As a parent, could I ask the advice of you teachers about the importance of presenting a balanced programme for an exam?

It's never been an issue before, but my daughter started looking at the G7 piano pieces last night with her teacher and her choices look rather unbalanced. She hasn't decided about the A piece yet, but that won't be a problem. She wants to do the Grovlez for her B piece and the Ravel for her C piece. It seems rather odd to me that they are on different lists, but perhaps I have a rather simplistic view of how these things work!

I think there is plenty of choice in the B list, but having played a couple of other pieces from L'almanach aux images she's keen to do the Grovlez (though obviously she couuld learn it anyway and choose something else for the exam). She wasn't keen on anything else in the C list (haven't looked at the alternative pieces yet).

Would it matter if she did both the Grovlez and the Ravel? Her teacher says that in his many years of teaching no exam pupil has ever had a comment about an unbalanced programme. Is that your experience too?

Thanks

Each piece is marked individually.
While it's good to start thinking about a balanced programme as part of growing musical awareness there are no marks for choice of programme at grade level... even where exam boards say that there should be a balanced choice.
Going with the best pieces for the student is the way to go to maximise marks.

Generally speaking in all the Graded piano exams:

List A tests your ability to play in a contrapuntal style
List B tests your mastery of high classical style
List C covers romantic and modern developments

So to a large extent "balancing" the program is done for you.

Thanks both

Mad Tom: I'd agree that the difference between the lists means that normally the programme would automatically be pretty well-balanced - it just seemed odd to me to play one 20th century French piece for a B piece and another as a C piece.

She was trying out more pieces tonight, so I think she might as well just experiment a bit before making a decision. In the meantime, I'll try to track down the alternative C pieces too.