This piece is on the grade 8 syllabus, on the cd its played REALLY fast so i was wondering what the tempo was like on other recordings, as ive only heard this one.

I believe it's between MM crotchet=136-144. Even the Grade 2 tedesca was marked 132 if I remember rightly.

I'm doing it somewhere between 160-180! I'm quite happy with this speed.
This is the best recording I can find which is closest to my tempo......Disc 4 Track 12

How does this recording compare to the ABRSM CD?

Gae

I couldn't listen to it but can you compare that recording with this one and tell me rouchly how much faster it is:
http://www.edepot.com/music/beethoven/s25.mid

BTW, by piano teacher told me that, because Presto Alla Tedeca means 'In a German Style', it should actually be quite slow compared to the recording.

Mountain, your version is SOOOOOOO much slower than Gae's. I think that Gae's is actually faster than the abrsm cd one. hmm...

That midi is about the same speed as I'm playing it...between 160-180...around 3 beats per second. The Amazon recordings are slightly faster than this! Aren't they show offs?

Gae

in that case...as are the abrsm cd people.heehee

I'm sure someone will have the argument, "Remember, Germans danced a lot faster back in the early 19th Century. Something to do with the drinking water at the time!"

Gae

lol. My teacher told me taht teh German style of music is actually kinda slow and that Presto Alla tedesca is actually slower then the ABRSM CD.
Gae, I think you are playing at the speed of the Associated Board then.
I can manage this . . . with loads of mistakes.

I'm confused now!
Is the midi slower or the same speed as the ABRSM CD version? I'm playing this pretty much the same speed as the midi.
Anyway, I'm sticking with the way I play it.....artistic licence you know!

Gae

Mountain's midi is a lot slower than abrsm but the amazon one is a bit faster than abrsm

If you want to get the best mark play it slower with fewer mistakes; rather than quickly with mistakes (you'd be marked a lot more harshly for that). Obviously fast without mistakes is the best with practise but mistakes will be penalised a lot more than speed.

For reference: Brendel plays it at 166 and Kempff at 172.

Right. I'm going to play mine exactly 169 then!!

Gae

Hehehe, maybe due to all that beer, the Germans actually slowed down!
Well, I tell my students better play it slower than to break down all the way through it.
Humph well waltzes aren't that fast, and tedesco means slightly faster than a normal waltz (according to the explaination at the bottom of the Grade 2 tedesca), hence I came to the conclusion that anywhere between 135 and 144 would be an accepted slower tempo for this piece.

Do examiners take into account the speed at which you played a section a lot? i want to play a little slower then the recording, but not if I'll lose a lot of marks.

For earlier Grades I would suggest no, but for Grade 8...not so sure!! Tempo would have to suit the style and fit into the category of interpretation. They do expect a lot more technical security and fluency as well as musicality. This particular piece does seem a particular tricky one for tempo though as there have been several different interpretaions of "Presto alla Tedesca" already in this topic. I'd hate to think that the ABRSM are sticking rigidly to the speeds of their recordings. I'd imagine as long as you play it reasonably fast and musically everything should be fine. Here's what F. Corder says on the tempo in the preface of my Paxton's edition of the Sonata:-

"The first movement is headed "Presto alla tedesca", a very misleading direction. "Presto" is generally taken to mean "very fast" and "alla tedesca" means "in the German style" r.e. "like a German Waltz" But this latter is by no means fast; in fact, the best known dance of this kind is the villager's Waltz in Der Freischutz, which some of beethoven's passages (bars 196-203) closely resemble. Allegro non troppo would have been a safer indication."

I'm finding I'm playing the one-in-a-bar waltz pulse in a more pronounced way the more I play the movement........of course it suits the dance quality very well. The one in a bar Waltz rhythm is tricky to keep with all the cross-accents in the arpeggios and the cross-over sforzando's in the development section.
I would concentrate more on areas like this this rather than worry too much about the tempo. So long as your tempo is reasonable and close to "Allegro non troppo" you should be fine.
Gae

Thanks. I've actually found that I do the accents in the cross-over more naturally teh faster I play and my teacher says I do as well, have you noticed you do this too?

Gae's advice is good. A point that is worth noting is that it's highly probable that the examiner hasn't heard the recording on the ABRSM CD, but with something as core to the repertoire as a Beethoven piano sonata, I'm sure that they will have heard many different recordings of the piece so they'll have a wide range to judge from. Don't worry too much about the speed specifically on the ABRSM CD but the accepted speed from a wider range of recordings. Remember though don't sacrifice quality for speed as I think that you'll be even more slated for that: Gae makes a good point, at this level the expect accuracy, musicality and a reasonable tempo as grade 8 pianists should be able to manage it.

I wanted to keep a record of my Grade 8 pieces so today, I recorded myself, with my Digital Camera, playing all the pieces in one continuous performance. I wanted to do them in one take, mistakes and all, to see them as they will probably be on the day of the exam.
Here is a clip of the Presto Alla Tedesca section of the recording I made. Sorry about the bad synch and low quality image but I couldn't get the sound to match up after compressing the clip and I needed to make the file as small as possible.
I made a mess of the D major arpeggio right at the beginning but kept going, as I'd intended, to do the recording in one take, which I did. There are also a few sound dropouts in the original recording...probably due to a dodgy DV tape.
This performance is played immediately after I had performed the Bach Prelude and Fugue and I followed this one with the Debussy "Arabesque". Dynamics aren't fully realised, I'm saving my ears for the exam and the piano is the freebie Spencer piano I got a few weeks ago although it does need tuning.
Hope you enjoy it!

Presto alla Tedesca

Gae

you got a freebie piano? cool! The recording is a bit fuzzy in places but ok as a whole. Im starting to really like this piece...still cant play it though! lol

One of my pupils played this piece for his Grade 8. We were a bit concerned about the tempo, but he needed to get the exam done at Easter - A levels were pressing - and he got a very good mark although he did not play it up to the AB cd recording speed. He was careful to play it very expressively and we decided that to give a "controlled" performance was a better idea than to try to go at maximum speed! In fact he played perhaps just a little bit faster than Gae's recording, although may be nerves in the exam might have made him go a bit faster as well.

(What a brilliant idea to do the recording and then get it on the computer - my technological limit is my trusty cassette tape recorder!)

Hi Susie, its not too difficult to do if you have a Digital Video Camera. You just transfer it to your comp, compress it to a smaller size and upload to a server with a link to it. The difficult part is the compression side of things in order to keep the file to a small size and the quality reasonably good. The problem in this case was that the audio just did not stay in synch after compression, no matter how many times I tried.
With regards to tempo, this recording represents one regular tempo I play it at but I do play it other speeds too. Quite often I play it a little bit faster but this tempo seems to sit somewhere between the slower "alla tedesca" speed suggested by some teachers and the faster approach of the ABRSM and other players. Why are we so obsessed with speed and fastness in our modern society?
I did this particular recording in "one take", hence the mistake at the beginning, because I wanted to to a recording of all my pieces and how I will probably play them in the exam...i.e. one after the other and maybe a bit cautiously on a strange piano! The whole performance lasts about 15 minutes.

Gae

P.S. Am I right in assuming that the piece should be played like this i.e. without the repeats, in the Exam? If not, I better learn those first and second endings now!!!

yes, without repeats.

or it would be sooooo long

Hello Gae

Good luck with the exam.

try and make it sound fast and lively to a speed that you can cope with and not make it too rushed