Nothing like a deadline to fire up your practicing! If you play Chopin anything like you play Rachmaninoff, you'll do just fine, debrucey. We believe in you!

If his past history here is any indication, I do not feel there is any to worry about.

I know I'm coming in a little late to this. I would suggest that playing something poorly would be less professional than dropping the piece.

That said, I don't think this is impossible to learn in two months. I hear you are proficient at Rachmaninoff, though I have never had the pleasure of hearing you play any. I learned Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto in 2 months. Bottom line: you can do this.

When push comes to shove, you can do so many things.. as you'll discover, haha =) good luck!

Fine -- but yes, "long time" -- which I would have thought could mean a lot more than 2 months.


IMO they're just wrong.
Sorry.

And BTW my guess would be that "a lot" is a bit of hyperbole. You sure you don't mean just 1 or 2 people that you happened to have come across? (Because I'm very, very confident that it's an extreme minority view. Unless y'all are talking about playing it not necessarily very well, or quite superficially, in which case just about anything isn't that hard.)

Anyway....obviously you're quite determined to press on with the Ballade. Good luck -- maybe you can pull it off quite well; a lot of people here seem to think you can. But from how you presented it in the original post, IMO it sounds way too iffy.

Good Luck! I've been in several situations like this and they all seem to turn out better than I had hoped. Although there were 1 or 2 that I'd rather not remember....

Good luck with your recital, Debrucey! Your YouTube recordings are terrific, and I am sure you can do an excellent job with the 4th ballade. You are shooting for a very ambitious deadline, though.




My recommendation would be to continue making your best effort at learning Chopin's 4th ballade for the November recital. As a safety measure, determine the latest point (e.g. early November?) when it would still be feasible to change the program without too much negative fallout. Have a back-up piece that you already play well (perhaps another comparable work by Chopin such as another ballade, scherzo, Fantaisie in F minor, Polonaise-Fantasie, etc). in good shape in case the 4th ballade does not go as well as hoped. A few days before the deadline, make your best judgement on whether to play the 4th ballade or the other piece. You can play both pieces in front of other pianists whose views you trust to get feedback to help you make your decision.

Would it be feasible to do something like this?

Nope, I have no such piece. The recital is 50 minutes long and uses up everything I have at the moment. If I were to change it for something comparable I would be in the same situation as I would still have to learn a new piece.

If I may dare propose something: Why does all the pieces have to be AMAZING and MONUMENTALLY stunning, difficult and contain the WOW factor? Just got for a couple of easier works. Not everything has to be at the standard of a Chopin Ballad I think...

True. A set of nocturnes, waltzes, or mazurkas would be really nice to listen to.

Nice last two posts, but I think we all get the feeling he's not going to be too interested in stuff like that.
He's clearly determined to do the ballade.

My main concern is that he thinks it's "not that hard," supported by "a lot of" people who've said it isn't, which is just bull, even if his lot of people really did say it. And it's not real good to go on bull.

lol

Okay, first of all I never said anything about what I personally think about the difficulty of this piece. All I did was point out that your statement that it is 'considered by all' to be the most difficult is not entirely true because I know of people who know what they're talking about who disagree. I never said whether or not I agree with them or disagree with you. I haven't learned it yet so I couldn't say how difficult it is. Secondly, the rest of my 50 minute programme is quite easy, so I could hardly be accused of favouring difficult pieces just for the sake of it.

What other pieces are you planning to play at your November recital besides Chopin's 4th ballade?

Beethoven, Bagatelles 1 and 5 from Op. 119 and Moonlight Sonata
Rachmaninoff Prelude in C-sharp minor and Etude Op.39-8
Chopin Raindrop Prelude, and finally the Ballade.

Perhaps I should have said relatively easy, haha. But I think my point stands.

I feel we've got somewhat sidetracked. The whole point of this thread was to hear interesting stories of how other people have coped under self imposed pressure.

In that case, please accept our help on this: Those people, however many or few of them there may be, are in a tiny minority, and more importantly, they're simply wrong.

Take my word.

Perhaps they're talking just about getting the notes, or worse yet, sort of getting the notes, and in either of those cases, they're really wrong, because they're missing the point of the piece, which presumably you don't want to do.

They're wrong. They're not worth referencing on something like this, because it will only mislead you.


It's not unusual for the main question within something to be different than what the person thought, and we see it here a lot.

Oh for goodness sake.

Indeed!

Exactly. He said the same thing over and over in three threads and several times per thread. All that from someone who worked on the Ballade for seven years before performing it.

Haha, good point.

Huh?

By the way, would you agree that there's any correctness in believing that the piece is "not that hard"?

I look forward to your reply.


Small point, but for what it's worth, that wasn't so. I did put it that way but it was a 'shorthand': I didn't perform it till 7 years after I first learned it.

Debrucey's requesting that his thread discuss what would be helpful to him. He said more than once that he wants to play the Ballade despite some posters' suggestion to do otherwise.

EXACTLY.

Thank you very much.

"Not that hard" is so vague that could be true for almost any piece. It's really impossible to argue intelligently against a description like that.

He told you what some of his acquaintances said. He said he wants to play the piece. What could possibly be the point of telling him more than once that your perception of the difficulty is different?

Helpful to him assuming he's going to play the Ballade. He just said that a few posts ago. He specifically said the thread had veered in a direction he didn't feel was useful or related to his first post.

I don't recall Debrucey ever asking for help. Maybe you can quote that part. Two months is a good amount of time if you have the time. Not a lot a time if you have a 9-5 job besides. Everything he has posted sounds pretty damn good so I think his judgement is probably pretty damn good also. If he screws up, that's a lesson learned too. I see little downside to digging into the ballade.

I NEVER said that I or anyone else thought the piece was 'not that hard'. The phrase I used was 'not as difficult as people think'. Neither did I say that I necessarily believed what they said. Please make more of an effort to understand what people have said before attempting to repudiate them.

Also, Damon is right. I never asked for help. I wanted to hear similar stories from other people and have a discussion about how we work on a piece when the deadline is closer than we'd like. I think that's quite an interesting topic.

If someone has a basic misunderstanding of something -- and he does -- that's worth noting. If he resists the correct input, and if you care about it (and more so perhaps, if you find the misunderstanding offensive, which I do -- on behalf of music and on behalf of Chopin) then you might try again.

Sorry, but I don't believe that you think there's much sense in feeling that this piece might be "not that hard," within any idea of the phrase. I think you're arguing it just because of who it is who's talking about it.

Debrucey: You're obviously determined. But, one more piece of advice: Don't let yourself say to too many people that you think the piece might not be that hard. It won't make a real good impression.


edit: Debrucey, just saw your last post.
Everything I've said applies absolutely equally to 'Not as difficult as people think.'
Trust me.
(Even though I know you won't!)

Of course I won't. Why should I? What reason have you offered me to convince me that you know more about this than any of the other people I've spoken to about it?

see above edit