Shostakovich piano sonata 2, 2nd and 3rd mvt

[yukonbro]

Has anyone who has played this piece got any advice? I am about to start learning it for a recital and have only a little over a month to get it down.

[j_menz]

I am about to start learning it for a recital and have only a little over a month to get it down.

Then either you are a fool, or you are unlikely to need our advice.

[yukonbro]

Well I don't deny that I am a fool, but its not my choice for having so little time, its just how it was arranged. If it could be my way I would have a year to study it, but I don't, so I have to make due with the little time I have.

[j_menz]

Then I would highly commend a listen to Maxim Shostakovitch play it:

He may not be the best interpreter of his father's work, but he has insights that cannot be ignore.

[yukonbro]

Thank you but this is the second piano concerto. Im learning the piano sonata.

[j_menz]

Thank you but this is the second piano concerto. Im learning the piano sonata.

Ooops. I really should pay more attention. 

Gilels gives a great interpretation. I've only ever glanced at it and must say I think it looks pretty complex.  Is there any reason you're not doing the whole thing?

[virtuoso80]

I love this piece, and I have a copy I read through, but I've never learned it to performance standards. Trying to think of advice, I'm finding it hard to give in a general sense, because it feels like a 'you either get it or you don't' kind of piece; either you hear how the harmonies and lines of the 2nd movement are just one-step removed from traditional harmony, and 'make sense', or it just sounds weird to you. To actually do formal analysis of the whole thing would take quite a long time.

There are no real technical acrobatics to overcome. The difficulty is in voicing and phrasing, and also in providing a large scale sense of structure, especially in the third movement, which has to start small, and then progress and build through its subsequent variations...I assume you noticed the 3rd movement is a set of variations, or else you probably shouldn't be playing this piece! That reminds me...is there a moment in the 3rd movement where it deviates from that? If so, that might be important to the 'story' of the movement, yes?

[yukonbro]

Is there any reason you're not doing the whole thing?

I am not doing the whole thing because a frankly do not like the first mvt as much as the others, although it is still great, and it seems the hardest technically so I doubt I would have enough time to learn it as well.

[yukonbro]

I love this piece, and I have a copy I read through, but I've never learned it to performance standards. Trying to think of advice, I'm finding it hard to give in a general sense, because it feels like a 'you either get it or you don't' kind of piece; either you hear how the harmonies and lines of the 2nd movement are just one-step removed from traditional harmony, and 'make sense', or it just sounds weird to you. To actually do formal analysis of the whole thing would take quite a long time.

There are no real technical acrobatics to overcome. The difficulty is in voicing and phrasing, and also in providing a large scale sense of structure, especially in the third movement, which has to start small, and then progress and build through its subsequent variations...I assume you noticed the 3rd movement is a set of variations, or else you probably shouldn't be playing this piece! That reminds me...is there a moment in the 3rd movement where it deviates from that? If so, that might be important to the 'story' of the movement, yes?

Thank you for this helpful information. I do know that the 3rd mvt is a set of variations but I do not know if there are any deviations. I will have to look into that.

[virtuoso80]

Ooops. I really should pay more attention. 

Gilels gives a great interpretation. I've only ever glanced at it and must say I think it looks pretty complex.  Is there any reason you're not doing the whole thing?

IMO the Gilels interpretation on youtube (live, with images of the score) is not that good at all. Leaving aside that I think he blatantly ignores Shostakovich's intentions in places, I don't find it nearly as musically successful and even some of the amateur performances on youtube. Also, I personally heard my former piano teacher a few years ago give a performance I thought musically far superior, and even more technically precise than this Gilels performance.