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Advice please from pianists. How difficult is this? I can play Chopin nocturnes competently for example, so would this Grieg Am concerto be within my grasp with some work?

Does anyone know of an internet site that has at least the first section so that I can guage the level of difficulty. I am happy to buy it but the music shops in my area do not have a copy.

Thanks

Adrian

I have never played it, but I have heard it in concert. Its a wonderful piece, and the cadenza seems very technically demanding. I heard JOn Nakamatsu play this with the Virginia Symphony Orcheastra back in September. He played it beautifully.

You'll find it here:
http://www.sheetmusicarchive.net/

It's very hard. Certainly much harder than Chopin nocturnes. (Especially the cadenza, and certain light chordal passages)

I performed the first movement last June with the orchestra at my high school (and before that with my teacher on second piano). It's a very fun piece! And very beautiful, too. I loved learning and playing this great piece.

From my experience just reading through it, it is hard, but it's a "playable" hard. Its funny, because I think a lot of people consider this one of the easier concerti. While it may not be up to the likes of Brahms 2, Bartok 2, or Rachmaninoff 3, it is definitely tough. If you're willing to put the time in, though, it looks like it is playable, challenging, and enjoyable.

Good luck.

"it is hard, but it's a "playable" hard"

I second this. It's sort of like the Mendelsohn G minor in terms of difficulty, because they're both difficult but not that awkward.

I have the Schirmer 4-hands edition that is
81 pages long. At your level you should be able
to work up any one page of it in a few months'
time. So it can be worked up by you, since it
would simply be a matter of spending a few
months on each page. The sticking point, however,
is that 81 pages times, say, 3 mos. is 243 mos. or
20 yrs., an unreasonable length of time to
work continuously on one piece. But, say,
one movement of it could be worked up in
a reasonable amt. of time, if you push it,
and assuming you improve in the process,
which will enable you to accelerate things.
But for an amateur of modest ability figure
on spending at lot of time and effort on
it, several yrs. at least.

For example, I also am an amateur of modest
ability, and I also got tired of wishing I
could play the big 19th cent. concertos, so
a while back, I simply started to work on
one of the difficult ones, which was much, much
too difficult for me. So what I've had to
do essentially is just rely on brute force
repetition to work it up, playing it over
and over again, because if you do this with
anything, no matter how difficut, eventually
it will start to become familiar to you,
and when that happens it is within your grasp.

When you're an amateur and you undertake a
daunting task like this on your
own, it can be frustrating, since you'll
soon discover that every page presents difficult
technical problems that you've never even
dreamed of, and now you have to somehow come
up with the technique to handle them, which,
of course, you don't have. So again, it's
simply going to be a matter of repetition
to develop the technique needed.

However, doing something like this can pay
dividends, because it forces you to innovate
in order to reduce the time required to
work it up. And when this happens you
improve overall as a pianist. For example,
along the way I discovered that if I forget
about memorization and play without looking
at my hands, it enables me to make unprecedented
progress. I also discovered that a digital
piano with weighted hammer action keys is
the ideal thing for something like this,
because it enables you to turn the vol. down
so you, and your neighbors, can't hear, at
full vol., your struggles with something
that's obviously much too difficult for you.
And a weighted digital also improves your
technique overall since it's slightly harder
to play on than an acoustic piano. I also
discovered things like the benefits of
rote copying of a score: copying longhand,
note for note, a few measures of some piece
of music every day before practice, which
improves your general music reading ability
dramatically.

I seem to be well on my way to working up
that concerto in a reasonable amt. of time.

You know, normally when you want to learn something that many other people can do, you don't try to innovate the answer yourself. In one's days of academia, the prescribed medicine was, "Get a tutor." Perhaps that sentiment isn't too far out of the ordinary that it might still pertain?

Imagine the progress one could make if they took their natural intelligence, borderline genius (for the ability to innovate over two hundred fifty years of piano-playing innovations on one's own), to a teacher who could issue forth these 'innovations' properly, and without all the trial-and-error manifestations of solitary confinement! (Not to mention that, psychologically-speaking, it is far easier to learn something properly the first time, than it is to un-learn something.)

Thanks everyone and especially Copper for the link. I do have a teacher who teaches at Diploma level and see no reason why I should not try this. (He is away right now or I would have asked him about it). It has never taken me months to learn a page of anything so I will see if it is as bad as all that. Adrian

Further comment: I did print out the score (first movement only, amounting to 20 pages) and have played through the first five pages a couple of times. It is not as bad as I was expecting after teh comments here. My playing is slow and ponderous as I am not a brilliant sight reader, but it is not impossible so far. It really shows up the weakness in the upper octave of my piano though.

I can see that it gets more difficult towards the end as the last five pages look very demanding, but I think that taking three months per page to get to performance standard would be labouring it a bit! It will be interesting to see how I get on with the whole first movement over the next month or two.

Wish me luck. Adrian

There's a nasty RH tremelo part that needs a pretty good technique.

AJB, it might not be a good idea to ask your
teacher about this. You may so no reason why
you shouldn't try this, but he may see plenty
of reasons why not. What you'd be doing by
leaping from nocturnes to this would be
sort of shortcircuiting the lesson plan he's
set up for you. Teachers tend to have very
set ways of doing things, and he's probably
figuring on nocturnes, then etudes, then sonatas,
then the easier concertos, and then way down
the line something like the Grieg, all in
a time span of yrs. By requesting that he teach
you the Grieg now you're essentially throwing
a wrench into the works, which he probably
won't like at all. I'd suggest you work on
it on your own without telling him. Then
your lessons will take on an interesting
new perspective as you work at home on
something that is much more difficult than
what is being taught you.

Grieg Concerto sounds much harder than it is--it can bring you great success when playing for a generic audience who doesn't know much about piano technique. Yes, it is much harder than most Chopin Nocturnes, but as long as you're basically loose in your wrists and have moderately decent octaves/fingerwork, it shouldn't present any big challenges.

Gyro! You do not take a few months to work on one page of anything! Maybe two weeks at the longest.
You should tell your teacher you want to work on the concerto. Some teachers don't have a strict plan for progress. As long as you're advanced and want to take up a challenge than a lot of pieces would work.

If you work it up that fast, you will have
developed none of the physical technique
required to handle it.

It took me almost a year to be able to play just the first movement. (Granted, I was very much preoccupied with audition repertoire at the time...) And it wasn't nearly as good as I might have liked it to be at any of the performances.

Perhaps I should add a few comments as whilst I take some of the points made about me launching into this, I am not sure that I agree:

I am 48 and have a mature teacher. He is open minded about what we cover. I have not told him about the Grieg yet and will be interested in what he says. But it has always been in my nature to jump into the deep end of everything and I have managed to stay afloat so far.

The comments about developing technique are interesting. Although I have recently come back to the piano after a long break, I have considerable finger dexterity and strength because I play guitar at a high level and also play violin (at a lower level sadly). I did study piano properly for many years (a long time ago) and it is coming back quite quickly. I also do plenty of exercises, (Hanon mainly at the moment).

So, I am not overly daunted by the Grieg. I tend to think that if I can play through most of it, slowly, sight reading, then there is no reason why I should not be able to play it properly in due course. And if it turns out to be beyond me, then I can always put it aside for a while.

I don't really see why a lesson plan needs to follow Nocturnes, Etudes of whatever before progressing to concertos in a few years. At 18 I might have seen the merit in this if I were pursuing a concert career (instead of business), but at 48 I think I need to play what takes my fancy as life is all too short.

When I re-started, a few months ago, a friend who is a piano teacher, said that I should start back at the basics. Indeed she was adamant about this and gave me several books of easy arrangements. This was dreadful because I hear the piece in my head (like a CD player) and if it does not match the simplified music than I am dissatisfied and de-motivated at the beginning. So I decided to ignore her and launched into the Chopin nocturnes. I found them incredibly difficult at first, but some of them are among my favorite piano pieces and I have the ones I am interested in more or less up to performance standard now (according to my teacher).

My teacher has been very encouraging as he has experience of musicians coming back to the piano after a break, and he believes that there is a certain portion of the learning curve that will be recovered very quickly. Eventually we will will discover the level that I am comfortable at, and at that point the real work will begin. I expect the Grieg is beyond where I should be, but it will be interesting to see how I get on with it.

I have ample time to practice (several hours a day if I feel like it) as I have taken a year or two off work (more or less), and so I can make rapid progress, especially if I keep things fresh by working on several pieces at once).

Anyway - thanks for the opinions, both the encouraging and cautionary.

Adrian

I think it is an absolutely horrible idea to hide this from your teacher. As Gyro said, your teacher has a set method of instruction. If you deviate from the plan without telling him, there will be consequences. He, having a specific plan, will likely have a trial-and-error subscription to determine what is causing your newfound variance from his methodology. By NOT knowing about the Grieg, he will exhaust many hours trying to fix the wrong things.

Whether or not you go forward with the project will likely be independent of your teacher's wishes and desires (if you're anything like me), but you should at least inform him of your decision, so that he knows what he is working with every time you step into a lesson.

Derelux and others. Forgive me, but if you read second post you will see that I have no intention of hiding anything from my teacher! It is just, as I said, that he is away at the moment (it is half term over here) and so I will not catch up with him until next week. I pay him to help me and see no upside in hiding anything. He and I decide the lesson plan together. I am not the type of person who is interested in a rigid teaching method or a dogmatic approach - I think that is a failing of all too many teachers (not just of piano). I have strong views about this and selected my teacher very carefully. I know what works for me. Dogmatic and inflexible teachers who would not deviate from a rigid path (or comfort zone!) put me off piano the first time around when I was doing all the ABRSM exams. I see no harm in stretching my teacher as well as me. Adrian

this thread makes me want to shoot myself.

Gyro. No. it should never take months to learn one page of anything, if it does, stop. You aren't doing any good for anybody...you, the audience, your teacher, the composer.

also no. The teachers are not out to get us. If the student is capable of learning a piece then most teachers wouldn't hesitate to teach it to them. Teachers like to push their students, but it is also good not to let the student get out of control or become inefficient. Usually the teacher knows best.

Take all this from sombody who jumped straight into the advanced rep. from damn near the begenning. Could I handle it? Yes. Did it help motivate me and was it fun? Yes. Was it efficient? No. Did it help to go back to something more realistic? ....it helped more then anything I could have ever done at that time... oh and did my teachers encourage my playing upper level pieces months into the piano. Yes. but they also helped me be realistic at the same time.

challenge yourself, set goals, but be realistic.

AJB... The Grieg is difficult but it is common for mid level pianists to play it decently. If you feel you can take it on go for it. To me it does not sound like the piece is way above you, it soiunds like you have an understanding about what it will take and you want to do it. And usually teachers are very encouraged when a student brings them a piece that they want to play. Everyone likes a motivated students and the teacher will be encouraged to make it work for you.

Derulux...Actually most teachers, especially with upper aged students, like students to work on stuff behind their back. My former teacher always told me that he wanted me to be working on stuff behind his back and surprise him. He was dissapointed I didn't do it much. My current teacher at the unversity strongly encouraged solo work on rep. They love it...it shows independence, maturity, and desire. Teachers are here to make the student the best they can be, they are here to encourage. Maybe at a very young age they have a set order of things but by 15 the student should be self-motivated...certainly by 48.

Let me sum up the lunacy by just saying this.

Look at the damn piece, let your teacher know your ideas, and it will be fine. This is no big deal. My money is on your teacher saying yes and you learning it in about 4 months.

Thanks snap-apple. Great encouragement. I appreciate it. Adrian

There is a strange attitude among many of the
forum members that I don't understand. They
think it is somehow fundamentally wrong to
plod and work note by note on stuff
that is much too difficult for you. Of course,
this is very inelegant and frustrating and
agonizing, but only for the person working
like this, not for them. (This is where a digital
piano really pays for itself, by enabling
you to turn the vol. down so you don't hear
yourself mangling a famous piece at full
vol. as you gradually work it up from scratch
to a dazzling performance.)

They also seem to think it is fundamentally
wrong for a pianist to climb higher than the
level that the system has more or less pegged
him at since his late teens, which for most
people is average to slightly above average.
Well, I'm not satisfied with being an average
pianist and I'm aiming to climb much higher,
and the only way I can do it is by doing
stuff like struggling through too difficult works
note by note.

I'd bet you'd improve a lot more by working on music that is not 'much too difficult."

Once you think you've perfected a piece, that's when the really hard work begins. Because then you delve into it, and you see how much there is to improve, and it's so hard to make those small changes (small changes that make a huge difference). I'd bet you'd learn so much more if you put all of the effort you spend on "much too difficult works" into pieces that aren't "much too difficult", and really work out every tiny detail. Not only will you get through more music this way, but the music that you play will be at a very, very, very high level of performance, you'll be very pleased, and you will get to the advanced works as you improve.

Levels are set up by professionals who wish their students to have smooth learning experience. Students playing pieces that are way too difficult for them never learn how to play the piano very well because they never can perfect the piece. Also, you can't just keep playing a piece through and expect it to fall into place eventually. You have to work on hard passages a lot and set up goals for yourself to improve.

Sam and Contrapunctus, you both are essentially
asking me to re-peg myself as average level
and shut up about it. I decline your invitations.

This isn't what most people want to hear but I have found it to be true in my case, I would rather play ten pieces perfectly at my level than struggle for hours with one piece and not grasp the full musicality of it. Also, I get more satisfaction ought of smooth progress than I do out of concentrated effort on a single piece that's too hard for me. At a more advanced level however things may be different, i don't know, i haven't gotten there yet.


~pianocliff

*oops, dbl post*

No, I'm not. Sorry it came across that way.

Personally, I think if you want to improve very quickly, of course you need to push yourself, but within reason. It's going to take you a very long time to learn a "much too difficult" piece of music, especially if your learning one page every several months (and especially if it's a long piece), and you won't be able to fully understand it. You won't be able to master it, because it will be too difficult (I speak from experience, having worked on terribly difficult pieces myself, and even after years of practice they are still not polished to the point that I can begin to really think about musicality and interpretation.)

I think you'd be better off learning music that is slightly above your "level" - basically, music that you can handle. It doesn't have to be easy for you, but it shouldn't take you several months to learn a single page.


This doesn't mean that you have to remain "average" (whatever that word means). Over the past 6 years, I really challenged myself with some very difficult music. And I've improved a lot. But this past 6 months, I've been working on music that I can really chew and digest, so to speak, and I have improved tremendously. I'm not kidding. I have improved so much more by really digesting a piece of music, after I've got the notes (which is the "easy" part) - then, painstakingly slow practice to get it perfectly even, perfectly under control, reworking fingerings to find the "best" fingerings, thinking about the actual music, trying to create music at the keyboard, bringing it up to tempo, trying to eliminate unwanted accents and put in wanted accents, figure out the dynamics so that I can play more than just "piano" and "forte"... you see, there's so much work one can do with a piece of music after learning the notes. I don't think you can really do any of that with a piece that is way too difficult (unless you're a genius, which you might be, I don't know), because you have to spend so much energy just getting the right notes, and then you never really get them perfectly right and they are so uneven and not under perfect control, because the music is just too hard.

Why don't you take all of the energy you spend on working on a piece that is "much too hard" and put it into really chewing and digesting a piece of music that you can handle note-wise? Not only will you end up being able to play the music that you practice at a very fine level of performance (which is definately not "average"), but also I bet you'll learn a lot more this way, and you'll improve a lot faster, so that when you do get to the music that is very, very, very difficult, you'll be much more able to work it out and understand it and control it.

Just my 2¢, for what it's worth.

no...we (..I..) think it is fundamentally wrong to plod and work note by note for months at a time on one or two pages. Why? because I simply couldn't imagine a worse use of time.And since we are talking about "fundamentals" (the development of a base a foundation...use of time spent working on pieces that far above ones skill level can not give them the information they need to move on.

Example. If I want to learn a complex Rachmaninoff piece, like his second or third concerto, it would probably be wise for me to first have a grasp on polyphony and voicing. I could certainly get that information out of any Bach two or three part invention or small scale Brahms work with out trying to do too much. As I move up the idea of voicing and chord balance becomes second nature since I have already seen it and done it in so many smaller works.

I also have learned, through the smaller scale works I've played, the importance of harmonic language, progression, polyrhythms, fast scale passage work, leaps and everything else so that five or six years later and with much info under my belt from many different sources, the task of Rachmaninoff's third concerto just isn't that big anymore.

In fact I've become (and this is a hypothetical situation) so good and so familiar with the keyboard literature that I can learn the work very well in 4 months time with out too much trouble at all.

Now isn't that better then just looking at the piece from the very begenning and ignoring all the other great music out there that has just as much if not more information for you.




okay this is where all sense gets thrown out the window. Why would you not want to hear yourself play? Why for the love of God would you not want to hear yourself? I mean first off if it sounds That bad while learning it, it's best to set it aside for a little while and come back. but even so how does getting a digital help? I own a digital piano....they suck. I own one for two reasons. One is cause I bought one along time ago before I was serious cause I thought noise would be an issue. Two is because well I bought it so I should keep it...and it's good for composition stuff in my apartment at night. But You need to learn how to start slow and make it musical even from the very begenning, even when it's raw and primitive and confusing.

That's part of the learning process.

how does a digital help this? how does not hearing yourself help you learn music? I'm confused.


what do you mean pegged? has a system pegged you as something. I don't feel pegged...should I feel pegged? I just play pieces that I like and that are good for me (push me, teach me, move me, challenge me)...Is there another way?...a pegged way?

We all want to climb higher but struggling through works too difficult for you will leave you behind I promise you on that. Even after years of work, even if you play the piece you want...your gonna miss something...maybe your runs won't be crystal clear from missed out moments of Haydn and Mozart...maybe your voicing won't be balanced from too little Chopin or Bach...maybe your sense of harmonic material or complex rhythmic patterns are off cause of a lack of 20th century rep...what ever the case, too much of one thing is never good. If your spending years and years on one piece...just learning it...that isn't good. It is different to have had a piece for years and years, performed and there too soak in and grow...but too have to struggle learning it for years and years is a lot of time wasted when you could be learning other works and then get to the piece you would have struggled with.

OK, maybe I'll buy into the idea that slow, steady progress is better than trying to leap too far ahead.

If you try to go too far too fast you can just cause more trouble than it's worth. And the problem is compounded because you could have used the time doing productive work.

However, I don't think that the technical difficulty of a piece is necessarily proportionate to it's importance or it's enjoyment.

So, now I'm thinking, wouldn't it be nice if there was a web page I could go to that listed the top 1,000 pieces I might want to learn. These top 1,000 should be sorted by genre and level of difficulty.

Or maybe there should be a list of dependencies. For example, if you want to learn piece A it would help to learn pieces B, C and D first.

Is there such a place?

I'd guess that ranking of difficulty of the "top 1000 pieces" would be different for most people.

Some people learn faster than others, some people find certain techniques easier or harder, some people like certain styles better and so learn those styles better and faster, etc.

Adrian,

I say go for it. If you can read the music that's half the battle, and the rest will come with time. You and I are at the age where we want to enjoy the music while we still can. We're not building music careers, or looking to become concert pianists. You're lucky to have the time to put the work into it.

You are also going about this the right way. As you know, any piece of music should be learned slowly and carefully whether it's a Clementi sonata, or a piano concerto. The fundementals are the same, just the scale of things is bigger.

Good luck with your endeavours.

John

There are negative psychological aspects to
playing big concertos that are not being
considered. The length and reputation can
be intimidating to a pianist, which is why
someone who can handle Chopin nocturnes will
wonder if he can play a big concerto, when
he already has the basic tools to do so,
although not overnight.

The length factor is not to be dismissed.
You can run through a 4 page piece every
day, but mulitply that by 25 or even 10 and
it becomes a completely different matter.
This, together with the bigger reputation
that concertos have can be and insurmountable
psychological obstacle to a person and
cause him to give up on a concerto when
all that really is required is to put in
more time in accordance with the greater
length.

Therefore, it is prudent to go slowly with
a big concerto so that the idea of a long
haul becomes ingrained and you won't give
up at the first opportunity. And since
the psychological factor is so prominent
something like a digital piano with vol.
control can be a major help since
initially you can sound like you're hopelessly
stumbling with the concerto and you don't
want to give up on it just because of that.

Gyro, I am grateful for yoru perspective, but seriously, I am quite a tough nut and I do not give up on anything easily. I am not in the slightest bit worried about the pyschological impact :-), it takes more than a bit of difficulty with a piano piece to get me down. And by the way I didnt say the Chopin Nocturenes was the only thing I can play. I am not daft and if I find that I cant get it reasonably quickly then I can always shelve it for a while.

Seriously, it is only a piano piece. Just a string of notes to add together with variations or timing and intensity. I think there can be a tendency to make out that there is more to it than that - but when you break it down it boils down to three things:

play the right notes
at the right time
at the right intensity

All pieces need this - its just that soem have more notes in the time available and need a bit more skill in touching the keys (which we call expression, or touch, or interpretation). I know you will jump down my throat about technique, and you are right in a way. But don't forget I have taken a couple of years off (as I said earlier) and I can play for five or more hours a day. I did piano to ABRSM grade 8 when I orignally trained and I have played other instruments for years. I can remember pieces extremely well. And I am doing lots of exercises.

All in all I don't think that this piece is beyond me.

I have the opening section of the first movement locked into my fingers, memorised and up to speed. And I can play the second section at tempo but not memorised yet. This has taken me about 8 hours so far (it is not the only piece I am working on).

My perspective on this piece is as follows:

it sounds more difficult than it really is
there is a lot of octave work. I am lucky in that I have quite a big reach and strong hands (from playing a lot of guitar) and I can set my hands in various interval positions quite easily
there is a lot of left and right hand mirroring
there are a lot of arpeggios and these often follow a logical pattern that is not so hard (so far) to set into the fingers (I play and read by visualizing patterns)
I know I am going to have a tough time towards the end of the first movement

I completely and utterly disagree with the digital piano comment by the way. I actually enjoy learning a piece! I dont want it virtually silenced. Even if I play it rather badly as I work it up, my mind can still play the "CD version" in my head and I can compare the sound I hear with the sound I want to hear.

For me, there is no point in having a grand piano and not playing it!

Of course, I am lucky in that I have space and sufficeint solitide to be able to play whenever I want (often late at night) without annoying anyone.

I respect the fact that you, and perhaps others have a different view though.

And John, thank you for your encouragement. I am going for it.

Kind regards

Adrian

I agree with all of this, except for that bit about turning down the volume on the digital piano.

I think it is essential to listen to yourself all the time, not just when you think you can play it well. If you really listen carefully as you are struggling with the music, you can hear what you are doing wrong (and what you are not doing right), and then you can fix it. If you aren't listening to yourself, then how will you know what you're really struggling with and what you need to do to play better?

Similarly, if you're struggling, and all of a sudden you do something good, you MUST hear that and remember it! If you aren't listening, or you've turned the volume down, then you won't hear that you did something right. But if you are listening, and you remember what you did well, then you can try and repeat that effect in the future, and you can try to make that "something good" part of your regular playing of the piece.

gyro can you please shut the heck up about what you think is right? because it isn't, simple as that. I'm not trying to troll here sorry

If your playing the piano then you should already know that there you need to put a lot of hours into your work. If you don't like hard work, long hours, and lack the endurance and energy to follow through then it won't work. This is true of every aspect of piano playing, not just learning a big concerto or big piece.

Playing fewer more-difficult pieces poorly doesn't make you a better pianist than playing a larger number of less-difficult pieces well.

I don't believe in "pegs", but I will tell you this:

I spent almost a year when I was 16-17 trying to learn the Mephisto Waltz. At the end of a year, I could play up until it slows down (I think that's 8-10 pages in, out of 24). That was right about the time I stopped playing piano.

When I came back to the piano five/six years later at 22, I learned the entire piece in about three weeks. My technique, however, was still horrible and frustrating. I was fighting myself to learn the piece.

When I spent three months learning the 1st movement of the Rach 2, I decided I'd had enough. I wanted to perform, and didn't feel I was progressing towards that goal. So, I got a teacher.

I've been working with the teacher since the middle of July, and he has completely changed my technique (though I still struggle to prevent myself from falling back into my old technique). I still have a long way to go, but now I fight myself less when looking at passages, and learn them much quicker (sometimes in a matter of minutes).

It took me all of about three hours to be able to play through the first movement of the Tempest. Now, it's not at 'performance level', but I'd say three hours to play through it is much better than a month to learn one page.


You see, I don't place much stock in "average", "above average", "below average", "genius" or any other crap rating. I see ability and technique (or lack thereof). There's no sense continually fighting yourself trying to learn something. Get a good teacher to teach you how to work with yourself, and you'll be golden.

Derulx, perhaps you are preaching to the converted? Who has said that having a teacher is a bad idea?

This is becoming a self aggrandisement thread, which is a shame and was not the reason why I started it.

And Mr E, your remark is surely a truism? Playing anything badly is no use. No one has said that they aspire to that. We all need to find our own level. And maybe some of us could consider beinga little less judgmental?

(Now that I have lost my five star rating, I feel I can say whatever I like :-) )

With my best regards

Adrian

Oh good, so you're going for it. It's a really fun piece to learn. Another technique you'll come across a lot is polyrhythms - esp. 2 against 3 (in the piu lento sections) and 7 against 8 (in the cadenza).


Good luck!

Which publisher did you get the for music? If you haven't gotten it and just studied it from someone else's score, I reccomend the Schirmer edition as it is edited by Percy Grainger. Grainger spent the summer with grieg in the year of Grieg's death working on a new edition. He has some great suggestions that you may want to consider, as I used them in the cadenza especially. But if you already have the music, then I wouldn't bother.

Ick, the Schirmer edition is so messy!

(I don't know if it's the Grainger edition that I saw, but one of the Schirmer's is so messy, with maybe 2 lines per page (sometimes only 1 line) and all of these ossias and footnotes and such.)

You know, I can learn stuff fast too, but when
you work up pieces that fast, what are they
going to sound like? And, have you gained
anything in technique, in a fundamental way?
Have you learned it by shooting yourself
up on adrenaline, so to speak, and built
it on a foundation like a house of cards,
that's going to come crashing down as soon
as you get off your adrenaline highs?
I'm looking for a commercial recording-
level performance, plus, fundamental
improvement in physical technique overall;
that's why I'm working so slowly on something
big like this, the biggest thing I've done so
far.

See, the trouble is that this is what you have assumed I've done.

"Have you learned it by shooting yourself
up on adrenaline, so to speak, and built
it on a foundation like a house of cards,
that's going to come crashing down as soon
as you get off your adrenaline highs?"

I've never understood this.

Gyro, here's what I'm saying (and I think others, too):

Work very long and hard on pieces that you can really handle. Wait until you can handle the really difficult ones until you're ready for them, and in the meantime transfer all of that energy into music that you can really play well.

That's exactly what I'm doing now, Sam.

Good.

Sam, I meant that that's exactly what I'm doing
with this concerto, because, although
it's difficult, I believe I'm as ready as
I'm ever going to be for it, and can
eventually handle it, so that's why I'm working
so long and hard on it. And I'm putting all
this energy into it, because I believe that I
can play it well, in the not too distant future.
I didn't mean that I had suddenly started to play
like you recommended--I would never do that.

well this is nice...this is good...

OK. If you think you can handle it, then why not? I got this idea from some of your posts that you would advocate just working on any piece that one might like, regardless of the difficulty. For example, if you or I or anyone were to work on a piece that was clearly way beyond the grasp of that pianist's musical/physical technique. Something that the person probably wouldn't be able to play well in the not too distant future. Then it doesn't make much sense, because the person will put so much time and so much energy into it and not get a pleasing result. That time and energy would be much better spent on a piece that is easier (not "easy", but "easier") - something that can really be understood and performed well.

I guess I just misinterpreted your thoughts, then. Sorry about that.

It makes sense, what we've been saying, Mr. Jerome.

If you're trying to do 50 pushups, you'll never reach your goal if you sit there trying to do 'one more pushup' as often as you're capable. You have to set limits and short-term goals, and if you really want to see results quickly, do a few exercises other than pushups (that are designed to increase your strength, and therefore your ability to do pushups, and then your endurance, therefore increasing the number of pushups you can do) in order to reach your goal.

It does not make sense to lie on the ground continuously trying to push up if you simply can't. You will never reach your goal that way.