Welcome to the Piano World Piano Forums Over 3 million posts about pianos, digital pianos, and all types of keyboard instruments. Over 100,000 members from around the world.
Join the World's Largest Community of Piano Lovers
(it's free)
It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!
I found this great piece in my daughter's RCM Level 8 book. After listening to various interpretations on YouTube including Oscar himself, I think swinging it would be more true to original intent and style of the piece. Playing it straight as written in the RCM book seems like the classical world is trying to take the jazz out of the jazz tune. Would anyone like to weigh in with their thoughts?
Two comments. First, when you say it's "written straight," in the jazz world you rarely notate the swing. Virtually all tunes are written with straight eight notes, but the performer knows it should be swung. And swinging it was certainly the way Oscar played it because he had about the best swing feel of any piano player.
That said, swinging while playing solo piano is quite hard to do. If whoever will be performing this (not sure if it's you or your daughter) is classically trained, giving it a good swing feel is very hard to do. So it might be better to stick with a style that the performer knows how to handle.
Nice piece, by the way. I don't know that I'd heard it before.
What you could always do is to play along with Oscars recording and see if you can match his pulse. He doesn't drop a beat except for a few ritardandos here and there.
Your version is the first I've heard that actually sounds like a gentle waltz. Some of the other interpretations I have heard on YT sound too mechanical, emphasis is not placed on the melody line, or the rhythm is not quite correct. I like the way you added the swing.
"Imagine it in all its primatic colorings, its counterpart in our souls - our souls that are great pianos whose strings, of honey and of steel, the divisions of the rainbow set twanging, loosing on the air great novels of adventure!" - William Carlos Williams
