Performer's Repertoire

[cluey]

Hi everyone  first time posting in these forums. I would like some suggestions/recommendations on selecting pieces.

A little bit about my background:

-Been playing for about 10 years
-Did all my exams through the Royal Conservatory of Music (Canada)
-Received my Associate of Royal Conservatory Perfomer's Diploma
-Participated in Kiwanis Festival (received 1st/2nd place in different compositions)

I have played quite a diverse selection up till my Perfomer's Diploma, including:

Bach - Prelude and Fugue in F minor (no. 12, book 2)
          Prelude and Fugue in C sharp major (no. 3, book 1)
Mozart - Sonata in C Major, K. 330  (1st movement)
            Fantasia in D minor, K. 397
Beethoven - "Pathetique" Sonata (1st and 2nd movement)
               - "Moonlight" Sonata (all 3 mvmts for diploma)
Chopin - Prelude in E minor (I think this was my grade 7 RCM piece, very early on)
          - Waltz in C Sharp Minor
          - Nocturne in E Flat Major
          - Nocturne in B Flat Minor, op. 9 no 1 
          - "Heroic" Polonaise in A Flat Major, op. 53 (won 1st place at Kiwanis Chopin subsection, 
          also my diploma piece)
Debussy - Arabesque no.1
            - Le Cathedrale Engloutie (from the Preludes album)
Gershwin - Three Preludes
Kabalesvky - Variations in A minor
                - Prelude no. 10 from 24 preludes
Moszowski - multiple etudes

So I have had diploma for about 3 to 4 years now, haven't really had time to play but keeping up my finger dexterity with Czerny & Moszowski. I have recently decided to pick up again:

I am learning:

Bach - Prelude and Fugue in B Flat Minor (book 1, no 22. )

Mozart - thinking of playing   Sonata in C Minor K 457, 3 mvmts? good idea?  (I read that this is an important sonata for pianists to learn)

Chopin - my teacher suggested Polonaise in F Sharp Minor, the "tragic".  But I really don't want to play another polonaise.  Any suggestions here, Ballade no.1 in G minor  or Scherzo no1 no 2?

Or any other romantic repertoire? I would like to play a piece by another romantic composer. Liszt maybe?

Any concertos I could start learning? I'm quite fond of the Mozart Concerto no. 20 in D minor. Would it be too difficult?

Thanks guys!

[hozepshad]

What about learning a couple of sonatas by Scarlatti, I also don't see any Schubert in your repertoire. Chopin's ballade no. 1 would be a great piece to learn, or you can learn his fantasie in f minor, and play it alongside the heroic polonaise in a recital, I think those two would make a great combination.

[zippi]

If you want to play some Liszt I would recommend you the Hungarian Rhapsodies, Ballades, Three Concert Etudes.  The three Liebesträume are a easier than the pieces mentioned before, yet beautiful.
Liszt has so many lyric pieces its sad that many just know him as a crazy virtuoso :/
I could go on and on but that should be enough for the beginning

[cluey]

Thanks hozepshad and zippi! Great suggestions.

Yeah I've never played Schubert before what are some good compositions ?

I forgot to list that I've actually played Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody #2 before. Maybe I'll think about his other ones. Or like zippi suggested -- Un Sospiro from Three Concert Etudes.

How is Liszt's Sonata in B Minor in terms of difficulty?

[onwan]

Yeah I've never played Schubert before what are some good compositions ?

The most famous are his Impromptus Op.90 and Moment Musical Op.94 but I think that they are really overplayed. Personally, I love his Klavierstückes D946 and his Impromptus Op.142 nos.1 and 3.

[zippi]

I didn't play the b minor sonata yet but its a beast.
I agree with onwan Klavierstück D946 No. 1 is also one of my favorites by schubert.

[cliffy]

Aloha, Cluey,

First, let me congratulate you. You've got the hardest part behind you; think of how many people stop before getting where you are. Well done indeed. However, it does worry me a bit that you've been playing for 10 years, and still lack either a deep enough knowledge of what's been written for the piano or a deep enough knowledge of your own tastes to make a list of pieces you want to learn a mile long. Developing a good, long list of pieces which appeal to you and grouping them into programs for performances, listening to those pieces, and playing through them is vastly more important to overall musical development than our beloved Professor Czerny and his terrible etudes, which are very valuable until you realize they don't do anything that other, vastly superior pieces won't do faster and better (if you don't believe that from me, look at the preface to Dohnanyi's finger exercises, where he says basically the same thing). I wonder if, as you work at keeping your finger dexterity you aren't working at the wrong aim and wasting your precious time at the piano. I'm not in the business of arguing with success though; if that brings you success in a time period you're happy with, by all means keep at it.

I was looking over your list, and wrote up some suggestions for what I thought you might do well learning, but then noticed you've already played the HR2, I assume to a concert standard, which opens up vast possibilities. I'll just mention a few of the more notable ones I had on my list:

Grieg- Lyric Pieces
All of these ought to be cake for you, and contain some of my favorite Romantic pieces, such as Sylph and Homeward (op.62 n.1 & 6 respectively). I assume even the hardest of these won't provide more than a few hours challenge if that; if you ever need a new Romantic piece, why not learn one of these?

Schumann- Carnaval
I love this set; it has an extremely interesting overall construction and one of the pieces in the set (Coquette) has been ringing in the back of my mind for years. Chopin did no agree with this assessment, though. This should provide a greater challenge than the Lyric Pieces.

Alkan- Etudes in Major Keys op.35
Alkan is one of the most unusual cases in Romantic piano literature. To the average pianist, Alkan composed 16 pieces: 12 minor key etudes under op.39, 3 Etudes under op.76, and the etude "Chemin de Fer" op.27. He is usually considered a super-difficult composer, on the level of Godowsky and Sorjabi. I think this is a shame, as he wrote many approachable pieces. Still, it does let you impress people who know only the name and the usual story by playing Alkan for them at almost any level. These 12 etudes are by no means simple or small-scale, but they are easier than the usual suspects, and some are quite marvelous. For an easier introduction to Alkan, you might consider his Preludes, op.31, which should be more than manageable. Really, you can find plenty looking through this fellow's output.

Petrassi- Toccata & Lesur- Ballade
Two wonderful modern pieces, both of which are easier for ears acclimated to purely tonal music than most other pieces of their time period, and should be widely played. Sadly, pieces such as these can be slightly hard to acquire scores for.

Chopin- Etudes
I'm surprised you haven't learned even one of these yet. If you don't have any predisposition against these, I'd recommend learning as many of then as you can. I'll offer you one possible idea for studying these. It may work well for you, it may not. Several of these etudes have a strong Right Hand bias, as you'll well know. As I see it, the most useful thing to do with Godowsky's transcriptions is to use them to prevent overuse injury from working one hand too hard for too long. I think you would do well with several of these etudes to learn, concurrently, one of their Godowsky transcriptions. Specifically:
Op.10-1 and Godowsky 2
10-2 and Godowsky 3
10-5 and Godowsky 7
10-7 and Godowsky 14
10-8 and Godowsky 16 (Godowsky's versions of this etude may be too hard to be of use though)
(10-10 might have fit here but for the tremendous difficulty of both of Godowsky's versions)
25-2 and Godowsky 27
25-5 and Godowsky 33 (would have been in the same boat as 10-10 if not for Godowsky's Ossias, which may help)
25-6 and Godowsky 36 (now this'll straighten out them double notes...)
25-11 and Godowsky 42
*I use Godowsky's original numbers

Naturally this will be a very controversial idea, but I found it to be useful for 10-7 in particular; it's worth a try. It goes without saying, don't try the rest of the Godowsky transcriptions unless you have the fingers of an angel, nerves of steel and a wrought-iron stomach.

Finally, here are a few composers to research; I think they'll lead you to good things:
Gottschalk
Syzmanowski
Tcherepin
Vladigerov
Kalkbrenner
Borner
Dvarionas
Paques
Korngold
Buxtehude
Blanchet
Couperin
(Pardon any misspellings, it was hard enough to write this out on an iPhone )

Good Luck!
Cliffy

[cliffy]

Oh, and I second the suggestions for Schubert, Un Sosperio and lots'a Scarlatti. Another piece of Liszt's you might like, which is less well known, would be the Valse Melancolique S.214-2

[thesixthsensemusic]

I'd suggest you try Schumann's Davidsbündlertänze or Carnaval.

Both are 30-something minutes long collections of miniatures that are quite often challenging to learn but allow you to master them piecemeal. And personally, I think both are among the greatest piano works ever written.

Secondly, I would advise you not to waste any time playing Czerny etudes to keep your fingers supple, except if you really find some of them worthy of performance in public.

I had a chat about this with my old piano teacher a few months ago after I had been playing again for a year after a lengthy hiatus. Basically, he told me this:

You can practice your dexterity as well with learning moderately difficult works (like the easier Beethoven Sonatas, Schumann's Papillons, Debussy's Children's Corner and Suite Bergamasque, most of Chopin's Nocturnes and Mazurkas) that are somewhat, but not too far, below your skill level.

I tried this approach for a few months and to be honest I fully agree with what he told me.

Personally I find that the most important skill for developing your repertoire, is proficiency in reading sheet music and a gut feeling for chord progressions etc. While you are surely capable of reading sheet music and could no doubt figure out even the most complex scores, constantly learning new pieces that are harmonically complex, sharpens these senses quickly, and not doing this gets them dusty after a while.... in the end you learn to memorize and sight-read way quicker, plus it also develops your instinctive fingering, both greatly reduce the time you need to take for learning difficult sections. You'll notice the difference once you decide on a really difficult piece to tackle (something like Chopin's 4th Ballade or Schumann's Symphonic Studies for example).