Accompanying concertos, Play full tuttis or cut? Options

[Yet another muso]

Just a quick update on this issue. In the end for all the diplomas I accompanied this session, where concertos were involved the soloists all asked me to play all the tuttis. The concertos involved were Mozart Bassoon concerto, Trumpet concertos by Haydn, Neruda and Bohme, and the trombone concerto by Ferdinand David. The examiners certainly never stopped us as a result and no questions were asked about it in the viva. Will let you know if there are any comments in the examiners reports when results come out.

The tutti's in the Neruda are particularly long, totaling over 3 minutes of the actual concerto which is around 14 minutes so I would definitely cut some of them, especially as there are some fairly natural cuts in them anyway. Ditto the David which I know well as my daughter played it for her diploma and I teach it to my students. It's surprising that they weren't quizzed on their decisions to include them all as the syllabus certainly does seem to suggest that they should have done so.

Congratulations to you on learning all of these pieces and accompanying the diplomas - some seriously hard work must have gone in on your part!

Out of interest, what were the other trombone pieces?

Thanks, always nice when people realise the work accompanists have to put in! I had five diplomas in all, at the end of what had been a pretty relentless term of teaching and concerts so not much time to learn all the music. Life would have been easier without having to do all the tuttis which often don't sit comfortably on the piano. The trombonist also did the Hindemith Sonata movements 1, 2 and 4 (not exactly a walk in the park!) and the Guilmant.

I had the same feelings as you about the Neruda, but in fact if candidates were to want to discuss the full use of ritornello form, you would need to consider the movements without cuts to really understand this fully, so they had good answers at the ready as to why they didn't do the cuts, but in the end didn't need them. I guess the lesson I learnt was that so long as the whole programme was within time limits specified they aren't going to complain. Will have to wait for the examiners written reports for final verdict though . . .

In answer to Jod's comments, I certainly went through programme notes with all of them and did practise vivas with them all, getting them to justify/explain any points in their notes which I felt needed it, so we certainly worked as a team in that respect. It's hard work but very rewarding, certainly all of them were very stretched by all they had to do to meet the demands of the diploma and developed hugely as a result. Fingers crossed for some good results as the icing on the cake now!

The Hindemith is a beast for the pianist! How long do the candidates have to play for in the DipABRSM? My daughter had to do 32 - 38 minutes without any breaks for her ATCL but I know DipABRSM allows a 5 minute break. My gut feeling about the trombonists programme is that it might be a bit short (depending on how long for the ABRSM dip) as the David is a max of 14 mins with cadenzas and tuttis, 10 for the Hindemith and around 6 or 7 for the Guilmant so just hitting the 30 mins mark?

That's a very good point about the neruda - it would be very uneven and unmusical to hack at it to truncuate the tuttis.

DipABRSM is also 32-38 minutes but this can include an up to 5 minutes break. We timed the programme on the final rehearsal as 30 minutes of music, then took the five minute break on the day so it should have worked out fine.

[Wai Kit Leung]

When I took my exams I never had any cuts in tutti. I needed all that time to rest my lips. If your client has already said he/she needed the time to recover, I think it is expected that all tutti will be played, or else his/her exam performance will be compromised.