Hi.
Can anyone enlighten me as to the nature of the alternative pieces for G8 A list. I've had a bash (literally!) at the Bach and the Mendelssohn, but these do not suite my style of playing at all. I prefer slow and highly emotional pieces, of which there are none in this syllabus , but I'm obviously not expecting that kind of piece in an A list. Just something a bit less frantic for my older fingers would be nice. I absolutly hate Bach, both to play and to listen to. Have picked the Mozart and the Albeniz for B and C. Any suggestions?

The whole point of list A is to test your ability to play counterpoint, whether it is from the Baroque period (Bach) or more recent (Mendelsohn etc.). It is the nature of contrapuntal writing to require a degree of precise fingerwork with two or more separate lines of music happening together. There is no getting away from that! Any alternative piece is going to be a test of the same abilities.

If you really find that stuff difficult you have two alternatives:

1. Work very hard at it. Just because you don't especially like it doesn't mean you can't do a good job of it. (It is just like scales. A lot of folk hate doing them and think the time could be better spent, but anyone that can play the pieces can knuckle down and do a good job of the scales too)

2. Use lists B & C to choose pieces that you empathize more with, and aim to get really good marks on those.

or do both 1 and 2!

I used to have your problem in reverse when I was doing the grade exams. I loved Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, so I was overwhelmed with choices from lists A and B, but I hated the modern stuff in list C and often couldn't find a single piece that I really liked to play.

Perhaps you could try the Soler which has some fun LH/RH arm crossing and is technically really not that difficult. Alternatively you could try one of the Scarlattis although they would be more difficult.

Personally I think that the Shostakovich Prelude & Fugue are wonderful.
Since it is modern music not requiring strict finger legato & allowing pedal, and the fugue is more broken chords than heavy duty Bach motif style counterpoint, this might be just the ticket for you.
It sounds a bit like film music, of which Shostakovich wrote his fair share.

I genuinely feel nothing but sorrow for you, that you are denied the enjoyment of the pinnacle of Western art. But there you go.

Edward

The soler's good, and not too hard either (once you get used to the whole arm crossing thing )

How very dare you!!! (Only kidding, but that is a great pity..)

Johann Sebastian

(sorry - I know that doesn't help if you're not keen ... (yet!))

Oddly, I tend to get same the reaction from people when I say I like Scriabin. Different strokes for different folks I guess!

Scriabin but he's so difficult to play!

Compared to Bach!!!! He's an absolute caker!
Have you ever seen a photo of him. He looks like something out of a Two Ronnies sketch!

Er, 'caker'? Please enlighten me! (Scottish epithet??)


Ooh, nice 'tache..

'Caker' is merely implying that compared to all the counterpoint , Scriabins odd fingering, bizarre harmonies and large chords are much easier to achieve. Well they are for me anyway. I got one of my best marks in an exam on a Scriabin piece in D flat major. Sadly none to choose from in this syllabus though

from "piece of cake"?

Many thanks to everyone for their input. Have ordered up the Shostakovich, as it sounds like my kind of thing, and I'm more than happy to do broken chords instead of counterpoint. Will probably get the most usage afterwards from this book as well I think.

At Chethams last year several people were amazed to hear a very prominant French pianist tell a master class audience that he "really didn't like Bach"!

I spoke to him about it afterwards and he maintained that musicians from "Latin" countries generally don't hold Bach in nearly such high regard as the British and Germans.

Too bad to hear that susiejean dislikes Bach's music.

I was going to suggest Bach's Duetto in G Major. In terms of texture, it is definitely more straightforward then any of the preludes and fugues (Bach, Mendelssohn, Shostakovich) on the list. It is more like an extended Bach Two-Part Invention. Once the fingering is sorted out, the piece is really not that difficult for a good Grade 7 or Grade 8 student.

Scriabin is my favourite composer too, along with Grieg and Chopin. I just bought an 8 CD +dvd of Maria Lettberg playing the complete piano works of Scriabin. Cost £32 but they're great. As for Bach, though i don't play many of his pieces, I am growing to appreciate his music more, i would think he's the most influential of all composers. Dont forget C.P.E Bach either, he was quite an innovator.

I find J S Bach a little enigmatic. I love to play/massacre the keyboard music as I find it a technical challenge but then I believe that's what it was written as. However, listening to J S Bach's keyboard music does nothing for me and I only do it as an academic exercise to help with playing. Bach himself almost certainly never intended most of his keyboard music for performance, and certainly not on a piano which hadn't been invented. The exception perhaps is his organ music and then only in the context of a church service.

The Orchestral works are delightful, such as the Brandenburg Concerto's, but I prefer a more mature symphonic style, starting with late Mozart and Beethoven.

However I find his choral works, especially the Mass in B minor and the St Matthew Passion, are just breathtaking - there simply isn't anything more mature or magnificent in the repertoire to date, although The Messiah (Magnificent in it's own right), Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, The Verdi Requiem and a few other things come close (and don't forget that my first love is piano!)

That (the Choral music) is where Bach was and still is at the pinnacle of Western art (IMO).

Having said which, the original post was about grade 8 list A. As Mad Tom has said, the idea of list A is to be technically demanding and counterpoint of one sort or another is pretty much unavoidable. Try the Scarlatti for a different flavour of Baroque, or the Shostakovich for a 20th centrury take on counterpoint. Good luck!

Really? I never suspected.

... French Suite No. 5, Some stirring preludes: Nos 3, 5, 6, 9, 15 from the first book of the WTC, Partita No. 6, Goldberg Variations - the theme itself is heart-rending ...


I have read in more than one place that he saw an early piano and did not approve. But I am sure he would have been happy with a modern concert grand. His keyboard stuff sounds much better when it is (well) played on a piano than any of the alternatives: Organ, Harpsichord, Spinet whatever.

I have read in more than one place that he saw an early piano and did not approve.

Yes. My understanding is that some early ones were definitely around, but that JSB was not too keen.

I stand corrected re the JSB & the existence of the piano! And I agree, I think he would have been very happy with a concert grand. My family have agreed all my life that he would have thoroughly approved of jazz as well, and that Jacques Lousier's ineterpretations of Bach, being improvisational, are probably well within the spirit of JSB.

To be honest, I overstate (or is that understate) my liking for his keyboard stuff to listen to, and you are right there are some lovely themes: However, much as I love to play the stuff (or at least to attempt it), I would rather listen to (almost) anything by Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Gershwin etc. some of which can stir the emotions in a way that Bach's keyboard stuff simply doesn't. In many ways, I find rather the opposite: It inspires a certain asceticism: It's clean, tidy, precise, mathematically satisfying rather than emotionally stirring. The Masses & the choral works do "emotionally stirring" in no-trumps, but (for me) not the keyboards.

Rachmaninoff My all time favourite. Ah, if only I had hands with the span of a tennis racket head!

To get back to Group A pieces....actually you do really need a big hand to facilitate the Shost A major fugue

Let's all give a big hand to . . . Shostakovich!!!

Boom boom! I actually got the Shost through the post on Fri. Some of the stretches are absolutly impossible for me, so I'm just going to have to rely on the pedal and lose the marks. I'm not changing piece again as the book cost me £25 , but I wouldn't say I've fallen in love with the piece. At least it's not TOO long!

There is absolutely no reason not to use the pedal in the Fugue. The recording I have has pedal throughout the spread arpeggio sections. The Prelude is a different matter: I was just being as legato as possible for the 10ths.

I'm no longer doing this piece for Grade 8, as I just didn't have the time or energy to learn the fugue as well as I needed to. So I've switched to the Bach Duetto, which is readable.

Im glad you've said that. I'm seriously considering trying that one now, as between teaching and looking after a youngster, I'm not sure I can pull all 3 pieces up to a passable standard before the scales syllabus changes. I haven't even looked at the aural yet, and I'm finding the scales a 6th apart troublesome.
I wondered if I should try and sell the Shostakovich book on Ebay, although I won't get back anything like what I paid for it. It actually reminds me of Last Post every time I start playing it.
I tried doing a search on Youtube for the Bach Duetto but to no avail. The other 2 pieces are gradually coming together, so this is beginning to seriously stress me out.

Don't give up too soon on the Shostakovich! You can pedal throughout. This is modern music not Bach.

If you want to get a feel for how the Bach Duetto sounds:
http://www.amazon.com/Duets-BWV-802-805-Du...7489&sr=8-5

You can buy the Henle edition from any reputable sheet music dealer.

Perhaps you are just expecting things to come together too quickly, and panicking because you have set yourself a deadline that might be unrealistic, as you can't practice as much as you would like/need to because of other demands on your time. But it seems a bit premature to give up on the Shostakovich so soon. Especially after all the soul-searching that went into choosing it, and bearing in mind your lack of enthusiasm for Bach.

You can keep looking for "easier" pieces, but that is not really going to help. Firstly the pieces are chosen to each pose a similar degree of challenge. Secondly the examiners are no fools and they expect any significantly easier pieces to be played to a higher standard, so the amount of work needed is going to end up much the same.

As for the big stretches in the Shostakovich, I am sure that the syllabus states somewhere that if you can't stretch an interval because your hands are too small you can arpeggiate it (or judiciously omit notes - provided the musical effect is satisfactory) and that there will be no penalty for doing so.

Ultimately there are only two things you can change. The quality of your practice, and the amount that you do. (Actually there is a third - by becoming a better overall musician the ability to grasp a piece both as a whole and in its details improves, and so the technical problems seem less).

[Warning. Preachy stuff ahead. If the following section is "teaching you to suck eggs"then please feel free to publicly berate me - but sometimes teachers don't follow the advice that they give to their students]

As you can't spend more time, then you have to use the time you do have very effectively. That means focussing your efforts on overcoming the difficulties you are having. To start with that means no playing through of entire pieces for pleasure, or of long sections, except very occasionally, and with some specific purpose such as to check progress with technical problems, or tempo, or fluency. And certainly you cannot afford to practice inefficiently by always taking a piece "from the top" and then tagging on a few more bars each time until you can get through the whole thing. A routine "warm-up" of scales or exercises that you can already play well can also be viewed as a waste of time.

Instead you have to be very organized and disciplined to isolate the sections in your pieces that are giving you problems, work out WHY you are finding them difficult, and figure out HOW you are going to overcome the problems. You then try out your possible solutions, and when you have one that looks as if it is going to work, you repeat each of the difficult parts in an isolated short section (short enough to play without error) as many times as it takes to make it both fluent and secure. Then you integrate it back into the preceding and following sections. Focussed, concentrated work of this kind can seem tediously slow, but actually it is the quickest way to make real progress. It will drive your family up the wall (!), it is mentally tiring, and it may still take weeks or months to master really difficult (or new) physical actions. Unfortunately you cannot force these things, and if you do, you just have to go back and do them properly later - like painting a topcoat without properly preparing the surface. They take as long as they take, and there is no point fretting about it!!
[ End of preachy stuff]

I would not worry about possible changes to the scales syllabus. If you can play the scales currently in the syllabus you will easily learn the couple of new scales that will be required if it changes. As for scales in 6ths, the method described above works wonders. Find the tricky bits, isolate them, fix them, put them back in context.

Whatever your decision, I wish you every success and, more importantly, an enjoyable journey on the way there!

I wish i could understand what it is so many like about Shostokovich's piano music. Believe me, I have tried to get into it, but as yet to no avail.

If you are looking to change from the Shostakovich then I would highly recommend the Bach Duetto. I know you aren't keen on Bach, I'm not exactly his biggest fan but I do enjoy this piece. The fingering is the worst part and once you've sorted that out its fairly straightforward and at least it doesn't have any big stretches in it! It took me ages to decide which piece to chose in group A, but I would definately say that the duetto is nice to learn.

Good luck!

Thanks for your advice. I'm was relieved to admit that at least I seem to be going about it in the right way as I was able to tick all your boxes. I wasn't really being too unrealistic as I started in Nov and had given myself till the syllabus changed in 09, but if I'm not ready by then I'll scrap the idea as I'm not learning another 3 pieces of that magnitude! I am beginning to warm to the Shost, so I probably just need to plug away. I love the mendelssohn, but , oh me!
I'm feeling confident enough with the Mozart piece so I know that with copious amounts of time it will scramble up to a pass. I'm enjoying the Albeniz best though. Had dabbled with it years ago as it's in a Keyboard Anthology book, and liked it then. Great scope for a performance with that one.

Wow!
The advice given above is some of the best advice I have seen on this forum in a long time.
Well done Mad Tom and thanks!

Just been given the name of a music book site by another teacher. Guess what they have? The AB anthology of G8 exam pieces, 2007/08. Guess whats in it? Yes, 3 of the alternative A pieces, ALL of the alternative B pieces and 4 of the alternative C pieces. And, deep joy, it's only £11.50 delivered. Remind me again why I have a £25 book of only Shostakovich pieces, when I could have had my pick of almost all of the alternatives. I can't even pan it off on one of my pupils.

What book is that?
The AB book I have for grade 8 has 3 each of list A and B pieces and 6 C list.

Check out this site www.muzic-makers.co.uk and look at left hand menu for piano. From that menu pick Ab piano exam and there are 2 pages come up. It's on the second at the bottom. Blue and white. Can't miss it.