Orchestra only concerto recordings for practice?

[malwambi]

Hi Piano People,

Is anyone aware of any recordings of any concertos in which only the orchestra is playing?

I would really like to practice along with a recording of a real orchestra (without having to compete with the recorded piano). 

[stevebob]

Music Minus One

[malwambi]

stevebob,

That is EXACTLY what I was looking for.  If I were of the zaluphix tribe, I would give you the first-born of this year's baby goats. 

[stevebob]

Enjoy!

And dang, I already have enough pets!  But it's the thought that counts. 

[orangesodaking]

I've heard of this and I've never used it (because concerti aren't exactly prominent in my repertoire), but thanks for the link stevebob.

[stevebob]

The only Music Minus One recording I have is a cassette tape (!) of Chopin's first concerto that I bought about 25 years ago.  They've been around a very long time, and their selection has expanded along with technological change; a number of their CD packages even have a reduced-speed practice version of the accompaniment.

There's a fair amount of chamber music in their catalogue, too, in addition to concertos, as well as repertoire for many instruments other than piano.

[rienzi]

Does anybody find these recordings valuable aids to study? The experience of playing with a real orchestra, where there is collaboration (ideally!) between the soloist and other players is totally different from trying to keep up with an orchestral contribution which was recorded long ago and far away. It's a bit like following an orchestral recording and pretending to conduct, when the real job of a conductor is to direct the performers in his orchestra.
I once bought one of these recordings (Mozart K466) and got rid of it shortly afterwards because I found the experience of trying to synchronize with it (at tempi which I would never have chosen, by the way) frustrating and anti-musical.

[pianisten1989]

Does anybody find these recordings valuable aids to study? The experience of playing with a real orchestra, where there is collaboration (ideally!) between the soloist and other players is totally different from trying to keep up with an orchestral contribution which was recorded long ago and far away. It's a bit like following an orchestral recording and pretending to conduct, when the real job of a conductor is to direct the performers in his orchestra.

Well, you try to find a full orchestra everytime you need to practice! ;P

[nmitchell076]

What I like to do is write the whole concerto into Finale (sans-piano part), then I record that all into Audacity and split it up into the various "sections" of the concerto.

Then I use a program like Live and a USB footswitch to cue in the orchestra when they are supposed to come in.

This is EXTREMELY tedious, but doing so allows you do do a certain amount of things that you wouldn't get to do with the MM1 disks.

1. you get to tweak the performance in any way you want to.
2. You can cue in the orchestra at any part at any time without having to worry about resetting the disk.
3. (and this is an important one) by typing into finale everything your going to play (I even do the piano part and mute it for recording), you can thoroughly think through the way you want to perform the concerto AWAY from the piano.  You see how the parts fit together from a visual (and aural) point of view.  And the personal adjustments you can make to the concerto here allow you to have an idea before you even sit down at the piano to practice it of what your goals are, where liberties are granted, what feel you want for a passage.

Point number three seals the deal and makes the whole thing worth it for me.


Granted, Finale will never have the sound of a true orchestra, and you have to go through A TON of trouble to make the orchestra not sound mechanical, but it IS doable, I've used this method in my preparation of the Gershwin Concerto in F and the Copland Concerto.  The only thing is that you have to understand that some things won't work as well in practice as they will in Finale, and some things will work better in practice.  But, again, you can go back and edit the file to adjust for all of these things later.

[rienzi]

Well, you try to find a full orchestra everytime you need to practice! ;P

The idea is you practise the solo part at home and then go for the rehearsal with the real orchestra. Practising with the orchestral part played on a second piano is also a thousand times more preferable than struggling to keep up with a disc relentlessly spinning on the turntable or in the cd player.
I've performed around twenty concertos and never used these recordings as a practice-aid. Poor old Horowitz, Schnabel and Rubinstein also never had the "advantage" of using these aids at the beginning of their careers either. However did the poor things manage?