Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum April Piano Bar (Before April 1 and No Fool'n!)

Well, you will have to understand what is comfortable and possible for the violins. I didn't think of that. It could be tricky. But in this case it should be comfortable.

Whizbang and Maechre - Good work.

Teodor Beethoven is a blast. there`s so much you can do with orchestration, too much for me to attempt at my age. His Bi Polar aspects always need particular attention which means volume nearly silent, then deafening. You`ll have fun doing this; I look forward to seeing the finished product! Well done man!

Maechre Fantastic reading and playing! Well done; this does not look simple. Rattling through all that without pause or mistakes? The next time I do that will be the first! You`re well under way . . .

Elle Great music on your new piano . . loved te Burgmuller one (2nd) so well and fluent. If I might say, break it down into sections and don`t be afraid to slow things down in between. . . fingerwork`s super!

Whizbang -There sure is some talent here this month . .that rag was not tattered . . good exercise for the fingers! Have fun . . . .What ya gonna play for Men`s History Week?

stumbler A gentle touch my friend. Just what the Doctor ordered. Relaxed, I lay back and think of . . food!

There's no shortage of rags written by men. For instance, right now, I'm working on Cottontail Rag by Joseph La...waitasec! What sort of man's man, especially one from New Jersey, writes a rag named after a cute, fluffy, pink bunny!?

Whizbang Great job "The Thriller". It makes me think of the golden era of silent movies! Thanks for sharing.

Stumbler As you probably know, this piece is sometimes referred to as "The Hungarian Dancer". It sounded like your fingers danced very nicely and gently over the keys! Well played indeed!

Whizbang: The ragtime is very nice. The dynamic is very good.

This is my second submission for April 2013.

Romance
An Old French Song by P. Tchaikovsky

Thank you! I played this for my Uni recital last year (didn't do as well, but I passed!). I practised this many times before bringing out the camera, and then recorded it several times before I got a take I was almost happy with . . . and then I still had to edit out a mistake!

But I think I'm just starting to get somewhere with my reading. I'm working at it!

weiyan - Unmistakedly French, from a hymn tune I imagine. hundreds o` years old.

You and your ole Joanna . .
are sounding in a goodly manner!

Weiyan, you say that's P. Tchaikovsky, and I believe you - but the music sounds much older than his time period. There is a real medieval tone to it. Very nice!

The song is a course material of Jaak Sikk's online classical piano course. Let me ask Jaak about the author and age of this nice piece.

peterws - Schubert Impromptu 3 - You play this well, but the mismatch between the sound and video drives me crazy. Reminds me of a concert of Alfred Brendel playing Beethoven, our seats were so high up that the sound and sight were out of sync. Wouldn't have been bad except there was a lot of fast notes. Looked like the sound was created by him lifting his hands rather than by lowering them.

Teodor - Sonata op 10 no 3 orchestration
Interesting work but I find the synthetic strings detract considerably.

Maechre - Kingdom Hearts: Simple and Clean (Hikari)
It is still a good duration for the piano bar. Well done.
Also you handle the page turns quite well.

ElleC - Minuet BWV 115 - Congrats on the new piano. I enjoyed the minuet. I noticed the ornaments in particular were nice and clean.
- Arabesque - Burgmuller - This one is new to me. Again well played. It sounds like you are having no problem adjusting to your new piano.

Whizbang - The Thriller - more rags please !

Weiyan - Romance - you are picking up pieces fast



casinitaly, swissMS, peterws - thank you for your compliments.
Thanks, Amaruk, BTW I didn't know this one had a name.

It is the sixteenth piece (not "song") from Tchaikovsky's "Children's Album", Op. 39, composed in 1878. A score can be found here: http://javanese.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/1/15/IMSLP154641-WIMA.fd00-Tschaikowsky-rom.pdf

I don't know how the course works but there are some things that are not the same as the score. Tchaykovski didn't write some of those rhythmic patterns that you play. It sound very different. Also this is music from the romantic period, it needs more pedalling.

The Tchaikovski "Album for the Young" pieces (Weiyan's Romance is one of them) are supposedly for children, and so for students. I got involved in an event on another site that featured another piece from the Album and my teacher talked about them. They look simple because they're in easy keys and don't cover a large range on the piano, but to make them sound good you need a lot of skills that a student won't have yet. Either that, or they were written for the kind of student they had in the old days that had a teacher every day of the week and practised for hours under close supervision. (If you read Czerny's "letters to a student" you'll get the idea.) Nowadays these pieces get assigned as grade 2/3/4 pieces and get played in an elementary way. When I was looking for ideas for my piece, I found one professional pianist called "Cubus" who did justice to it. I.e. it took a seasoned professional. Some "student piece"!

Second thought is about (us) students who are developing. Different teachers have different ideas. One is to move from easier to harder pieces, and learn skills along the way. One other idea is to focus on separate skills one at a time, because of the idea that we can only hold on to one new thing at any time. The one I know is to get the right notes with relatively easy motion, then worry about relative note value (two quarter notes fit into a half note), then tempo with even beat, then if you have that much control, play with rubato, dynamics etc. Pedal is in there too. So even if a piece calls for all kinds of fine effects, the teacher may want the student to be working at one of those points or levels I mentioned. As students we might practice in layers, along those same lines, adding to the piece as each one gets mastered, up to what skills we've reached.

These are the thoughts floating around in my head while listening to Weiyan playing the Tchaikovsky Romance.

I followed with the score. The right notes are there, I think, and generally an even pulse and note values. There are some tricky spots, and it's not a super-easy piece. There are a couple of slips in note value which may be the rhythmic thing that Teodor has mentioned: especially the G in the bass coming in beat 2 of m. 2, 4 etc. - it's early. But this is also a tricky spot if you're learning, because the G is being held across the measure for 3 beats when the music is in 2/4 time and that is probably why W comes in early. If I were playing this piece and I had reached my level, my teacher would say "Good. Put it away now. Come back to it later in 6 months when you have mastered more things, and then develop it further." At that point I'd discover what used to be hard is now easy, and I can do more.



Undoubtedly - yes. But ... pedal is a skill, and I'm told it is a poorly taught skill. If I had learned it, then I'd go for it, maybe after getting a handle on the notes (which Weiyan has), maybe with a teacher's input on where to pedal. If I had not learned pedal, maybe I'd learn it in easier music, and then come back to it. I agree that it would sound better with pedal. In fact, part of this piece is the fact that from m. 17 - 20 you suddenly have a contrast with the staccato in the LH, contrasting with the legato RH, and suddenly in m. 21 we're back to pedal and the highlight of the piece.

An advanced pianist could do things like bring out phrasing in the RH, make the LH much softer than the RH, add rubato and subtle effects. But we are not advanced pianists, most of us.

Weiyan, all in all a good job. I'd love to hear what you do with it a year from now. (I have a number of pieces "on hold for the future" - the one I presented in this forum was on hold for two years!)

I guess so, to me this piece doesn't even contain notes to read it's simple. But I do love to play it as well. I also play the Sick Doll and the Doll's Burial from this album and they are both great pieces. When I get tired of sucking at debussy, I go back to those just to prove to myself that I can still actually play piano decently