I have a piece I am working on and cannot decide whether I am doing the pedalling correctly.

It's from Piano time 3 and called the Watermill.

In the bass at the start there is a general pattern of 3 crotchet beats phrased in each bar, with the pedal being depressed on beat 1, lifted on beat 3 and then depressed on beat 1 again.

After beat 3, I clearly lift my finger off the keyboard to end the phrase. However on the pedalling I have found that keeping my foot off the pedal for a whole crotchet beat means I end up lifting my foot entirely off the pedal (not the heal off the floor of course ) and the pedal make a clonking noise as it returns which is really annoying, plus, with the sustained notes only working on the first 2 beats of every bar I feel you almost cant hear the pedal effect.

So I now keep the pedal down almost until the end of beat 3 but then lift and depress it very quickly so it still stops at the end of the phrase and I get that clear breath between the phrase.

Does this sound ok?
Try getting your piano tuner to put the pedal movement right. This is a problem which can occur in any piano. Busylizzie.
Thanks in advance

I've just got this piece out to have a look, and there are several points I'd make:

1. I would question whether what you refer to as phrases are in fact simply slurs. When I played it through, it seemed to fall very nicely into four-bar phrases - OK, some groups of notes are slightly detached, but are the phrases really that short? I'm not sure you need to be leaving a break at the end of each bar anyway.

2. When I played the piece through, I was definitely legato pedalling it - i.e. the pedal comes up and down very quickly when you play the F# in bar 2, as to not leave a gap between the bars at all. This isn't what's marked for the pedalling, but it is my interpretation (and it's probably what I'd teach, particularly as it's marked 'andante espressivo'). I think that either you stick to exactly what they've written, in which case I think the piece will sound disjointed and you're just going to have to be very careful about lifting the pedal at the end of the bars. Whichever way you choose, your foot doesn't need to come off the pedal at all - it will need to rest on it so that you can control the pedal coming up (and hopefully eliminate the noise).

It is true that some pedals are particularly noisy - a piano tuner once suggested putting a little extra felt or sponge in the gaps to stop this. I have to say though that most of these problems tend to be caused by poor control rather than because of poor pianos!

Hope that helps a bit!

David

I guess that in the end, it comes down to interpretation - in that sense, there isn't a right or wrong way of playing it. Obviously 'espressivo' doesn't necessarily mean legato, but my interpretation in this intance was that it was, overall, intended to be a legato piece.

DISCLAIMER - I haven't seen this piece and am shooting in the dark, whereas David has seen it. But could the title have any bearing on whether it should be totally legato - or disjointed in the way that it would be if the slurs were observed? As in, with a one-in-a-bar feel, with a feeling of when the turning bit of the mill hits the water each time? (I can't think of the word for the turning bit; is it the arms?) Espressivo won't always mean totally legato; it may want you here to express the movement of the mill!

(But NB the disclaimer - I'm just trying to imagine the piece in my head from what you've said about it. Last pupil of the night didn't come tonight, and my brain hasn't switched off yet... )