Hi, I've just started the Grade 7 piano syllabus, and just wondered if anyone had any recommendations for any of the pieces? I was just briefly listening on youtube till the music came, but then all seem a bit dull, but any suggestions?

Thanks

For grade 6 I played Allegro (A3), Elegie (B1) and Soiree Polka (C1), I liked the first two, but I found that C1 and other pieces that 'jump around' a lot catch me out :/

I know most of those pieces.

For A List I would suggest the Mozart or the Daquin. The Daquin particularly I would have thought not as difficult as Grade 7.

For B List the Granados piece 'Coming from the Fountain' is very popular.

For C I love that Kabalevsky Sonatina, the last movement goes at a heck of a speed but is very spectacular. Start slower and then speed it up !!

Good luck , and let us know what you choose.

For A List I was looking at both the Mozart and the Arne, but would you suggest the Mozart out of those two? It's just for the mozart there looks to be some fast fiddly semiquaver passages. Thanks for the suggestion for the Daquin, I searched it up on google and it looks like a fast repeated passage on the RH (to start), which seems okay, I'll take a look

For list B, I think I may go with the Bruch. I didn't really like the Granados piece, though the Skryabin looks okay too. Which would you suggest?

For C, I too like the Kabalevsky and the Webster one as well. Kabalevsky is just scaring me a bit, due to its sheer speed :/

Thanks for your help Do you think there is a big step up from 6 to 7? As I found 6 manageable and not too difficult, but grade 7 music hasn't yet arrived, so just wanted an opinion for now

I'm currently playing the grade 6 pieces, whether I do the exam or move onto grade 7 is a different matter though and is dependent on a few things. I'm doing A1, B1 and C1. Currently I am taking these pieces to bits and trying to give them the musicality they deserve.

So I will be watching this thread very carefully . Are there any baroque pieces on the Grade 7 lists? I've took a real shine to playing Baroque music, though the debate about should it be played on a piano is a different one

Good luck with your Grade 6 pieces. You're not taking A3? By far my favourite piece in the book (I did B1/C1 as well, B1 was alright...).

Also, I heard that you can start taking the 2013-2014 syllabus next June, do you know when the books for those start coming out?

Well in Grade 7, there's a Handel and a Bach, but arguably I prefer the Mozart (which from the romantic era...I think?)

If I were doing grade 7, my choice (for once!) would be easy to make:

A3 - Mozart
B2 - Scriabin
C5 - Stephen Hough

although the B6 Szymanowski Prelude is tempting too.

The Kabalevsky is fab - it's not difficult notewise and the fast passages are just scales with arps in the left hand. I found memorising them helped with the speed.

I like the Kabalevksy so much I bought the whole Sonatina and am really enjoying playing the other two movements as well.

Funnily enough I have the anthology book for grade 7 and have been learning Le cou cou by Daquin.
Love the piece, its title gives away the general feel of the piece and that helps so much!

Daughter has been playing this too, and only took grade 5 at Easter, so I'm sure it must be at the easier end of the grade 7 repertoire. She's playing it from "Hours with the Masters" Book 5, which claims to be Grade 6 level. Nice piece though!

Regarding difference between grades 6 and 7, it seems that daughter's teacher has decided she will omit grade 6, from which I infer that either grades 5 and 6 or grades 6 and 7 must be not too far apart. She's yet to start work on exam pieces though (Daquin just happened to be in one of the books she's currently using!)

I love A1 the most out of all the Gd.6 pieces that I am doing, there is SO much that is down to the players interpretation and I've spent ages getting it exactly as I want it, articulation wise! I'm enjoying B1 and C1 too but am spending far too much time on non exam repertoire including Chopin Op.69 No.2 and Bach's WTC preludes and fugues.

Very interesting on the 2013-14 syllabus - no idea when books come out, will be interested to know what is on the lists. Hoping to be looking towards taking my Grade 8 in 2013.

Mozart is as classical as they come, romantic = slightly later, Beethoven's time.

I don't know where you've seen that but the usual thing would be that the syllabus is available form about July/August and the fist session you can use it will be spring 2013.
The overlap is in the other direction, in the UK you can use the 2011-2012 pieces in the first session of 2013 rather than being able to use pieces in advance.

I would say the same for A3, and in my exam the examiner quite bluntly asked, "so why did you choose those dynamics?" As I prompted for more of a 'question and answer' dynamic scheme for A3, which suits it quite well (for the bits with the mordants), hopefully that scored me some marks, but yet to get my mark back!

Ah okay, I don't really know what type of era's things come from :/ But I guess I do know which composers I enjoy

I think I would take my grade 8 in 2013 as well, june should be grade 7, then sometime after that it'd be 8 Though, probably not in june 2013, as I've got my A2 exams :/

I cant comment on the Scriabin , as I only know the Op 11 preludes, not the Op17's
Yes the Daquin is mainly RH work, just needs getting up to speed,and there are places where best fingering is to change finger on a repeated note. P*P , you will probably like it too
Please do try the Kabalevsky for Group C - I agree with Impressionist's comment above

The complete Sonatina! I'd be awfully curious to know hoe difficult the other movements are ... can you make any tentative assessments of the grading?

The teaching notes for the ABRSM exams suggest that the whole Sonatina is "suitable for a grade 7 player".

The movements do have different areas of difficulty - the 1st movement uses a lot of chords with passages of legato playing and romps along, but is nowhere near as fast as the 3rd movement so you don't need such finger speed.

The 2nd movement I find the hardest because it needs a very legato touch and the latter quarter of the piece has held upper right hand notes underneath which a two note slurred chord pattern is repeated, (also played by the right hand). It has highlighted yet another area of weakness in my playing.

I have found that learning the notes for all three movements is quite straightforward but to polish it to performance or exam standard is going to take some work... but it is fun to play!

The whole Kabalevsky Sonatina has been set for Grade 8 historically by one of the boards. The first movement is certainly harder than Grade 7, though the slow movement has been set for I think Grade 5 or 6.

On first listening I didn't particularly like the Grade 7 pieces but now I love them. I am learning the Bruch piece but I also love Skryabin and Granados on the B list. I have bought the Gershwin but it looks very difficult.

Something very similar happened to me but I immediately fell in love with the Haendel Allemande and almost immediately chose it for my List A. I had a go at the Mozart but the neatness and speed required are hard to achieve and, in general, I'm not that fond of Mozart for the time being.
Like you, I like Viniendo de la Fuente, which I took to almost at once and after trying to learn Conchita reve for a few months (and not quite succeeding), I decided to start learning the Granados, which I took less time to learn (it must be easier, notewise) and with which I managed to play more musically. You see, Turina's Conchita presents the type of difficulty of slower movements where the attention must be kept high from beginning to end and a minor slip in focus may mean an error, which may lead to another and another ... This is the way I felt about a Satie Gymnopedie (Grade 6 I think it was) and how I currently feel about a Rachmaninoff Melody in E (Grade 8).
For List C, my choice was almost by exclusion (I'm not usually keen on List C in general, though I used to be in the lower grades) as there was no other piece on List C that appealed to me except Black Coffee so I'll play that. My exam is due next June and I have a few months ahead but pieces feel quite unattainable at this level ... and achieving the degree of security required for an exam seems a tall job.

I did grade 7 this summer, and I did the Handel (A2) on the grounds that I really like slow Baroque music because it's so expressive without being...yucky?! I don't know how to put it eloquently! The Scryabin (B2) is beautiful , and really not impossibly difficult once you get past the key. I did the Kabalevsky that others have mentioned, and it's really fun to play and quite showy too. Enjoy!
My teacher's just told me to buy the grade 8 book so we can start working through all of the pieces, which is terrifying. I'm sure it'll be a good challenge...

Interesting post, ilovemycello, for somebody planning to take Grade 7 next year.
I am an adult student (aged 54) and in spite of all the talk about adults having certain advantages, etc. etc I sometimes have apprehensions about being 'too old' to tackle pieces at this level of difficulty.
I've got a few questions about two of the pieces you played which I have also studied. At what speed did you play the Kabalevsky Presto and Haendel's Allemande? What comments did you get for the pieces? How long have you been studying the piano?

I've been playing for about 9 years, though not with any massive amount of practise or anything! I played both pieces slower than the metronome marks in the AB exam book, but for different reasons.

Allemande I think sounds rushed played too quickly, as it needs to be fairly slow to get all of the expression and lovely harmony. I don't remember a metronome mark per se, but I think the way to find the optimum speed is to start ridiculously slow and work upwards until you find a speed that you can both physically manage and sounds right to you. I'd count in quavers rather than crotchets too - it's very difficult otherwise if you're at a slow speed to keep the momentum going.

The Kabalevsky is a bit of a different story. I definitely didn't get it up to the speed in the book - my fingers can't move that fast! Again, I started very slow and just worked upwards (a metronome mark or two a day is quite a good pace) until I reached the fastest tempo that I could play at accurately. You can still get the exciting feel with lots of dramatic dynamics without it actually being that fast.

I don't have my marksheet to hand, but I should say that there is a proviso to my advice - I scraped a merit with 120 so I'm not exactly a perfect example or anything!

Thanks for the post. Congratulations on a very good result!
It is relieving to learn that the Kabalevsky can be played at a slower tempo in an exam. I manage about 126 per dotted crotchet (with peaks of 132 on good days) but feel that, however beautiful, the piece is rather stress-inducing and will probably choose Black Coffee, which makes me feel more at ease; we don't want any extra stress in exams, do we?
I definitely agree with you that the metronome mark for the Haendel Allemande is a little too fast. That may be in line with what Allemandes in general must sound like but not with the type of piece and, somehow, not in line with Haendel's intentions of beautiful phrasing and expression.
Any tips are welcome!

Just thought I'd notify you guys, that I've chosen a few of my pieces. I should be going with the Arne for A (A1), and either B1 or B4 (which would you advise?).

But I'm a tad stuck for the c pieces. My teacher wants me to play Black Coffee but it seems incredibly dull :/ I was looking at the C4/C6. Any thoughts on those?

Although early Beethoven is still Classical.

In my opinion, even late Beethoven has more to do with classical ideals than romantic ones, even if the boundaries of convention are stretched so much as to be unrecognizable.

In Piano Sonata terms, I always consider Beethoven up to Op22 is classical and from Op26 early Romantic.

Can anyone give some advice on C4/C6 or a good piece from the C block?

It would be easier if you added titles and composers.
That way we'd know whether we were familiar with the pieces or if we have them at least.

C6 is Babar. I had a listen to that on Youtube after it was mentioned in another thread about Grade 7 pieces ( http://www.abrsm.org/forum/index.php?showt...80&hl=Babar ). I think it's a sweet, if not wildly exciting piece - BUT I am not a pianist. I was just curious as parent of a potential grade 7 candidate.

Ah yes sorry.

LIST C
1 Kabalevsky Presto: 3rd movt from Sonatina, Op. 13 No. 1
2 Martin˚u Harlequin (Scherzo): from Puppets, Book 2 Selected Piano Exam Pieces 2011 & 2012,
3 Paul Francis Webster and Sonny Burke Black Coffee, arr. Booth Grade 7 (ABRSM)
4 Gershwin ?S Wonderful. Meet George Gershwin at the Keyboard (Faber)
5 Stephen Hough Valse enigmatique No. 2. Hough Suite R-B and Other Enigmas (Weinberger/FM Distribution)
6 Poulenc Le petit ?l?phant: from L?Histoire de Babar (piece published separately: Billaudot GB6398/UMP)

Here's the List C pieces. I've heard the Gershwin, looks difficult but is nice. I found the Kabalevsky too fast for me, and the Webster was just a bit dull :/ Teacher said to not play Harlequin...So I'm just left with the alternatives...

Any suggestions?

Id still do the Kabalevsky, yes its very fast but for much of it the notes fall under the fingers quite well.

Ah okay. I think perhaps I'm rushing it a bit, hence I play many wrong notes :/

Also, for B, which would you recommend? I'm not sure between "coming from the fountain", conchita reve and the bruch. :S

Conchita reve requires great control of chords, touch, expression (!!) and dynamics (dramatic, Spanish-style expression with extremely marked contrasts and these require more than absolute security, otherwise the character is lost); this is mostly what the piece is based on. I found the sustained relatively slow tempo made it difficult to keep concentration and therefore, mistakes often crept in or expression was imperfect/absent or mostly insufficient. I then started with Viniendo de la Fuente (a lovely piece, too) and that was much easier. However, the greatest difficulty with the latter is not only bringing out the melody with all those double notes but making it sound varied as the same theme is presented a number of times and one tends to play it in the same way at every occurrence. I simply couldn't bring myself to love any of the other pieces and the syllabus, on the whole, did not seem to me to be very appealing ...

Juan Carlos, I do agree with you about Viniendo de la Fuente (I think we've discussed this on another thread). I'm not going to do it in the exam because of the problem of making the theme sound varied each time it appears. Going to try the Bruch over the next weeks. I've also spent quite some time learning Conchita Reve and agree with you there too. With the Conchita Reve how much pedal are you using ?

A lot of pedalling, both left and right one and a combination of both.
Right pedal throughout the piece in every bar up to b. 10 included. I mean, pedalling the first chord and the second in the LH (both in minims) separately where applicable (bb. 1-2-3) and only in the first chord (as in b.5-7-8-9, etc.) when pedalling the 2nd would create too much reverberation. And so on in all occurrences of these rhythmic patterns throughout.
In addition, I used to press Una corda in bars like 11-12-13, up to b. 16 where the chords sound better if subdued. Then, the same as at the beginning with another una corda in bb. 23-24 to render the pp effect more convincingly and also in bb. 29-30 and 33-34 and then, at the end, in bb. 39-40. It is hard to explain all this on the Forum but if you read the suggestions and follow the score at the same time you can get it better, I think. Remember these are only suggestions my teacher made and I'm sure 20 players would give 20 different renderings with 20 different pedallings ... so make a few trials before you decide and, most important, talk it over with the teacher.

I'm doing
A3: Mozart - Presto (3rd Movement from Sonata in F)
B5: Liszt - Romance in E minor
C2: Martinu - Harlequin (Scherzo) from Puppets Book 2

The Mozart is coming along quite nicely. The really tricky thing is the fact it's marked "Presto", and some of those semiquaver passages are rather fiddly. All in all, I'd reccomend the Mozart or Arne pieces for A. They just seem easier (I'm using that term losely) than that Allamande by Handel, which looks really tricky.

I chose the Liszt piece because I had worked on it some months before I started Grade 7, so had a bit of a head start. Looking back, it probably wasn't the wisest choice as it seem to be the hardest piece from the B list. But it's worth it because it's such a wonderful piece. I liked the look of the Skryabin, but it looked quite challenging because of those rhythms. And I also liked the look of "Swedish Dance in A minor" by Bruch, and it seemed remarkably easy for Grade 7 - then I turned the page and saw all those Trill and ornaments .

The C list was an easy choice for me. I wasn't going to do the Kabalevsky because I didn't want to be doing another piece that fast, as it's not really my forte and I already had the Mozart to worry about. I didn't really like "Black Coffee", probably because I'm not keen on Jazz or 20th century music. Generally, I struggle choosing from the C list as I don't tend to like many of the pieces they put in there. But thhe Martinu piece is really awesome, it's quite easy to get the hang of and it's quite a leisurely piece compared to the two others I'm doing, which is nice because it takes the edge off the exam a little.

All in all, I'm having a lot of fun with Grade 7. The pieces are coming along well and so are the scales. But I liked this syllabus, lots of interesting pieces on there.

Thanks very much Juan Carlos - lots of ideas and very helpful! My teacher and I are still experimenting a lot - sometimes, lots of pedal throughout, sometimes not much at all. Hadn't thought of una corda other than right at the end...

Like Sam-Chopinfan I find those semiquaver passages in the Mozart fiddly.

Good luck to all us Grade 7-ers!

Defiantly! I find the trickiest are those broken octaves on the second page which alternate between the left and right hands. They're absoloutley fine at a slower tempo, however; attempting to play them at Presto speed leaves much to be desired. And yeah, Good Luck everyone taking Grade 7!

I also studied the Mozart [/i]Presto[/i] at the beginning and got it to sound quite nicely but again, the neatness/speed/phrasing required (but moslty the neatness at that speed) decided me against it.
The thing with us adults, is that we often have a very clear idea of what it must sound like and being a music lover since early childhood, I know only too well how my renderings depart from what I believe to be 'the real thing' so I often get discouraged and move on to more 'achievable' pieces but as I go up through the grades there seem to be fewer and fewer ....

Because of the dangerous semiquaver passages in the Mozart that's we're all lamenting, I'm also learning the Bach Sinfonia (3-part invention) as a possible alternative. This is challenging for a different set of reasons!

So I'm looking at doing
A3 Mozart or A5 Bach
B1 Bruch or B3 Conchita Reve
C4 Gershwin

There seems to be less discussion about the Gershwin than some of the other list C pieces.

I took up the piano again only at the start of last year (after a 30 year break) so anything too fast like the Kabalevsky is just impossible....

I do agree with Juan Carlos that you approach the pieces differently as an adult. But there are some advantages as well as getting discouraged. Back then at school the piano teachers were prone to dictate how to play every piece, now I enjoy having some great two-way discussions.

Ok, so I might possibly do the exam - in November.

At the moment I am thinking of doing:

A5 - Bach (just reading it through)
B1 - Bruch (have learnt it but it needs polishing)
C4 - Gershwin (not started at all)

Am mostly worried about the aural part of the exam this time though - looks truly horrendous!

Is anyone using the Trinity G7 syllabus? My son has just announced that he is thinking about taking another piano exam after a 3-year break (from exams, not from lessons). He wouldn't be able to take it until next year and with the changeover of the AB syllabus, I think he'll be looking at Trinity as he's keen to start looking at pieces now, rather than wait until the new AB syllabus is out. I know that he and his teacher will have a good discussion about it and it will be their choice between them, but I wondered if anyone had any opinions about the pieces. I've listened to some on Youtube and I think he'll like the Bach Courante, Schumann Kind im Einschlumern and Hummel Adagio and Allegro Vivace from the A list and possibly only the Copland from the B (Sentimenal Melody). Any thoughts welcome.

I know most of those,
My short list would be Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Prokofiev and Cyril Scott
Id probably go for Bach orMozart/Schumann/Prokofiev or Scott

Thank you. I haven't been able to listen to the Milne (Bob?) Wild Mushrooms - if it's rag/jazz he might like that. I had the Scott down as a query piece - I like it but I'm not sure whether my son will. And I had missed the Prokofiev, but that's definitely odd enough to appeal to him.

Mozart Sonata no. 5 in G, K. 283, 1st movt: Allegro
Mendelssohn Song Without Words op. 19b no. 1
Prokofiev No. 10 (from Visions Fugitives op. 22)

Nice choice

My son's just had a listen and I was right in the ones he liked: the Bach and Hummel from A-list book and Schumann from A-list additional (and also the Paradies Giga, which I didn't think he would). He only liked Copland from B-list book but also the McGuire and the Scott from the B-list additional. I still can't find Wild Mushrooms to listen to, but at least I know now it's Elissa Milne, not Bob He 'quite liked' more from the A list, making about 6 possibles altogether, whereas his reactions to the B list were very definite 3 'yes' 5 'no' (and one unheard).