MTNA

[pianoman98]

The competition is coming up pretty soon. Look at my signature for my repertoire, whats everyone else's?

[yohankwon]

What state?

[pianoman98]

Missouri senior

[david456103]

im also entering MTNA senior. for privacy reasons i wont say the exact state, but im in the easter division.
my program:
Beethoven: Waldstein mvmt. 1
Liszt: Transcendental #4(Mazeppa)
Messiaen: Vingt regards #13
Ravel: Ondine from Gaspard de la Nuit

good luck to you

[pianoman98]

Wow, that's a difficult program! Good luck to you too! How long is your program, btw? And what grade are you in? I missed the cutoff for junior division this year by 11 days

[david456103]

aw that really sucks     im a junior in HS, my program is around 27 minutes long. is this your first time entering MTNA?

[yohankwon]

im also entering MTNA senior. for privacy reasons i wont say the exact state, but im in the easter division.
my program:
Beethoven: Waldstein mvmt. 1
Liszt: Transcendental #4(Mazeppa)
Messiaen: Vingt regards #13
Ravel: Ondine from Gaspard de la Nuit

good luck to you

lol me too....new england or mid atlantic?

[pianoman98]

Yes this is my first time entering MTNA. Last year I only went to the statewide competition, though I got first I'm guessing this isn't your first time

[david456103]

@yohan: im in the mid atlantic region. how about you? what are you playing?

[yohankwon]

new england...1st movt of mozart k 570 and then the complete chopin 2nd sonata O_O

[david456103]

the complete 2nd sonata? very impressive!

[yohankwon]

the complete 2nd sonata? very impressive!

Thank you! So is ondine and the waldstein

[david456103]

state competition in less than two weeks!

[yohankwon]

.....sunday

[david456103]

oh, yours is much earlier than mines then. let us know how you do! best wishes

[yohankwon]

oh, yours is much earlier than mines then. let us know how you do! best wishes

I played really well, but

1) there was ONLY ONE JUDGE, which is not right. There should have been at least three

2) Judge was too stupid to not know how hard the chopin sonata is, and it seems like she didn't like my playing

[david456103]

only 1 judge??? in my state i've never seen less than 4!
you don't know she didnt like ur chopin sonata! judges rarely show the true way they feel. and if she was a judge, she'd probably know how hard the whole thing is. did you get your comments back? and did you place?

[yohankwon]

no prize, which I find completely bullshit. There were 6 competitors; a good friend of mine and I were at the bottom.

I'm getting the comments in the mail

The performance will be on youtube shortly (unlisted)

[yohankwon]

[kalirren]

What's completely bullshit about no prize being awarded?  If none of the competitors deserve it, why should a prize be awarded?

My comments on your recordings follow:

Mozart 1: There is none of the charming quality of a rococo sonata present in this interpretation.  You rush through rests, you don't let harmonies clear from the hall after large, strong chords, and the sixteenth notes sound far, far too brilliant.  Think orchestrally - the sixteenth notes are just little harmonically supportive twiddles on the violins - it's the violas who are busy hamming it up, relishing the one chance they'll ever have to play the melody.

A good performance of this sonata should be able to draw the audience in, as if the hall you were playing in was a small room.  In Mozart's day, 150 attendees was a smash hit concert.  Instead, you push the audience away with the radiance of your sound.  The touch you've chosen would be more suitable to the fast movements of the Ravel piano concerto in G.  It's not appropriate here.

Chopin 1:  Don't know this work as well so I'll be less judgmental.  I'm concerned for your cantabile texture not being lyrical enough.

Chopin Scherzo:  Why is it always so loud?  You are clearly capable of playing softly well, and you show that in certain parts, but in between those parts, you become uncontrolledly loud.  If you were to find more places where you don't need to be loud, and take those opportunities to come down more, it might benefit the contrast.

Can't help but notice a lack of LH lyricism in the middle section of the trio.

Chopin 3: Dotted rhythm != triplet.  LH voicing is missing in the opening - LH chords could be significantly "darker". You're failing to exploit the open fifth.

Forte means strong, not loud!  Similarly, piano means soft, not quiet.  The difference is in balance between outer voices and inner voices.  Especially when you see first forte then crescendo, pay special attention to the potential of each voice to grow and don't start too loud.  You'll kill a listener's patience for your sound if you try to crescendo from forte to fortissimo with imbalanced voicing.

Cantabile in this middle section is better than that in the 1st movement.  It's also easier.  Try isolating the difficulty in the first movement - I suspect it may have to do with multiple voices in the hand that needs to be cantabile.

Chopin Finale: Unfortunately, the echos of the hall were not friendly to your pedal-heavy interpretation.  All the runs needed to be clearer.

[yohankwon]

I know those are just your opinions, but....

K.570 Can you be more specific about the rests "rushing"? Which section are you talking about? And also, do you play an orchestral instrument by any chance? I do and I know what I'm doing (which might not appear in this video). I even played it on my violin while experimenting.

And this wasn't the kind of competition you'd expect...only the 1 judge and about two or three people..

1st mvt: Cantabile? Do you mean the 2nd theme in Db Major? If so, it's the piano. Here's another recording at a studio-->

It's no big deal if you don't like it.


3rd mvt: no, those were definitely not triplets. Count in your head 1-2-3-4 per quarter note. The LH should not be heard the most in the opening, it should be the RH because it has the melody.

I find your forte=strong and piano=soft debatable...

2nd and 4th mvts...I'm not gonna bother about your comments because I know what to do.

[dima_76557]

I played really well, but

Yohan,

First I'd like to say that you are a good pianist.

I do want to ask you to define a couple of things:

- What did you want to say with the Mozart? How do you feel that piece?
- What did you want to say with the Chopin? How do you feel that piece?

While admitting that YouTube video clips are too poor as a medium to actually transmit anything deeper than superficial visual and audio impulses, I don't feel the cultural and emotional connection enough between what I expect and what you play.

Nobody at a competition is really interested in
- how difficult the pieces are you play or
- whether you miss or don't miss certain notes occasionally;
- how loud, how soft, how fast, etc. you can play, and whether you do that in exactly the right places;
- how you look, move, etc. while playing etc.

You have to tell people something in their own "language" with their "idioms" so to speak. That's what earns you a first prize in a competition, and nothing else. Instead of blaming the judge, think of what went wrong in the communication. Why didn't she "understand" you? ("didn't like" is your impression, but I cannot believe that to be true). The answer to those questions will greatly boost your development.

EDIT: I also miss the psychological pressure you are supposed to put upon the audience: "Here I am, and I have something to say. Take it or leave it." Trying to meet all of somebody else's expectations in all respects is your enemy in art. This is something all good artists in any field realize. This attitude is necessary to avoid the listener getting the impression that you are merely citing "a learned lesson" up to known standards.

Good luck!

[kalirren]

Can you be more specific about the rests "rushing"? Which section are you talking about?

The parts I was most disliking were any time when you had two-staccato-chord cadences.  The echo-decay is so long in that competition hall that the reverberation from the second chord effectively shrinks the rest on the third beat of the measure, so much so that when you came in on time for the first beat of the following measure, it actually sounds as if you had been truncating the rest and coming in early, because we have not heard one full beat of rest.  This typically wouldn't be jarring, except that you were already playing very close to the maximum speed allowed by the hall's acoustics, if not above it.

The most obvious example of this is when you had this rhythmic figure twice in a row in the transition from exposition to development, one measure F major, one measure Ab7 over Gb, then arrival at Db.  You took extra time before arriving at the Db, and this is very effective.  This might be the only quarter rest of this type that a listener in that hall would have heard at its full value.

Interesting, I listened through these again on a different audio setup and the reverberations weren't anywhere near as bad, so I may have to retract this comment.  If what I was hearing was due to bad playback management and not the hall, then it's all my fault, and none yours  :-)

And also, do you play an orchestral instrument by any chance? I do and I know what I'm doing (which might not appear in this video). I even played it on my violin while experimenting.

I play the violin as well.  I think if the hall had been smaller, and its acoustic more agile, the brightness of your performance would have been an asset rather than a liability.

Cantabile? Do you mean the 2nd theme in Db Major? If so it's the piano.

Yes.  I see it's not marked cantabile in the score, though it may as well be.  Are you being diligent about finger legato?

Thanks for including the other recording.  I felt that you played the 1st movement much better in the studio recording than in the competition.  The balance and volume management are both superior.  A piano (especially one as out-of-tune as the competition piano!) can throw me off like that too.

The LH should not be heard the most in the opening, it should be the RH because it has the melody.

Yes, I agree.  But still the LH ought to be properly voiced to support the melody in the RH.  Otherwise the whole assemblage sounds a bit disjoint.

[david456103]

@yohan: how many prize winners were there(1st place, alternate, HM)?
my state competition is in less than a week...so nervous!

[faulty_damper]

I was only able to listen to the Mozart B-flat and the other vid of the Chopin.  The other two links were listed as "private".  Anyway, I can hear why you didn't win because there were a lot of musical issues.  It didn't seem like you had much control of tone and there were musical idiosyncrasies that were the result of technical issues or emoting ones which prevented you from hearing what you actually sounded like.

[dima_76557]

my state competition is in less than a week...so nervous!

If you want to avoid getting nervous, don't participate in "difficulty rankings" here on the forum, and play what you play as a LEADER, not as a follower, waiting to get punished any second for doing something not as expected.

A leader is what they're looking for in the pianist; a person who can lead other people to far-away places. If you are a leader, all of the above mentioned by all participants will take care of itself. You will sound confident, "charismatic", and nobody will have to tell you that silence is just as important in a speech as sound, and that you need good rhythm and the right timing to get your message across.

[david456103]

^i completely agree ! 

[dima_76557]

^i completely agree !  

I'm glad you do, and hope that you do so at the necessary level.

A competiton consists of three groups of participants:
1) meaningless noise managers - they are the majority, and they are the ones that generally make competitions into such a disgusting event.
2) meaningful sound managers - they will be filtered out and if they're good, they may even get into the finales. They will, however, never win first prize if they don't have anything else.
3) leaders - people who have the qualities from category 2, but who also have a personal vision that cannot be tampered with, and their goal is to share that vision. They are the winners, even if the jury does not agree with their artistic "opinion".

[yohankwon]

@yohan: how many prize winners were there(1st place, alternate, HM)?
my state competition is in less than a week...so nervous!

winner, alternate, two HM

and let me know how many competitors are there

[david456103]

i just had my state competition...results come out in around 4 hours..! so anxious...