Viennese Sonatina Mozart (1st Movement)

[musicsminion]

This is the piece I have to play for my upcoming music competition. The thing is, I don't exactly love playing it. That's a big problem for me because if I'm not fully and completely into the song with all my heart, it just isn't the same anymore. Last year I played Avalanche By Stephen Heller (which is an amazing and fun piece to play) and I knew that I loved it. I would play it and only it for hours. But the Viennese Sonatina doesn't ... doesn't.... well, I'm just not getting the right vibes from it. I have no feeling for it whatsoever and my soul is out of it.


What do I do? How can I learn to love it? 

[ramseytheii]

Transpose it to a minor key!

Walter Ramsey

[keyboardclass]

The Sonatinas are arrangments not piano music - that may be your problem.  I find them delightful.

[dss62467]

Well, I don't know if you can ever "learn to love" anything!  You either do or you don't.  That's a point I've tried to hammer into my ex-husband several times.... but that's another story.   

I know exactly what you're talking about.  Is the piece assigned to you so you're obligated to play it?  I don't know, I'm not a competition level player, so I've never experienced any of that.  But if I get a piece from my teacher and don't catch the vibe in a couple weeks, I usually say, "nope... not digging this one...."  Sometimes it's just a matter of learning it and playing it closer to "right".  Like the Haydn piece that has become my favorite.   It was very close to the chopping block.

Can you listen to a recording of someone playing it really well?  That sometimes get the piece stuck in my head and I have to play it.  Like scratching a mosquito bite....

Best of luck on your competition!!!!   I would love to go watch one of those sometime.  It would just make me green with envy I'm sure.  But in a good way.

[musicsminion]

I sort of am obligated to play it.

I mean, I have one other choice, Scherzo by Hummel, which I enjoy playing WAAAAY more.
But my teacher just insists that I play the Sonatina.

I know this might sound very extreme , but every time I play that song I feel like throwing up .. it is the only piece in my life ever that I've hated so much.

Then again, what can I really do? Kids don't hold much power or voice overy anything these days *scowl*.

I just told my teacher that I'm "happy" with it.

She's very gullible.


 

[brogers70]

I'm not sure what you don't like about it. If you feel that it's Mozart being sort of naive and simple, you could try thinking that he meant the piece ironically. There's a tendency to underestimate how much darkness and melancholy there is in Mozart, but if you look for it you can find it. (Like that little A major, musicbox parallel thirds bit plopped down in the middle of the bare third movement of the A minor sonata; that's certainly meant ironically). Remember there's always more to Mozart than the sweet surface.

[b0mbtrack]

I learned the first movement and I hated it at first but then when I got into the dynamics and all the other stuff besides learning just the notes I was having a lot of fun and getting into it.  I know there are different arraingments out there though, the one I like started with octaves in the left hand but I accidentally went and bought another arraingments that I haven't really looked at yet.