What level should you be to be able to start trying concertos? And which ones? I've heard a few of Haydn's are easy.

PUR-LEE-E-E-E-E-ESE! ! ! ! !

Try the "Emperor" - dead easy. You should have polished that off in 2 weeks of practice, perhaps a couple of days. Remember though it's among the top ten concertos.
For those you need to start at diploma standard in showmanship as much as piano playing.

(Bluff your Way says, "Don't think it's easy to become a great concert pianist. Apart from several hours' practice a day, regularly soaking the hands in hot olive oil and insuring them for hundreds of thousands of pounds, you have to practice adjustment of piano stools, flinging tails over the back of the stool neatly and accurately, hand-wringing, brow-mopping, looking interested and unconcerned during moments when you are not playing, shaking hands with conductors and leaders, bowing and taking encores." ALL very important. Can you get all that done in 2 weeks?)

If you want a little relaxation Ravel's Concerto in D is nice. What you do with your right hand during that is rather up to you as it's for LH only - just half the work so you only need a week's practice.

There are concertos and there are concertos as you may have heard. Alot of it will depend on what level you play at now. I am grade 8 and can play SOME of quite a few in the privacy of my own house. I love attempting to play my late husband's first piano concerto but would not be able to play a note of a Racmaninov or Shostacovich one - but that is not to put the others down! Basically try to play one!!

QUOTE (Rhapsodin @ Jan 1 2005, 10:39 AM)

If you want a little relaxation Ravel's Concerto in D is nice.  What you do with your right hand during that is rather up to you as it's for LH only - just half the work so you only need a week's practice.

I have a cd of that piece but it has NO information on the inlay card... it's most intriguing... so it *is* entirely in the LH? I will listen to it with new ears...

QUOTE (sarah-flute @ Jan 1 2005, 11:40 AM)

QUOTE (Rhapsodin @ Jan 1 2005, 10:39 AM) If you want a little relaxation Ravel's Concerto in D is nice.  What you do with your right hand during that is rather up to you as it's for LH only - just half the work so you only need a week's practice.       I have a cd of that piece but it has NO information on the inlay card... it's most intriguing... so it *is* entirely in the LH? I will listen to it with new ears...

Yes, even though it sounds like 3 or even 4 hands (the tail end of the candenza). The piu lento (2nd subject, fig. 8) is total abject beauty* to me. Ravel manages to fit the melody among those languid deep arpeggii by combining triplets with 2s. It was commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein who lost his right arm in the Great War.
What's amazing is that Ravel's hands were quite small and he could hardly stretch the octave so the broken chords/runs are convoluted - keep turning back into themselves like in the cadenza where you pick out the melody with accents during those fast runs - mostly thumb not always.
He was desperate to give a public performance apparently and they persuaded him otherwise.
I mean, you can't even cheat using both hands.
But most Ravel is like this...His norm is the hemidemisemi-quaver. I got a book for christmas....so that I can look at it and hope, I suppose.


*Have an interpretation by Kr Zimerman. He's, um, everso slightly better than me hahahahahaha. But then I only practiced it for 13 1/2 days!

QUOTE (Rhapsodin @ Jan 1 2005, 10:39 AM)

PUR-LEE-E-E-E-E-ESE! ! ! ! !   Try the "Emperor" - dead easy.  You should have polished that off in 2 weeks of practice, perhaps a couple of days.   Remember though it's among the top ten concertos.   For those you need to start at diploma standard in showmanship as much as piano playing. (Bluff your Way says, "Don't think it's easy to become a great concert pianist. Apart from several hours' practice a day, regularly soaking the hands in hot olive oil and insuring them for hundreds of thousands of pounds, you have to practice adjustment of piano stools, flinging tails over the back of the stool neatly and accurately, hand-wringing, brow-mopping, looking interested and unconcerned during moments when you are not playing, shaking hands with conductors and leaders, bowing and taking encores."   ALL very important.  Can you get all that done in 2 weeks?)

Er....you're joking, aren't you? I'm sure even the best concert pianists don't really soak their hands in hot olive oil! And it doesn't take any practice to make good handshakes and bows. What's an encore? It sounds stupid but I've never been told the explaination (read and heard it a lot of times though).

The first piano concerto I learned was the Mozart Piano Concerto in A K488, which I began learning just after I received my Grade 8 piano results.

However, the only reason I started learning it was because it was a set study for AS music and I wanted to know it as well as I could, and my teacher said "any pianists grade 7+ should take this home and learn it". But, somehow, I don't think she meant "learn it to concert standard" although she did ask me if I wanted to play it with the school orchestra! (We had a few rehearsals and then most of the violins left so we couldn't do it any more )

QUOTE (Rhapsodin @ Jan 1 2005, 12:42 PM)

QUOTE (sarah-flute @ Jan 1 2005, 11:40 AM) I have a cd of that piece but it has NO information on the inlay card... it's most intriguing... so it *is* entirely in the LH? I will listen to it with new ears...  :rolleyes: Yes, even though it sounds like 3 or even 4 hands (the tail end of the candenza). The piu lento (2nd subject, fig. 8) is total abject beauty

Wow... I kind of assumed, having listened to it, that the LH just had a bigger part than usual or something... I just found it hard to believe it was really all just in the LH!!!

The piu lento... which movement and roughly how far in, please! I have only listened to it a couple of times, and not properly - and like I say, not info on the inlay card at ALL.

I am just amazed that anyone can play the thing... one hand... woah.

As you probably haven't the score, I timed it. Rough because Zimerman's performance will prob be slightly different from the one you have. But it starts very nearly dead-on 6 minutes in after the noisy kerfuffle (called an orchestral tutti!) that follows the piano's first entry (the bare-sounding chord passage (no thirds in the chords) has died down and tailed off into the slow piano arpeggii.

The episode lasts about 1 min before the orchestra takes up the theme with the more usual Ravel impossibilities backing - but that minute ravages me...

So if you listen out somewhere after 5m30s....
It's in just the single movement, by the way.

R

how about Rachmaninov's 2nd piano concerto

QUOTE (Rhapsodin @ Jan 2 2005, 03:19 PM)

As you probably haven't the score, I timed it. Rough because Zimerman's performance will prob be slightly different from the one you have. But it starts very nearly dead-on 6 minutes in after the noisy kerfuffle (called an orchestral tutti!) that follows the piano's first entry (the bare-sounding chord passage (no thirds in the chords) has died down and tailed off into the slow piano arpeggii. The episode lasts about 1 min before the orchestra takes up the theme with the more usual Ravel impossibilities backing - but that minute ravages me... So if you listen out somewhere after 5m30s.... It's in just the single movement, by the way. R

Thanks Rhapsodin. You can tell I haven't listened to it properly, can't you? lol... I will have a sit and listen to it properly. I did put it on the other day but the beginning of it was pretty busy and I was in the mood for something a little more relaxing...

Apparently Mozart's Concertos are the easiest!?!...

Mozart is easy to "play", but very difficult to play WELL. I personally would rather get my fingers round a piece by Chopin or Rachmaninoff, because all the emotion is already in the music... but Mozart... it's all transparent, you have to analyse it all, you can never just switch off and enjoy it while you're playing - you have to make sure it's all got something to it, otherwise it really isn't all that interesting. It's very "pretty", but you need to work at it to make it decent!!

Kind of like the difference between science and art... Chopin is art - you can gaze at it immediately and know what it's all about. Mozart is science - perhaps a graph, or a mathematical formula, or diffracted light or something - you need to know an awful lot to be able to understand and appreciate the true beauty of it.

QUOTE (cheeble @ Jan 5 2005, 02:28 PM)

Mozart is easy to "play", but very difficult to play WELL. - you need to know an awful lot to be able to understand and appreciate the true beauty of it.

... and that is precisely why our little Wolfgang Amadeus was/is so great!!

QUOTE (cheeble @ Jan 5 2005, 02:28 PM)

Mozart is easy to "play", but very difficult to play WELL.

I entirely agree with you. This is exactly what I said to my teacher last week (I was playing Mozart's K330).

QUOTE (cheeble @ Jan 5 2005, 02:28 PM)

Mozart is easy to "play", but very difficult to play WELL. I personally would rather get my fingers round a piece by Chopin or Rachmaninoff, because all the emotion is already in the music... but Mozart... it's all transparent, you have to analyse it all, you can never just switch off and enjoy it while you're playing - you have to make sure it's all got something to it, otherwise it really isn't all that interesting. It's very "pretty", but you need to work at it to make it decent!

I agree on that. Most of the time, the audience will notice every little mistake we make in Mozart than Beethoven, for example.

Yes, my piano teacher said the same. He said that the listener will easily find that the player is lack of technical ability (ie me ) if a Mozart's piece is played. Even a tiny mistake is noticeable.

Yup... I'm doing 3 piano pieces by Mozart for my A-level recital... I picked them cos I wanted a challenge! They are:
Rondo in D
Concerto in A, K488, Second Movement
Variations on an Original Theme in Bb
I can't remember all the K numbers but they were all written in the same year, 1786!

QUOTE (cheeble @ Jan 7 2005, 01:16 PM)

Yup... I'm doing 3 piano pieces by Mozart for my A-level recital... I picked them cos I wanted a challenge! They are: Rondo in D Concerto in A, K488, Second Movement Variations on an Original Theme in Bb

I think Mozart is an excellent answer to DGA's original question. There are lots to choose from, some of them being more difficult than others. The last dozen or so are among the best things he wrote (that's quite a large collection though), and even Beethoven only matches their standard once (with the 4th) IMO. The slow movements, in particular, challenge your musical ability without requiring frightening numbers of notes.

K 488 is very well known, of course. For something less often played, but with a charm of its own try the earlier A major. I can't remember its K number, but I think it is usually considered number 12 of the piano concertos. Again, the slow movement is particularly fine. It is based on a tune of J C Bach, Mozart's London friend, who had just died.

For similar piano writing, but with the possibility of playing the complete work with friends, try the two Piano Quartets in G minor and Eb.