Clair De Lune

[justliam]

Hey guys, any comments greatly appreciated, performed this for A-level, but this isn't a recorded of that particular performance. Thanks in advance.

[gaer]

Hey guys, any comments greatly appreciated, performed this for A-level, but this isn't a recorded of that particular performance. Thanks in advance.

Just "turning on a machine" to record is enough to cause extra things to go wrong, so let me assume that wrong notes are the result of nerves and that you know where they are.

The sound is mostly quite nice, although I think you exaggerate some of the loud spots too much.

The number one thing that I would work on, besides fixing some wrong notes, is counting. You are holding some notes much too long and are playing a few almost twice as fast as they should go. I'm not talking about your use of "rubato" but of places in which you seem to be playing by sound (what you hear in your head) rather than by the actual note values on the page.

A good example of what you could improve: the first meausre sounds like this to me:

X and uh two and three and four and. In other words, you last beat is much too long. It sounds like a bar of 4/4 rather than 3/4, and there are other places like this. Get the counting right and your whole performance will instantly improve a great deal!

Gary

[zheer]

The sound is mostly quite nice, although I think you exaggerate some of the loud spots too much.



   Disagree , you need the contrast , you need a big sound here, well done.



X and uh two and three and four and. In other words, you last beat is much too long. It sounds like a bar of 4/4 rather than 3/4, and there are other places like this. Get the counting right and your whole performance will instantly improve a great deal!


         
          Agree, 100% , it sounds like you are thinking rather than expressing, common erra.

[gaer]

Disagree , you need the contrast , you need a big sound here, well done.

I was not very clear. I wrote:

"The sound is mostly quite nice, although I think you exaggerate some of the loud spots too much."

I did not not mean that the peaks are too loud. That is a matter of personal taste. But I think there are sections in which the music grows too quickly, so that it gets to the climaxes too soon. For instance, in measures 15-18 the only marking is pp. So here any building should be quite gentle, right?

Then the building starts at 19, but it can't get too loud too soon. This is what I meant. Debussy only says to get louder and faster (more animated) little by little, so we don't know clearly how much—that is all interpretation—but somehow it has to build up to the point at which the arpreggios appear, where it says to diminish a great deal (dim. molto).

I should learn to be more precise, but Wilma and a too long day seems to have made me rather unclear.

Gaer

[zheer]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh , OK.