Any tips for being more ..........
A. expressive in this piece
B. playing faster
C. keeping a consistent fingering (besides practicing)
D. How did you go about learning this piece?
I play the right hand, then play the left, and slowly mold them. After playing the right with a certain fingering and doing the same for the left.

I did a recording of it, you can listen to it here:
www.angelfire.com/music6/pianostuff17

About playing faster, I guess you're mostly speaking about the preludium right? I think you should practice the hands seperately. Try to play each first sixteenth note (which is on the beat) with an accent, and the three sixteenth notes that follow much more quiet. Practice this slowly! Make it a big contrast - a forte on the first note and piano or mezzo piano on the other notes.

About expressiveness... It's nothing I think about when playing it. With bach, it comes automatically in my opinion. I wouldn't bother too much about where to make a crescendo, how to phrase etc... just do it!

Ahh, thanks for the advice!!!!!

Fnork, I really like ur recording of WTF in C minor. It sounds great!!! What an inspiration!!!

Also how did you go about recording the file? I noticed its in a small mp3 format?

Thanks! I'm not too proud of it myself (the preludium sounds too heavy overall and the hands aren't always together, and I missed too many notes in the fugue), but I'm glad you liked it I like playing the fugue the most, it's really fun. Think of the melodies as a conversation - one of them says this, the next one replies etc.

I recorded it on my friends MP3-player with external microphone which was included with the MP3-player. I compressed the file to make it small enough to put up on angelfire.

compressed it how? as in zipped it?

I was just finished practicing the Prelude, I wrote out fingering for both hands and can play both hands at about m.m. 65. Im not quite at the Presto section yet.... I have a little trouble around measure 15/16 or so, with the left hand there is a jump.... Other than that I am progressing fine, I want to have it down as in notes and at least m.m.75 by this time next week.

Just compressed so that I could have lower quality. That file is just 64 kbps or something like that, so it takes less space. That's all.

Make sure you can play it from memory ASAP. Try to play the first four measures without the sheet music in front of you - does it work? If yes, good! Try a couple more measures and see if that works too. If this doesn't work, practice with sheet music for a while and THEN take it away.
Which measure, more specifically, has a left-hand jump that troubles you? If you tell me the exact measure, perhaps I can help you.

Make sure that the hands are totally together all of the time, otherwise it will sound sloppy.

fnork, the prelude is not bad at all, although sounds little uneven at the end. i never finish learning this piece and some day i will do both prelude and fugue which i do love.

Try not to use (de)crescendos in this piece. Use something called "terraced dynamics", where you change the dynamics instantly; no gradual rising and falling of the dynamics. The Prelude is a good piece to practice your terraced dynamics, though you may want to do something a little different in the runs at the end.

fnork, I like your recording of the Ballade No.3 by Chopin.

Very good fnork, just curious how long have you been playing and what piano do you use?

Thanks for the positive responses NAK, you probably have a point there, and I actually haven't tried it yet.

Requiem: I started playing about 7 years ago, although I never got a good teacher until I started upper secondary school, which was about two and a half years ago. Since then, I've become much better and have practiced more. In my home, I have an upright piano of Nordiska Pianofabriken. However, I usually practice in school instead, since they have far better instruments there. The recordings were done on a Yamaha grand, which is the piano I usually end up practicing on

You can download Angela Hewitt's recording of this here:

Download

fnork: thanks for posting your recording. i've played through this piece earlier in the year but I never polished it to performance level. After hearing yours and some of the comments on here I think I might work on it again as practice. I never settled on a tempo for this piece and I've heard recordings of jando and a sample of Schiff's. Your tempo is much like Schiff's but Jando plays it a lot faster. I don't know which I prefer yet but i'll post again maybe after I've played around with it. Plwatcher: how much faster do you want to play it? or should I say how fast are you playing it now?
When I learned this piece I did HS all the way through and then slowly HT after I memorized it all. Also HS helped me nail a consistent and comfortable fingering. And I agree with fnork i think memorizing it makes it much much easier. ofcourse I had no choice because my sight-reading is horrible.

Whenever I play this I make sure not to start too fast. I find some interpretations start fast and then when they hit the presto section they only speed up a little bit. For me, I'd rather have the opening section be moderately fast, but not too much so - so that when you hit the Presto section the contrast is more marked. The suggestion as to playing the first note right on and then the following three is a good one.

fnork - I like your choice of tempi - my recording (not a good one, I can't even remember who does it) is much much faster in the beginning I would personally go a little faster in the presto, but the point is - not too fast to start off.

that's strange i posted a reply 5 minutes ago and it's not here?
well 8ude you make some really good points. especially about the tempo relative to the presto section. I think i'll explore that when i get the motivation to take that music out. actually, these days it's tough because I always have the motivation to play but NO time. It's very frustrating.
the presto section took me a little longer to get down compared to the rest but in general this piece just feels natural for the fingers.
Another piece that I like and is also not too difficult in the WTC is the G major prelude from book 2.

Thanks guys for the tons of advice!!

My troublesome measures are #s 10, 18 & 19 --- The left hands have a few jumps, and I dont want to play wrong notes. Any tips....

+ my ideal tempo, or at least the one in my book is M.M.108 but if I can get to around 88-95 that would be ideal, but then there might not be enough contrast, between that section and the Presto.

Plwatcher:

You probably know most of know this already…

Prelude: Accent 1st and 3rd beat of the bar; alternate each bar by playing one bar strong and the other weak; try not to move your arms up and down; creative use of rubato post bar 24; in getting it faster, practise the quavers as dotted quaver to semi-quaver, then vice versa - that way then you've practised all the quavers as semi-quavers, read 8ude’s post about opening tempo; and in the ‘Adagio’ bar, mark in your script where the beats are supposed to occur.

Take note (not that it makes much difference):THERE ARE 7 HEMI-DEMI-SEMI QUAVERS IN THE SPACE OF 8 HEMI-DEMI-SEMI QUAVERS! - bar 34 (My teacher pointed this out the other day!)

Fugue: Heavily accent the entrance of the theme whenever it occurs in the piece; stress the parts that go ‘tone - semi-tone down – semi-tone up’; from bar 22 dynamically mimic the movement of the scales (i.e. scale goes up, dynamics get louder) but at the same time increase the general dynamics until the theme is once again reached (BUILD UP THE TENSION BUT DO NOT SPEED UP); once the theme is reached play it in a terrible and tumultuous fff (I don’t, but if you want, play the final theme in octaves as stated in the Czerny version) and powerfully thrust the titanic C chord down that is capable of ringing until the end – then in massive contrast, play the final 2 and a half bars a very, very timid piano, as if to resolve the tension…. If Bach wanted a loud ending, he would have ended it at the C chord.


Fnork: an impressive recording!

Whoa, I will accent the 1st and 3rd as opposed to just the 1st and 4th, which is what I was doing. Also I will ask a stupid question ...

can you elaborate on quavers == ??????

Lol.

Quavers are also known as half-notes.

I'm not sure, was that what you were reffering to Plwatcher?

Yup yup! I feel like a dunce! thanks HannahT ~

LOL!

HannahT, i don't understand why we have to play one bar strong one bar weak, which makes no sense to me. i remember i might have heard someone playing it like that but felt very uncomfortable about it. i always assume this prelude should be played like relentless fast moving flow with even dynamic and yet always with sort of furious tension. well, i am not an expert on Bach, but for this prelude i always have a particular sound image of it and always want to play like that (unfortunately i learned only 1/3 of it and stopped some time ago).

Well I really want to MASTER this Prelude to some extent, being that it is one of my many audition pieces. I had the other Prelude from WTC Book#2 in C-minor but I wanted to learn a new one. And I knew #24 in the 2nd book, but once again a new one...

what coincident, Plwatcher, i learned part of no.24 prelude of WTC2 as well, but sadly never finished it just like the no.2 prelude you are talking about. they both are quite beautiful.

yes they are both beyond beautiful signa. I hate never completing pieces. I have started so many and not completed them.

To complete = perform in this case or at least be able to have them at performance level.

very true, Plwatcher. i learned almost 1st page of no.24 prelude a couple years ago maybe, when i was technically not quite up to the task and had to give it up. now, i feel technically better and yet i have no time getting back to those preludes because i too have many pieces started and never have quite completed (except fur elise). besides, i keep adding something i really want to play at the moment, like tempest's 3rd mvmt. i wish i have more time but have to work and can only focus on 1 or 2 pieces at a time.

of all WTC preludes, i also like no.2,6 of both book 1& 2. i actually completed no.20 prelude of book 1, but now i have forgot it and have to relean it if i want to get it back.