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Topic: Pieces that are 'easy' to play but hard to read  (Read 2840 times)

Offline pianoplayjl

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Pieces that are 'easy' to play but hard to read
on: February 24, 2012, 05:49:48 AM
 ;D
Funny? How? How am I funny?

Offline stiefel

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Re: Pieces that are 'easy' to play but hard to read
Reply #1 on: June 01, 2012, 04:16:04 AM
pretty much anything with a complicated key signature and lots of accidentals is hard to read, but not necessarily hard to play.

Offline grandstaff

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Re: Pieces that are 'easy' to play but hard to read
Reply #2 on: June 27, 2012, 06:55:22 PM
Scriabin's late preludes, and Desir.

Offline rachmaninoff_forever

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Re: Pieces that are 'easy' to play but hard to read
Reply #3 on: June 28, 2012, 01:22:47 AM
Everything... :(
Live large, die large.  Leave a giant coffin.

Offline nanabush

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Re: Pieces that are 'easy' to play but hard to read
Reply #4 on: June 28, 2012, 08:35:14 PM
Stuff by a brand new composer.  I've played next to no Schumann... I get a headache looking at his writing.  There is extensive passagework in a lot of his pieces with double stemmed notes to outline melodies.  I know that a lot of other composers to this a lot too, but for some reason with his, it just looks cluttered!  I can't say these are easy pieces, but I know a lot of people who play a bunch of Schumann, and have never really complained about it.

A lot of Liszt.  The piece is obviously not 'easy', but in the Mephisto Waltz, the climax with the RH arpeggios after the deadly frantic jumps (near the end) is probably one of the easier parts to execute in the piece (once you have the notes down!).  That was something that struck me when I was working on it.  There were other parts that were easy to read (RH tremolos) that were beasts even after knowing the passages well.

Reflets dans l'eau... I was looking at that piece a little while ago and was working through it on the side.  I went to this after studying the 'etude pour les arpeges composees'.  These pieces are tough to get going with right off the bat, but they fit so nicely in your hand!  The Eb major climax spot in the Reflets dans l'Eau may sound intense and look intense, but broken apart the components to it are very manageable!

Bach fugues... once you get the voices and finger independence working with these, it is as if you are solving a tough puzzle.  There probably aren't too many people who can sit and sight read a bach fugue and have really good voicing throughout.  These pieces are pretty miniature compared to a lot of stuff by later composers, but they seem to require the same intensity of work.  I find though, once it clicks, it REALLY clicks.
Interested in discussing:

-Prokofiev Toccata
-Scriabin Sonata 2

Offline evitaevita

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"I'm a free person; I feel terribly free. They could put me in chains and I still would be free because my thoughts would be mine - and that's all I want to have."
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Offline j_menz

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Re: Pieces that are 'easy' to play but hard to read
Reply #6 on: October 14, 2012, 11:42:47 PM
Anything published in a book that keeps trying to slam itself shut while you're trying to play from it.
"What the world needs is more geniuses with humility. There are so few of us left" -- Oscar Levant

Offline 49410enrique

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Re: Pieces that are 'easy' to play but hard to read
Reply #7 on: October 15, 2012, 12:05:35 AM
Anything published in a book that keeps trying to slam itself shut while you're trying to play from it.
you too!? omg we bought the same music  :o

Offline ajspiano

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Re: Pieces that are 'easy' to play but hard to read
Reply #8 on: October 15, 2012, 01:44:36 AM
Anything published in a book that keeps trying to slam itself shut while you're trying to play from it.

This is why I so rarely buy scores and prefer to print/bind my own.
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