Mozart Fantasy in D-minor (Urgent! Performance in under 24 hrs!)

[pbryld]

So, I've been playing for a little more than a year now, and I started working on this about... well, one year ago. It's been very much on and off.

Tomorrow I have to play a piece, and this is the only one I have actually kind of finished (I am very bad at finishing pieces) and haven't performed with already. Starting on this while being very unskilled, I've developed some bad habits and play a few parts a bit simplified.
I've tried not redoing anything in this recording, so there are some screwups that I hope won't be there tomorrow. Somewhere I even forget some notes...
You will have to mind the tuning. I just got this piano, and it is very much out of tune after being moved (by me, my father and little brother...).
I am also still getting used to the mechanics.
The recording is on an iPhone. There are some weird tics in the recording... Don't know why, maybe the sound being too powerful at times.

I have added the last two chords myself. Let me know if you think they are not appropriate.

Well, enough with the excuses! Let's hear some music.

By the way, the piano is a 1879 Bechstein B (2 meters long), restored (20 year ago) of course.

[schubertiad]

Hey,
Lots of pointers for you, most of which are already written in the score. You probably won't have time to incorporate all this in your performance tomorrow, but it might give you something to look at in the future.

1) Pedal! You are committing serious pedal abuse in this one I'm afraid.  Listen for example to bars 18-19. You are sustaining both a g sharp diminished 7th and an a major chord! I would suggest playing the entire piece with no pedal at first, and rely on finger legato instead. A closer look at the score suggests that finger legato is pretty much written in. For example Mozart sustains the opening tripet of each bar in the opening, as well as in the first theme. The piece is absolutely full of held notes, ties and finger substitutions for a reason. Mozart would not have wanted you to steamroll over them with dampener pedal.
 
2) Rhythm Lots of little misreadings of the score which should be addressed:
Bar 16: Left hand has a crotchet (quarter) note rest, not a quaver (eighth) as you played.
Bar 17: The triplets in the right hand should be played evenly, not dotted
Bars 23-25/analogous: You are playing these as triplets, whereas they are in fact uniform semiquavers with a semiquaver rest (almost the opposite problem to the last bar!)
Section before allegretto: Timing is way off here. Sit down with the score and work out exactly where each beat falls.

3) Timing I'm not sure if it's down to not being totally secure with the notes or if it is intentional, but your performance loses a lot of its natural flow by a number of unnecessary pauses and wild tempo fluctuations. For example, you break up the broad, arching broken chords of the opening with a pause between each bar.
Secondly, the score is already marked Andante, Adagio, Presto, Adagio, Presto, Adagio, Allegretto all within the space of a few pages! With such a range of tempos already indicated, I would keep the tempo within each section stricter, or else the structure of the piece seems to fall apart.

It would be remiss of me to not mention some of the positives. You have clearly put a lot of time and effort into this work, and despite the problems you play with a sense of style and feeling. The presto passagework is not bad at all, either. Having played for just a year you are doing fine, but please try and address the basic pedalling and timing errors. They won't fix themselves.

I hope this was of some use to you, good luck with the performance and let us know how it went.

Schubertiad

[pbryld]

Hello Schubertiad.

Which score are you using? It doesn't seem to correspond with mine at all.

EDIT: as far as the bar numbers go.

On another note: 24 downloads and ONE comment? Oh my.