I am going to Play for a Third-Grade Class

[thomas_williams]

I was recently asked by a local music teacher to come play for her class of third-graders.  It sounds like it could be fun and I told her I would do it, but I have never done anything quite like this before.  I would like some input on how to make it fun and interesting for the children, and any other general information.

My ideas are along these lines:
Try to make the session interactive.
Tell the students a story about a piece (e. g., Rachmaninoff's C-sharp Minor Prelude), or briefly talk about a musical form (e. g., prelude and fugue) or a composer
Ask the students about the pictures they saw in their imagination while listening to the music

Music I might play would be:

Bach: Inventions or a Little Prelude and Fugue
Beethoven: A movement from Sonata in C minor, Op. 10, No. 1
Brahms: Sarabande and Gavotte in A Minor
Liszt: Sposalizio
Rachmaninoff: Prelude in C-sharp Minor
Kent Kennan: Three Preludes

If you have advice or suggestions regarding any of this I would be glad to hear from you on it.

[timothy42b]

If you are going to play for that age group, I think you will have to choose music likely to be interesting to them, not you.  And you want to be interacting with them constantly, keeping them involved.  They don't have the attention span for a concert, or even for most of the pieces you named.  

I've done quite a bit of this, not on piano but on trombone.  

I choose pieces they are likely to know - nursery rhymes, tv show themes, famous cartoons,  etc.  I quiz them, give prizes for whoever names the tune first, get them to help me put the instrument together, etc.  I add my own stories to the music - eventually they will too.  

Here's a suggestion for repertoire.  Most of the tunes for the Bugs Bunny cartoons were written by that famous team, the Italian Rossini and the German Wagner.  Place some transcriptions of those.  SHORT!  Kids can't handle much.  Here are two songs about horses, one by Tchaik (William Tell) and one by von Suppe (Light Cavalry).  Which one do you think liked horses best?  Here is a song about a dragon eating a mall.  The daddy dragon is too fat to fly, but the mommy dragon fights off Mothra.  Can you tell when the mommy dragon comes in?  (Ride of the Valkyries)  

You're an entertainer first and an educator second, and a performer never, with this age group.  If you do it right they leave excited about music, not bored.  

[allchopin]

Haha, Thomas - appears as though you're making a premature Carnegie Hall debut.  You're playing for KIDS!  You have listed, what, 10 pieces?  Third-graders could handle maybe 2, and only if they were rather short and fun.  I'm with Tim.. tone it down a bit.  

[thomas_williams]

Okay, let me clarify-- the list of pieces I gave was not intended to be a "program" as such.  My plan is not, and was not, to play everything on the list, and I am not limited to the repertoire on this list either.  

The idea of playing music the kids are likely to have heard on cartoons, etc., is a good one.  How about this: play something they would have heard, (e.g., something from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker,) talk to them about it and get them involved, then play something else by the same composer.  Maybe play something by Mozart (or another child prodigy) written by a composer when he was their age, telling them a story about the composer's childhood.

Any more thoughts?

[allchopin]

Cartoon pieces:
Hungarian Rhapsody
Mendelssohn's Spring Song (Song without Words Op. 62 #6)
Mozart's Turkish March (mvmt.3 of Sonata K. 331 in A)
Piano transcription of Wagner's Flight of the Valkryies (does such exist?)
Khatchaturian Sabre Dance
Rhapsody in Blue

I wouldn't play any of these pieces in full.

[timothy42b]

And of course,
Barber of Seville,
Wagner's "speaw and magic hewmut"
La Gazza Ladra

[kaff]

My children, aged five and nine, are pretty unexcited by a lot of the piano music I play, even thought they are both quite enthusiastic pianists themselves.  But Debussy's Golliwog's Cakewalk always brings them rushing into the room, demanding that I play it again and again.  Similar reaction to anything by Scott Joplin.  A recent surprise hit was a Grieg Poetic tone-picture, Op. 3 No. 3, which had my five year old son doing some very dramatic "spooky dancing".  Short, quite rhythmic pieces seem to hit the spot.

Oh, and the piano theme music to the children's TV programme, "Rugrats"! They think it's just brilliant that I can play the half dozen or so bars of this music by ear, and then they think it's even more brilliant that they can have a go at it themselves, as it's just a series of major thirds going up the scale of C.  I don't know what the whole piece of music is called though, or whether it's available in sheet music. Anyone else know?

Kathryn

[allchopin]

Rhythmic pieces reminded me to add another to the list - Grieg's Wedding Day at Troldhaugen is a very upbeat piece like this, and would probably go well with kids.

[Egghead]

Hi, this brings back fond memories...
We had someone visit our class when I was 8, maybe the best thing that happened to me in primary school. I was VERY impressed. I still remember that he played Schumann (Kinderszenen and late Album for the Young). With hindsight these pieces fulfill what I would expect a kid to like: they are short, full of life and character, imaginative.

So as mentioned by others, Grieg also springs to mind. Lots of contrast/ dynamic/ rhythm and/or a singable tune to take away are probably good.

In my opinion, while it is nice to have the whole thing interactive, you might also want to have some pieces for the kids to just, hm,
1) be damn impressed what one person can get out of just one piano (range of pitch, tone, dynamic, density of sound vs. single melodic line, sheer speed, etc- no didactics, please),
2) something more quiet to invite a day-dreaming atmosphere.

Music is magic after all.
BTW - can you improvise?
Egghead

[squinchy]

Tell the child to play C and G while you play "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," or something like that. That's what the zitar playing lady at epcot let me do when I went in 4th grade.  

[mosis]

Play Hungarian Rhapsody 2.