure you'll do well anyway

I was gonna suggest some certain Beethoven sonata movement with tricky yet innocent looking LH passages. If your LH is good, I can imagine you do pretty well on those. Only thing is that it's way too in the standard repertoire.

I'm currently learning Beethoven's Emperor concerto, I'm curious, how hard do you find the LH in places like:


Those 4 measures (middle 4 measures) are taking me quite some time to learn. If LH and RH were reversed, it becomes sightreadable at full tempo, so I'm just wondering for better pianists than I if they can sightread it at close to full tempo. No need to post a recording, I'm just curious to know.

It's weird, if the passage is in the RH, my brain can process it pretty much instantaneously, but since it's LH, it barely even responds to it.

Bravo on the sight reading!!

Fantastic! I'd be happy at 25% of that.

Just a quick question - how much time do you normaloly spend previewing a piece to determone key signature and changes, overall structure, flow, etc. before actually starting to play?

here is a Saint-Saens etude if you dear to try!

it's no. 6 the Toccata!

imslp

http://imslp.org/wiki/Mazeppa,_S.100_(Liszt,_Franz)

That passage is very similar to parts of Chopin's Study Op. 10 No. 12 (and perhaps even inspired it), which Jeffrey probably already knows.

I'm looking forward to listening to these sightreading links when I get home!

Good get! Never thought of it despite having spent a lot of time with both....

The passage in the "Emperor" is much more difficult, though. I always slip.

Interesting... of course, I can't even play it without practicing, so "slipping" is outstanding, esp. when your "slipping" is essentially just a minor blip.

I have two points:

1) I know you said solo music only, but string musicians love the Mendelssohn Op. 49 Trio and Brahms Op. 8 Trio, both of which I have trouble sight-reading beyond the first couple pages (at maybe 80% tempo). Have you ever tried reading them?

2) Beethoven had Bach's 48 P+F in his repertoire. Bach and his contemporaries improvised fugues. I wonder, if people back in those days, with familiarity of counterpoint of that period, could sightread each other's fugues?

To me, the other way around. The ongoing chords in the R.H., despite being syncopated, help to "anchor" the L.H. and help keep it from feeling "naked."

They could, indeed. Bach, himself, was fond of bragging to friends that he could sight-read any piece set before him and many of them tried to trick him (unsuccessfully I might add).

Is the challenge still ongoing, by the way? If so, I would like to hear the Fmajor and gminor fugues from Bk. II.

I do not know if the challenge is still going on, but are you looking for pieces that are rarely played, or can we suggest more common ones?

it reminds me when i was 6 and was determined to give my new teacher a run for her money by turning to the last page of a collection and asking her to play it. she, being my grandma, and a conservatory professor, passed my stringent test.

it was the incomparable "the blue danube", standard arrangement, in many popular piano books

Here's what I'm interested in: lesser known pieces that are Romantic and lyrical. I'd be open to classical-period composers too. I play some difficult music, but I'm not at my best in virtuoso literature. I spent most of today sight-reading through pieces by Anton Rubinstein. Fantastic! They could use more polish as compositions, but the musical ideas are top-notch. I was surprised that very few of them were technically difficult, given his fearsome reputation as a performer. I got through all of the Album de Peterhof, Op. 75 (which is over an hour), and four of the National Dances, Op. 82 (which is probably close to an hour too).

Anton Rubinstein, Album de Peterhof Op. 75:
I: http://www.box.net/shared/fy0z2r0q06pz5fookvo1
II: http://www.box.net/shared/a81ve1hkpigtedz4ra7v
III: http://www.box.net/shared/38mtfv72zg0tmpcmlmcu
IV: http://www.box.net/shared/mqts6o0a6yf222k6i7nv

National Dances, Op. 82:
I: http://www.box.net/shared/43qtzcbtrf6cy039r5xz
II: http://www.box.net/shared/fit54agb4ceerq5cdyo6

I take it then that you're not interested in the Bach I mentioned?

This should fit the bill:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Les_Sylvains,_Op.60_(Chaminade,_C%C3%A9cile)

I think one of the conditions were that you provide a link.

I play a different prelude and fugue out of the WTK every week for church. Wouldn't be fair.

OK, it's 1870 and you're visiting Clara Schumann. She hands you her Prelude and Fugue in F# minor to play for her:
http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/8/84/IMSLP75011-PMLP150505-c_schumann_prelude___fugue.pdf

A little question: If you were sight reading something like Chopin's Winter Wind etude -- I don't mean necessarily exactly that piece, because probably you know it too well for us to talk about "sight reading" it; I just mean something like it -- would you try to really get the exact notes of the R.H. or would you just go for the 'gesture' and only worry about the exact notes of the L.H.? (I wouldn't be able to think of doing anything but the latter.)

Saint-Saens Toccata (didn't go well): http://www.box.net/shared/dnc3cyauoj7c8lvi1g6g
Chaminade Les Sylvains (went very well): http://www.box.net/shared/a4gjgqb6oejm03rohtmx
Alkan Aime-Moi, from Trois Morceaux Op. 15 (went OK): http://www.box.net/shared/at7lu49aium6it316pff



I'll do it on the condition that you provide a printed score. The goal here is not to make jeffreyjones go blind and/or lose his marbles.



It would depend on why I was reading it. If I was reading it to learn it, I'd go as slow as I needed to get it right. If I was just demonstrating it in a lesson, I would play whatever as long as it got the point across.

Yes -- me too, exactly. Although I know that either way, you'd get a lot more of it than I would.

What? Are you serious? Who doesn't own a copy of the WTC?

So then, the WTC complete is already in your repertoire, yes?

I have a bad edition, so that doesn't count... I'm fixing that pronto!

I was going to say me, because I don't play any Bach; but it turns out I do have the 2nd volume of the Schirmer's edition. At any rate, I thought he might be reading them straight from his computer monitor, hence the request.

Well then you still don't really have any Bach, if Schirmer is all you have.

I realized that recently and bought myself the Henle Urtext edition. I hope you consider that an appropriate edition to use.

Also, do you dislike Schirmer for everything else too? I do have quite a few Schirmer books (eg: Chopin Scherzos, Beethoven piano concertos, Liszt piano concerto, Chopin piano concerto, Brahms complete works, etc). Are these not acceptable books to use, say for the purposes of an amateur competition?

Well if you have the Schirmer WTC, you have the Czerny version, which would be argued an interpretation of Bach by Czerny.

But if you have Schirmer for Rach 3 (a reprint of the original...), or Schirmer for Barber....well it's probably fine.

I think Schirmer for 20th century up to now is more reliable.

Schirmer is just reprints of old editions. If you don't mind paying a premium for 19th century scholarship when you can get it on IMSLP, then by all means, knock yourself out. Any other suggestions? I ruled out the Liszt Mazeppa because there isn't an adequate piano reduction, and the other two of the Alkan Op. 15 were going to make me go blind. I'm not John Ogdon, I read pretty well but I'm not an automaton.

Jeffreyjones, regarding Liszt Mazeppa, that probably meant Transcendental Etude No. 4, not the orchestra poem.

Okay, for Alkan, how about the Capriccio Alla Soltadesca from Op. 50?

Ehh, I'll try it but the scan quality is the worst I've seen.. (except for that Clara Schumann manuscript)

Yeah, that's a problem with his music, isn't it...

Alkan Capriccio alla Soltadesca: http://www.box.net/shared/kg3uxx2nccahu3h0uz9t

I literally had to spend 15 minutes just poring over the score in magnified mode before I could try it. Hopefully the results were worth it.

How about Fiorentino's transcription of the Waltz from Der Rosenkavalier (#891 on this page):

http://www.classicscore.hut2.ru/F.htm

or his transcription of Vocalise(#890 on the same page)?

Do you print out the music or read it off a monitor?

Renewing my challenge. I have vacation time and I hate vacation time, because I want to be productive. I'll do pianoloverus' last request tomorrow and anything else I've gotten by that time.



I read it off my laptop.

Alkan Prelude Op. 31 No. 16 "Dans le Genre Gothique"
Alkan Chant Op. 38 No. 1

Medtner Skazka Op. 26 No. 1, 3, Op. 51 No. 3
http://imslp.org/wiki/4_Tales,_Op.26_%28Medtner,_Nikolay%29
http://imslp.org/wiki/6_Tales,_Op.51_%28Medtner,_Nikolay%29

Kapustin Suite in the Old Style Op 29 No. 1 - Allemande
http://www.scorage.ru/view.aspx?id=076506898646F9550246394ED669D96A
(from classicscore.hut2.ru)

Kapustin Prelude Op. 53 No. 9/11 (i can recommend the whole set, but maybe most of it is too rhythmically and jazz-wise challenging for sightreading)
http://www.scorage.ru/view.aspx?id=3EDC1654CDDFD7ADB722A9D401E610B8

Alkan Esquisses Op. 63 No. 4 Les Cloches, 14 Duettino, 36 Toccatina, 46 Premier Billet Doux, 48 En Songe (again, recommending the whole set)
http://imslp.org/wiki/Esquisses,_Op.63_%28Alkan,_Charles-Valentin%29


Awesome job so far! But i do think others have to practice regularly to get better at sightreading, like me. You're either the exception or your 'practice' was done long ago.

I'll be sure to tackle some of these as I'm recuperating from my root canal.. music is my therapy.

I feel for you, get well soon!