Choosing pieces for playing

[yuuaix]

Hi i'm new here! Just discovered this wonderful forum!

Can anyone give me some advice? Like how difficult the pieces are, your experience with it etc
I have to choose a few pieces from a selection my teacher suggested to me for a program of about 10-15minutes. I have probably about now till early June to get familiar and them memorised.

Kapustin - Etudes (I'm looking at 6, 7 and 8. I wanna play them all though!)
Messiaen - Preludes (Can't seem to find recordings and i don't particular enjoy the sound. They made me kinda... sleepy :x)
Liszt - La Campanella (Looks like hell!)
Ravel - Miroirs (My teacher wrote Oiseaux tristes and Alborada del gracioso)
Poulenc - Les Soirées de Nazelles (love poulenc!)
Scriabin - She mentioned sonata, but didnt specify which piece. and wrote a 9 so i'm assuming it's Sonata No.9 Op.68 "Black Mass"

One of her recommendation is Alborada del gracioso but the glissandos and the series of single note hammering looks scary to me. She said if i feel uneasy about playing that now, I can move it to the next semester and play Kapustin first (which i love to! But i also want to save it for my finals) Should i do that? Or is there enough time for me to get Ravel perfect by June? She also asked me to consider the rest of the above selections too. Like, "c'mon, pick more!" orz


Personally i'm also looking at some of these as an add on to the timing:
Debussy's passepied, Danse bohemienne, Tarentelle styrienne-Danse, Valse Romantique.
Poulenc's Villageoises, petites pièces enfantines、Intermezzo No. 3 in A flat Major

So... any input? 

[okanaganmusician]

When preparing a program of pieces it's always important to make sure there is a nice contrast in there, which your list seems to include for the most part, so that's good (although a nice Classical-era sonata, etc. is missing).

La Campanella isn't as tough a piece as it looks.  I learned it in my 2nd year of BMus degree - it's one of those pieces that is technically challenging yes, but there are little tricks and shortcuts that the performer uses to make the more difficult parts sound brilliant, but are in fact easy.  There are other Liszt etudes that are much more difficult to play.

Don't always judge a piece by looking at the music or just listening to a recording - many of my students do this and in doing so miss out on some amazing pieces just because they got cold feet for no reason!

Another reason to include La campanella in your program is that it provides a nice Romantic influence that wouldn't really be there otherwise.  A Liszt/Chopin/Rachmaninov piece should always be a staple in the repertoire!