Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Tchaikovsky Themed Recital: April 2014

I have listened to all of the Opus 39 pieces and I really like several of them: Morning Prayer, The Sick Doll, The Doll's Funeral, the Old French Song, and the Organ Grinder's Song. Sweet Dream has its moments, too. I am really looking forward to hearing other peoples' versions of these, and I am learning Morning Prayer and the Old French Song now in addition to In Church.

To other op. 39ers - you might want to check this recording by Idil Biret, sounds nice to me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyFg5HMZKRw

I'm giving up "January". With my March recital, the April deadline for this recital is just too much. I have it half learned. But, going to have to set it aside to concentrate on recital material.

Is this piece too much compared to my other pieces...

Struggling with legato thirds where one finger is on a black key and the other white.. Any suggestions other than play it very slowly until you can do it?

Have you been through the middle section? If you can play either M24-31 or M45-54 up to or close to tempo, hands separately, within a couple of days you should manage this in the time available. It is one of the easier pieces in the opus which are uniformly Grade 7 ABRSM (though they aren't all the same level technically). Henle marks this as level 4/5. If your teacher gave you the Adagio sostenuto you have the interpretive skills but it's a bit of a march from Op. 39.

If you want it, put your name on it now. It's easier to take your name off later than trying to claim it after someone else has taken it.
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There is no requirement to get all these pieces played in this recital. It's more players we want than more pieces but if anyone is looking for difficult second pieces that will need more practise time I would urge you to stake a claim now since uptake has slowed down over the last while.

I'd like to leave Opp. 39 and 40 until December 1 before opening them for seconds.

There have been few responses to earlier suggestions so let me put some more out there and see how folks react...

The size of the works we've been tackling have, at least for me, been a bit of a stretch and have taken time, effort and dedication. If I'm to put that much into it then I'd prefer to have a more appropriate choice for my skills and tastes.

The fact that it IS a themed recital confines my choice enough for me.

Where there's a small collection of works being offered then it's worth having them all shared out but once all the pieces are taken up I see no further benefit in restricting subsequent choices.

Having more than one person play each piece is not enough to create competition in my view. Everything we do, in the classical world, is based on a restricted set of pieces but it's our own interpretation that makes it unique and there has been no sense of competition when popular pieces are entered in the ABF recital by two or more members, but rather been a fun comparison or gone almost unnoticed. It is what the performer does with the material that draws attention not how it compares to someone else's.

The first themed recitals were small in scope, five or six pieces presented by a small group but the Mendelssohn recital showed just how much fun and reward there is in a joint venture and a shared focus and how widely divergent peoples tastes are.

If we chose, for example, to do Debussy's Suite Bergamasque and everyone went for Clair De Lune, that would certainly encourage me to look at the other pieces.

My preference would be to see a list of participants, each with a piece or two they'd like to do, than a list of pieces only available to one person each. In fact I see more benefit from several interpretations.

For second pieces then, I see no need to restrict them to one performer.

Thoughts?

@Morodiene
Thanks, I am away at work so I don't have access to my dp nor the sheet music at the moment. (Also I wanted to thank you for your help in another topic last week but your inbox seems to be full so I couldn't send a pm. Thank you once more.)