Everybody on here seems to play Einaudi. I have his greatest hits on cd and really liked it so I was going to get his greatest hits sheet music but it was £30+ so I didn't!

Now that I've finally finished with grade 6 exam pieces I'm starting:

Schubert Op 142 Impromptu 3 Andante, theme, and variation IV piu mosso.
The variation is very tricky for me!

And, much easier: Scarlatti, Capriccio in G.

Having practised scales, sightreading and exam pieces for so long, I treated myself on Saturday to about 4 hours of just sitting at the piano playing through book after book of musicals and easy listening. Heaven!

why dont you get the thing that I got yesterday? Its the 'Enaudi Collection' and its only £14.99 instead of £30 and has stuff from eden roc album, le onde, i giorni and some other stuff on it...its really good!

That's because he is fab!

i know this isnt all that relevant but i've been going on at my mates for months about Einaudi and none of them seemed to know who he was but today i was talking to one of my best mates and it turned out that i hadn't even asked her about Einaudi but she LOVES it! woooo, AND i've already managed to get 2 people hooked on Einaudi since Friday!

G sharp rachmaninoff prelude
Hindemith- ludus tonalis piece
Gershwin Prelude 2+3

And plenty of random organ music..........

A boogie-woogie piece called 'Every Night I Have The Blues'. I had trouble with the right-hand triplets over left hand quavers but it's coming along well now. Another month and it will be 'performance-ready' which is why I decided to learn a boogie piece in the first place.

Shelton

~Minute waltz in Db major, arranged for flute and piano.
~Verso in F (piano)

Moonlight Sonata...Beethoven
Sonetta 123 del Petrarc..... Liszt
The Man I Love/I got Rhythm....Gershwin

Yes, I know, I'm working towards the DipABRSM!!

Gae

grd 6 pieces- A:2 andante, B:3 Vals Poetico no.5 and C:1 feelin' good, but i usually just pick up anything in my vast collection of music and just play it, n thats y im so good at sight-readin!(or so my teacher says so!)

if anyone is interested, im working on Grade 8 doing the Scarlatti Sonata in D, Beethoven Sonata No.25 in G 1st movement and Chopin Polonaise in C minor Op.40 No.2

All my grade 4 pieces:
Polonaise
Prelude No.48 ( I think? )
Freeway

and:
The Millwheel
Random other stuff in this piano book.

gosh, i do an awful lot

Grade 8 pieces
Scarlatti Sonata in D
Beethoven Sonata No.25 in G Op.79 first movement
Chopin Polonaise in C minor Op.40 No.2

PLUS
Rachmaninov Prelude in C# minor Op.3 No.2 (more revisiting than learning)

Chopin Nocturnes 19 in E minor, 11 in G minor and 20 in C# minor, Sonata in B flat Minor 3rd movement, Prelude in E flat minor Polonaise No.3 in A and messing around with Polonaises No.5 in F# minor and 6 in A flat "Heroic"

Debussy La Cathederale Englouite (revisiting) and Sarabande from Pour Le Piano

Albinez Malaguena

Bach Prelude No.2 in C minor from Well Tampered Klavier Book 1

Mozart Rondo Alla Turca

im largely focusing on my Grade 8 Pieces though

Where DO you get the time????????????

Yann Tiersen's Sur le Fil (which doesn't need much work... )

And (FINALLY!) Mozart's Sonata in F Major... O_O

Update on my pieces:

- Angelic Harmony by Burgmüller
- Picnic Piece (Jazz)
- Sonatina in Bb (which is one of my exam pieces)

Car Expert

STILL Exam pieces for grade 8: Allemande, Allegro assai and arabesque

also: Joe Hisaishi: Ash.itaka and San, Carrying you
Noodelz's comp, Passing Dreams *grin*
and that Dolphin Ocean thing (for the few people who know what I'm talking about..)

How do you work out which notes to play?

Car Expert

I'm currently working on my G6 pieces:

Allegro (Dussek)
Valse Poetico (Granados)
Prayer of the Matador (can't remember, sadly. )

I'm also working on:

Mozart: Sonata K545 (gettin' there!)
Bertini: Andante in A
Clementi: Sonatina, Op36 No 3 (I think)

I have not yet read further in this thread - I am replying to post no 30, so sorry if this is already superseeded.

I can answer this, AP.

I did many years where I had a large number of solo recitals booked. On top of this, I would have a couple of concertos and engagements to perform as an accompanist.

I would prepare the recital programme well in advance and use the same one throughout the 'season'. I would make sure the concertos were learned\revised well in advance. Out of a 4\5 hours a day practise, two thirds of this would be spent 'keeping things warm'. The rest would be spent learning new material - primarily the accompaniments.

To ask your unspoken question of this thread - "How can these people learn such a huge repertoire?"

Not a hint of a clue. Doubt if it can be done

Steve

my grade 8 pieces:
allemande- bach
allegro moderato- mozart
dem andenken petofis-liszt

Polonaise in G minor
Lullaby (which sucks) - Grechaninov
Allegretto - Hook

I am working on:
Schumann Intermezzo (for grade 8)
Brahms Rhapsody op.79 Nr.2
and also toying with Chopin's 2nd Scherzo.

I find that trying to learn more than 3 pieces is a complete waste of time. Unless you want to become an expert at playing the first page of millions of works, you never need to have more than 3 things on your plate. Might just be me though...

I agree - I find things just don't get the attention they deserve if I have too much on the go. I'm currently playing:
Scarlatti Sonata in C (pastorale)
Mozart Sonata in C
Mendelssohn Song Without Words (duetto)
and the percussion part of 42nd Street, but not very often.

I'm working on:

Frank Bridge Impromptu (final polish before performance next week);

Loeillet Corant (still trying to get the ornaments up to speed)

Czerny 8-bar exercises op. 821

and just starting Ravel Prelude.

From the current Grade 7 book:

Presto by Hassler
Esquisse by Gliere
Andante/ Sostenuto by Kadosa

I doubt I'll take the exam, I'm just keeping my hand in while I'm on maternity leave and have no accompaniments to practise for the next exam session.

Also:

Bridge over troubled water
and
Moonlight Sonata (the easy movement!)

just for fun.

I always wondered how people manage to maintain a large repertoire, it takes a lot more work to maintain pieces than I expected (perhaps why I never have a particularly large repertoire at any one time ).

I, like many other people, find that I can't work on too many pieces at once before it becomes unproductive. Currently I'm working towards an exam so my list is fairly predictable:

Handel: Gigue from Harpsichord Sutie No. 7
Lyadov: Bagatelle No. 1, Op. 53
Shostakovich: Gavotte from Dances of the Dolls
and
Beethoven: Piano Sonata Op. 79, second movement (I intend to learn the other movements at a later stage).

To be honest the last piece doesn't get much 'good work' put into it at the moment because once I've been working on the others (which are of higher priority) I just want to play the last piece rather than do much good practice....

Big pieces: yes...but a lot of the pieces that i learn are for fun and to improve sightreading and are just about sightreadable (badly) so i can learn one in about a week or just over...

Yeah I agree, I never 'seriously' learn more than 4 pieces at on time but I have another 10 or so that I play as sight-reading practise and to warm-up/wind-down. These are by no means perfect but I enjoy having a go at them anyway.

Performing pieces makes a huge difference. There is something about this that reinforces all the processing the brain has done.

I encourage students to give some sort of concert\festival performance of exam pieces prior to the exam. We can practise pieces until they are as good as we can make them. After that, the only thing that helps them improve substatially is performing them live. Well rehearsed pieces will be vastly improved in the aftermath of performance. No idea why.

The more often a piece is performed, the easier it is to revise. Eventually, it reaches the stage where the player can simply sit down and 'do' it. I have a vast repertoire of music I can revise quickly. Within this is a much smaller rep that I can simply play at the drop of a hat. Not all of this is easy stuff. One of the pieces is Chopin's G minor Ballade; I have lost count of the number of times I have performed this.

Top international soloists have followed this process with several hundred pieces and (for pianists) around about 50 concertos. This seems mind-blowing; I can see that it is simply the result of being a full-time pro soloist.

Steve

im currently working on
Chopin - Polonaise No.5 in F# minor Op.44
Sinding - Rustle of Spring
Debussy - Pour le Piano (Sarabande so far, going to start Prelude and Toccata soon)


SH, i find that revising comment not always true. I did Rachmaninov's Prelude in C#minor Op.3 No.2 quite well at one stage and played it at a competition, didnt go back to it in lessons since, but i've found that the middle section had badly deteriorated, yet the chordal sections remain relatively good (particularly the last section)

maybe its just me

I bow to your superior knowledge.

I'm working on the first movement of Clementi's 3rd Sonatina

It doesn't suprise me that the middle section has deteriorated more than the outer sections - it's more difficult....

thank you

YAP - oh yes!!! too right. But i can barely play the middle section now yet do the outer sections pretty well from memory...WHATS HAPPENED?!

Are you absolutely certain you want an answer to that? Beware of asking for things. Getting them is not always the blessing it seems.

t'was rhetorical (sp?)

i actually think i overplayed it

Wise move, young man.

Working on: Beethoven Sonatina in D, WoO 47/3.

Hopefully it should become fluent

I just looked back and noticed this, AP. It depends what you mean by 'work on'. If you mean learning new material then there is a limit to the number of pieces we can tackle before our concentration and energy becomes so fragmented that we get nowhere. If you mean working on well learned repertoire and keeping it under the fingers, then that is different.

There is a knack to doing this. It assumes a degree of 'mastery' of the basic repertoire, or in my case complete fluency allied to the ability to bluff and blag the more ridiculously difficult passages.

Take my season's recital programme. Once 'mastered' (hah) there is a limit to the amount of time I need to spend practising pieces. I play each passage in the piece slowly twice (say, the first subject group of a sonata mvmt). Reeeaaaalllllyyyyyy slowly; mistakes are not allowed. This gives the brain time to reprocess the information and allows it to keep control of the passagework. By mid-way through a season, I did not even need to do this every day.

Practised like this, and entire recital programme would occupy no more that two and a half to three hours. The rest of my time could then be devoted to working at other repertoire\concertos\accompaniments\slashing my wrists, whatever seemed most desperately in need of attention.

This is\was my method. I do not know how an Ashkenasy\Axe\Brendel\Schiff\Kissin et al goes about things. Here, we are talking about a different order of musician altogether.

Steve

*wishes he had anywhere near that length of time to practice*

Does this mean you have to perform it in a concert (with an audience) so you won't "forget" the piece? What's the difference between doing that and practising it at home without anybody watching?

A single performance to a live audience will make a well-practised piece dramatically better. As I said earlier, I have no idea why; it just does. It will be something to do with stress concentrating the mind. At the start of my career, I noticed the same effect after rehearsing accompaniments with a soloist for the first time, so long as I was nervous about the first meeting.

Multiple performances will fix a piece firmly in the memory. I have a couple of hours worth of pieces I can always play as a result of this process.

I assume the difference between this and practising the piece at home is the mind concentrating stress of public performance.

Steve

And all of those extra hours of panicking practise that magically appear as the date approaches . Or is that just me ?

Perhaps some of it is also the motivation to make sure that piece is thoruoghly under the fingers and really solid and consistent, whereas playing it at home doesn't offer the same motivation.

Throughout my life, the impending arrival of a major event has had the opposite effect - the last thing I want to do is practise is the material for said event.

I do not get nervous in the common sense of the term - no shaking, not butterflies. I wish I did.

My nerves take the form of making me so tired that all I want to do is go to bed. Not a good state of mind to be before, say, playing Rachmaninov's 3rd piano concerto

Or accompanying the under 8's recorder class in a music festival

Pshychologists describe our reaction to 'danger' as being one of either 'fight' or 'flight'. The 'practise until the last second' are presumably the 'fighters'. The 'let me go to sleep now brigade are presumably the 'flighters'.

Neither approach aids peace of mind. Bit of a b****r, really.

Steve

It's possible to recreate to a certain extent (but obviously not fully) playing to an audience in the privacy of your own practice room with a very vivid imagination - I sometimes find if I really imagine there's a row of people watching it actually triggers a slight increase in adrenalin, so I feel a little of the nervous state I would experience before a concert. (But then I've always had a vivid imagination - even from being a little girl! Perhaps I've never really grown up! But it also helps with interpreting music - if I'm having trouble getting the sound I want I try to imagine characters, or scenes - from films or just made up - and try to communicate those through the music. Once I've achieved what I'm looking for, the 'props' are usually no longer necessary.) But I digress! And of course there's nothing really to compare with real concert experience!

Oddly enough I just posted a similar, seemingly contradictory, thing in another thread. Exams seem to make me want to not practise because I feel like I have to not that I want to. However, when it gets closer to the date I do want to do more practise though through sheer terror but then I still don't do good practise, it's like the motivation is there but I don't want to do it, still I play through my pieces a lot almost to convince myself I can still do it . Still I will get a reasonable amount of practise done despite not wanting to, just through feeling that I have to. I'm going off exams actually, I used to like them but I sometimes now feel they get in the way of me learning in some ways. Still it's good nerve therapy .


I wish I didn't I have shaking hands, feel sick (often am sick ) and I really hate it...

my piano pieces for the RAM, RNCM and RCM audiitons in november/december.....

plus my grade 8 organ pieces.....

singing dipABRSM pieces as well...although i am not going to take the exam this year....

That was me throughout my teenage years and early career. I desperately wanted to perform and yet the immediate prospect was terrifying.

My break-throughs were: 5 years on the staff of Oldham's music support service, where I did on average one performance a week as an accompanist; a successful performance of my first big concerto - Tchaikovsky 2.

Self-belief worked wonders for me. It is probably no consolation to you that such major virtuosi as Ashkenazy still feel intensely nervous before a performance. Just take heart in that you are not alone

I sympathise with your changing views on exams. I am even starting to choose the children to whom I suggest exams with a little more care than in the past. The incentive to practise where this happens for the individual is a Good Thing. More and more kids want to take the exam but get sick of the preparation.

Steve

Have you decided that you will definitely be studying piano then? What are you planning to play for the auditions (just being nosey )? Good luck .


I'm trying to think of something I could do to get some experience, but so far I've not thought of anything that I'm good enough and confident enough to do, or found an opportunity to do anything.... I'm naturally quite a shy person and hate making mistakes in front of people (especially people who know what they're talking about): I think that's a large part of the problem.

I don't think I will ever abandon exams as I really need the expereince but I'm a lot less concerned by needing them to show my progress now, I used to feel that they were the only way I would feel I was progressing and learning properly. Now I do not feel that this is the case.