Help needed with programme notes!!!!!!!

[inufan]

I'm preparing my programme notes for my DipABRSM and I extremely need help in writing them
I will be playing the following pieces
Bach's Well-tempered clavier 2 - Prelude and Fugue in D
Mozart's Sonata in D K311
Chopin's Impromptu in Gb op 51
Bartok's six dances (the 2nd, 3rd, and last one)
I can barely find anything on Chopin's and Bartok's, I have ABSOLUTELY NO idea what to write and how to write my notes
can someone give me some advice and guidance plz~~~?

[general disarray]

Odd request, I must say.

Have you consulted your teacher? 

Have you ventured into a public or school library where a librarian would be happy to assist you?

Have you used the infinite resources on the internet?

Have you consulted the notes on any CD recordings of the works in your repertoire?

Have you PM'd faulty_damper, our eminent online pedagogue?

Have you gone to this forum's "Anything but Piano" section and looked up the "Dear Pianistimo" thread where it is appropriate to ask for help?  Pianistimo has recently been overcome by Ralph Vaughan Williams -- and fainted -- but she'll respond in due time because she's a sweetie pie.

(That said, I'd be happy to write your notes for you for a fee.  My freelance rate is $150 an hour.  PM me for contractual details.)

[Order "General Disarray's: Program Notes for All Occasions and Instruments," only $19.95 and, if you act now, you'll receive the General's Portable Potato Peeler, FREE!  Act now!  Quantities limited!]

[pianistimo]

hello!  is it the six 'rumanian' folk dances - or the 'bulgarian'? 

according to harold schonberg's 'the great pianists' - 'Dohnanyi's more famous countryman, Bela Bartok, was four years younger.  Bartok, like Dohnanyi, was a magnificent pianist - a second dohnanyi, he was called - who was appointed professor of piano playing at the Budhapest Academy in 1907.  Bartok did not make concert tours and when he did play it was generally his own music.  His recordings show that his approach to the piano was nowhere near so percussive as some of today's young virtuoso's might think.  Bartok, after all, was a pianist of the old school, where tone was still the most important thing, and he never banged out his music as so many of his successors do.'

[pianistimo]

However, on page 390 it says ''debussy wanted to suggest a piano without hammers.  Prokofiev, Bartok, Stravinsky,and Hindemith had the opposite view.  Nonsense, they said in effect.  The piano IS a percussive instrument, and there's no use trying to disguise the fact.  So let's face up to it and treat the piano as a percussive instrument.'

I think the contrast of paragraphs is simply that bartok still didn't pound even when he was being percussive.  It might be short, swift strokes - but never to damage the mechanism or be 'rude' in the playing.  It was for rhythmic effect.

[pianistimo]

page 394 'as Bartok conceived the instrument, the piano was indeed a hammer clavier. He composed a series of studies and also six books of graded pieces named Mikrokosmos.  The name MikroKosmos is so named because of the brevity of the pieces in the collection.  These six volumes codify Bartok's pianistic and harmonic theories.

I've played the 'rumanian dances' and have to look at my notes in my book.  i tend to write it all inside the front cover in case anyone asks me questions.

[pianistimo]

here's something from pianophiles on the chopin impromptu:
https://pianophiles.com/sheetmusic/composers/c/chopin/impromptus/schirmer1915/

[inufan]

>>>pianistimo
it is the bulgarian dances, and thanks a lot for your information, they're lifesavers! >w<