Hi all,

Just wondered which were your favourite pieces off list A, B and C (or which you thought were easier to learn!).

x

My pupil who's doing Grade 4 next term is going to do the Mozart 'Voi che sapete', 'Coquette' from Summer Sketches and 'Tumbledown Blues' by James Rae.

Deff Tumbledown Blues, Donkey ride and can't rem what else i dud but these two are kewl and lots of fun xx

i really like opus rag and tumbledown blues

I like the Mozart and the Bizet from list A, both the Microjazz pieces, the Gershwin, the Jim Parker and both the Paul Harris pieces in list B, and I'm also a James Rae fan as regards list C, but 'Tiviot Bridge' is another piece I've used with my pupils on that list, as well as the Baermann from 80 Graded.

I have found that Voi che sapete is popular, along with Donkey Ride, which seems rather simple for grade 4 in my opinion. Tumbledown Blues is one of the better studies, my students haven't taken much liking to the Baermannm from 80 graded studies.

My 10 yr old daughter just did grade 4 and she did :

A Mozart - Voi Che Sapete
B Jim Parker - Soldier Soldier
C James Rae - Tumbledown Blues

Had a bit of a disaster with the scales, hubby said she didn't play a single one correctly first time! She still got 117 though, so was pleased overall.

Soldier Soldier is a good piece, a hard grade 4 piece in my opinion.

Cheers for those replies! Much appreciated . Off to the music shop to have a look through the pieces tomorrow.

over the hill clarinettist - congratulations to your daughter!

As my daughter did grade 4 this summer, I’ve been listening to the exam CD quite a bit over the last couple of weeks (I did grade 2 in June) and my favourites so far are

List A
1. Bizet – Seguidilla
6. Mozart – Voi che sapete
7. Paradis – Sicilienne

List B
2. Lewin – Serenade to a Reed
3b. Gershwin – It ain’t necessarily so
5b. Haughton – Opus Rag
7. Parker - Soldier Soldier

Unfortunately they don’t put the studies (List C) on the exam CDs for clarinet, but I think that Tumbledown Blues would probably be attractive to most – personally I don’t like Chris Allen’s studies at all!

I found by accident that there are reviews of all Exam pieces for the current syllabus for both clarinet (gr 1-8) and saxophone (gr 1-5) on Wood, Wind & Reed’s website (here), written by a teacher of the relevant instrument, and these are quite useful, although obviously don’t give any idea what they actually sound like.

I’d like to see reviews of the bassoon pieces as well, since daughter already has grade 1 on that, but I can see why they haven’t got them, probably not much call for them!

The Wood Wind and Reed site is very useful, would be even more useful to see additions to the site in the form of reviews for other instruments and grades.

I guess that WW&R would consider putting further reviews on their site if someone offered them. It would take people to their site, after all.
Why not ask ?