Mozart sonatas - practicing evenness & trills

[hardy_practice]

I'll post some other bits soon.  It requires a supreme relaxed approach - kind of mechanically thoughtful (whatever that means).

An exercise:

- feel your RH little pinky relaxed all the time.  In fact concentrate on that more than anything else.

[gr8ape]

Ugh right hand pinky has been pissing me off recently, so much unwanted movement

The runs without trills I can do though, I have to work a bit to even them out but they are starting to come together so I am not limited by these, and recently I have been playing it and I am getting the relaxed flying fingers kinda feel, which feels nice

[hardy_practice]

In the semiquaver passages the keys should hardly go down.

[cwjalex]

playing that long of a trill is okay at slower tempos but if you try that at around 120 BPM it is very difficult.  if you have the technique to be able to do that then kudos to you.  also when you have the piece learned if you could post a video of it i would love to hear it.

[gr8ape]

In the semiquaver passages the keys should hardly go down.

except when im playing forte? haha
but i see what you mean, i feel I play best when i dont feel like "pushing down" on the keys, more flying over them

[cwjalex]

Sorry about that.  I just did this for you:

 Is that any help?  I may learn it myself.

this is the way i played in the first example of my video?  you guys think this sounds good when played at tempo?  i purposely played it slowly and then had my keyboard play it faster so i couldn't be accused of not playing it well.

isn't the first example in this one the same as the way hardy doing it?  maybe i missed it but i didn't see you guys address this.  or maybe when hardy said it was too fast he was referring to this video?

[ Invalid YouTube link ]

[hardy_practice]

playing that long of a trill is okay at slower tempos but if you try that at around 120 BPM it is very difficult.  

As I said before - it's maestoso.  Also, your mechanically speeded up trill won't sound right  - the fingers will speed up with their own 'conformation' as Chopin put it.

[cwjalex]

As I said before - it's maestoso.  Also, your mechanically speeded up trill won't sound right  - the fingers will speed up with their own 'conformation' as Chopin put it.

i don't understand how the speeded up one wont sound identical to the slower one, just sped up. i have recorded hundreds of things at a very slow speed and then sped them up to tempo.  they have always sounded exactly the same as they did at the slow speed, just faster.  also, you're saying it's too fast?  that's similar to the speed most professionals play at.

[gr8ape]

indeed same thing

as you said though, almost impossible (and dumb too) to try and snap that to 120bpm!

[cwjalex]

most of the professionals i hear recordings of sound like they start on the bottom note and do 2 turns

[gr8ape]

2 turns ? like gagf#gagf#c ?
weird, thought it was just one in what I heard

[cwjalex]

2 turns ? like gagf#gagf#c ?
weird, thought it was just one in what I heard

there was just one in most spots in my full recording of the piece but i'm talking about the 2nd example of the video i just posted. when i play it in the recital i'm goign to play with 2 turns with gagf#gagf#c i just didn't have it down when i wanted to record it.  hardy says it's won't sound right when sped up but the 2 turns sounds good (in my opinion) when sped up.

btw, does ur sheet music have a bpm indication?  mine says 116 although most recordings i hear are anywhere between 116-130 except for glenn goulds which i clocked in at 180, no joke lol

[gr8ape]

lol 180 thats wayyy to fast....but whatever Gould

Honestly maybe there is but I haven't paid attention to that, ill play it how I feel it. Ill start by then to 100 and go from there. I have the schirmer (epstein) edition ill check it out tonight

edit: Im listening to Gould's interpretation right now.......thats just stupid, some well executed ideas but still stupid imo

[cwjalex]

you should check out gould's version just for comedic value.  it's like when you have a keyboard that has built in songs and you increase the speed more and more until it is at an obscene speed yet still technically perfect.  in the beginning a part of it actually made me laugh out loud, which doesn't happen very often. the part where he rolls the chord with his right hand.  sounds so funny, like a BLEH.  or something hehe. (30 seconds in)

[gr8ape]

its lol-tastic

[gr8ape]

lol there is NO reason except mannerism to finish on piano rather forte !!! whyyyyyyyyyyy

[cwjalex]

wow i never listened to the end.  that's nuts.  it seems like he's just being defiant on purpose, i would like to hear a musical rationale for that choice.

i've tried to play along to that piece before and my hands start to burn after about 30 seconds in.  what a technical monster.  i hate many of his interpretations though.

[gr8ape]

he does the same thing at the end of the 3 "sections" of the first movement

yeah its like he has really good ideas sometimes and makes some voices stand out really well, but most of the time its just like "what are you doing"

this one is my favorite up to now

[cwjalex]

barenboim is another technical monster

i like this one even though it's a little slow

to be honest i like most of them.  i really don't have an educated ear.  it's not like i have a bad ear cause i can figure things out and hear the notes in chords, i just can't differentiate many of these pros.  they all sound good to me.

[cwjalex]

by the way what's your favorite part in the first movement?  mine is after the 2nd section when the left hand plays this apreggiated thing and right hand does a trill then it switches and the right hand plays the arpeggiated thing and the left hand trills (real technical description huh?).  love that part and it's so fun to play.

[gr8ape]

for me sometimes Im pretty picky on the interpretations. For example I listened to rubinstein's Heroic Polonaise once and I thought it was sh*t, probably because I got used to lang-lang's and horowitz's tough.

but im sure you can detect all these pro's "style", at least I hear it for the ones I listened to alot

favorite part?
 the whole first movement is incredible in my opinion, maybe I like the second part's C major runs a little bit less because I find they are somewhat less original, however its a blast to play! for the alternating trill/arp <-> arp/trill i know exactly what you mean haha, I am learning it HT right now.

[cwjalex]

in that section for some reason when the left hand does the trill it's the easiest trill in the whole sonata for me and i comfortably do two turns in it.  do you find that particular trill easy or is it just me?

[gr8ape]

its a fun part because of the octaves after the trills I find

real dramatic like
drrrrrum tu-TUNNN
drrrrrum tu-TUNNN
drrrrrum tu-TUNNN!!

lol


my left hand trills are bad at the moment so I cant really comment on that but that particular trill progressed much faster than the right hand trill so I can see why you say that. There might be something inherently easy of trilling on a black-note / white semitone with 1-3 (im guessing you do 1-3-1-3-1-2-3-2-1, at least thats how im learning it)

[cwjalex]

yeah i think you're right about the black note to white not trill

[gr8ape]

Thought about it and I believe that Gould interpretation is sped up. It is almost impossible and distasteful to this....

[cwjalex]

Thought about it and I believe that Gould interpretation is sped up. It is almost impossible and distasteful to this....

what makes you think it is sped up?

[hardy_practice]

Whatever trill you do, the LH last semiquaver (finger 2) must coincide with the first of the two demisemiquavers.  I draw lines to show.  None of the 'pros' do this.  Can cwjalex achieve this with his speedy up thingy without using my trill?  That would be useful.

[cwjalex]

Whatever trill you do, the LH last semiquaver (finger 2) must coincide with the first of the two demisemiquavers.  I draw lines to show.  None of the 'pros' do this.  Can cwjalex achieve this with his speedy up thingy without using my trill?  That would be useful.

when i get out of bed i'll check.  when i was in 5th-8th grade i was in national spelling bees (hated them) and one of the words was demisemiquaver.  i never thought in my entire life would i ever see someone use that word.  lol kudos to u

[gr8ape]

what makes you think it is sped up?

gut feeling (plus youtube)

[cwjalex]

gut feeling (plus youtube)

I think it's real.  Gould is notorious for playing things insanely fast or insanely slow and I also heard some technical mistakes that I don't think he would have made if he were playing slowly.  If it were sped up I think someone who knows exactly where the recording is from would point out the tempo is different than it's supposed to be.  I read through all the comments and nobody has mentioned the possibility of manipulation.  Of course I could be wrong and the video really is sped up.

[gr8ape]

perhaps you are right

still surprising...I kinda think less of gould because of that single recording hahaha

[cwjalex]

perhaps you are right

still surprising...I kinda think less of gould because of that single recording hahaha

yeah.  he's a great pianist but i don't like a few of his interpretations.  have you heard him play the 3rd movement of moonlight sonata?  ick.

[markh13]

For this sonata, I would start hands separately, and slow (on the metronome, as you're doing), and then slowly increase the tempo, as far as is comfortable and maintains accuracy and evenness.

With regard to playing evenly, one of the best techniques is (rather counter intuitively) to deliberately play unevenly. By this I mean taking short sections (e.g. 2-3 bars) hands separate and then rather than playing every note as a semi quaver (16th note), play note 1 as a dotted semi quaver, note 2 as a demi semi quaver, note 3 as a dotted semi quaver, note 4 as a demi semi quaver, etc.

Then you reverse the order: note 1 demi semi, note 2 dotted semi, etc.

You can keep extending this - for example: notes 1/2 semi quavers, notes 3/4 quavers (eighth notes), notes 5/6 semi quavers, notes 7/8 quavers, etc. Then reverse the order: notes 1/2 quavers, notes 3/4 semi quavers.

This is an excellent way of developing finger memory, but also of making the passage work much more even. And also good fun (or perhaps that's just me!).

And finally, as a poster above said, if there's unevenness, it probably comes from excess tension somewhere, probably in the forearms...

I hope that helps.

[gr8ape]

Yes I used this trick a bit for the runs, I think it helped, I should give it another go for extra work.
The trills are started to come in, I can do them almost cleanly @ 60bpm (in the whole passage, not just individually), so now its just speeding it up.
Now Im kinda stuck at another passage :/ (not stuck but I didnt get it first shot)
The one that starts with the B major chord sixth, with the semitone alberti-esque left hand, going through a bunch of of diminished chords. (then goes on to repeat the passage in "e major" then "a major")
The fingering for this is super-akward in my edition, i think its the hardest, or weirdest passage at least

[hardy_practice]

Don't worry about making the dotted tune legato.  Mozart doesn't mark it so and the long notes hold a legato for you.  The Schirmer edition fingering seems OK.

[gr8ape]

Should pedal be used in that part? Even if its not legato, its quite akward to actually hold the top and bottom note for a half-bar

[hardy_practice]

Pedaling half of beat 1 and 3 sounds nice.

[gr8ape]

When the bass note plays? That's what I am doing instinctively too

[hardy_practice]

In this era it was known as the loud pedal.  I've leaved through and I do believe this is the first time Mozart has used FF in a sonata so I certainly think it calls for it.

[j_menz]

In this era it was known as the loud pedal.  I've leaved through and I do believe this is the first time Mozart has used FF in a sonata so I certainly think it calls for it.

Do you have some authority that Mozart actually ever used a pedal?

K310 was written in 1778, the year after Mozart became acquainted with the fortepiano maker JA Stein. Stein's fortepianos used a knee lever, not a pedal, though Mozart is on record as approving of them greatly (though when he bought a new piano next it was not from Stein but Anton Waller).

Pianos in England (Broadwood most notably) used a pedal, but there seems to be little evidence that it became a feature of pianos in Vienna until rather later. Indeed Beethoven appears to have used pianos with a lever early on in his composing career.

[hardy_practice]

 Sheesh.    Notice I said Mozart era!  It was not published till 1782.  I'll bet - dimes to dougnuts - Mozart added the FF then.  You do know it was composed in Paris?  An interesting quote 'There are several indications that
Mozart made a great effort to compose K. 310 in a style which worked
well on the English pianos and would be attractive to Parisian pianists.'  Paper attached.

[j_menz]

Perhaps you might have found it useful to read the whole article.

It is thus very likely that Mozart on most occasions played on an English
square piano.19 Baron Grimm, who was an avid supporter of German music
in Paris, and who was one of Mozart’s main contacts there, owned a square piano made by Johannes Pohlman in London in 1771. Since Mozart stayed
at his house after his mother passed away, this piano would have been
close at hand when he composed Sonata K. 310. Furthermore, Mozart
would have been aware that the amateurs who were to buy his sonatas
would play them on a similar square piano.

Ironically, you miss the significance of the word "square" for the period.

Here is a Pohlman square piano from a few years later.  Note that it uses levers. They are not the knee levers of the Stein fortepiano to which I referred, they are the earlier hand levers, dating from prototypes by Cristofiori and developed by Silbermann. They had the significant disadvantage of not being able to be engaged or disengages unless you had a free hand - one of the reasons Mozart preferred the  Stein model.

You appear to have also missed..

The square piano....did not offer a wide range of dynamics

Perhaps you might like to reconsider your opinions regarding the FF in that light.

Sheesh.   

Indeed.

[hardy_practice]

Not quite sure where I said Mozart was playing it with pedal in 1778.  As it wasn't published till 1782, as I stated earlier, my guess would be he added the FF and used pedal then.  I'll say again - in Mozart's era it was known as the loud pedal - you'd need it for FF.  double sheesh

[j_menz]

Not quite sure where I said Mozart was playing it with pedal in 1778.  As it wasn't published till 1782, as I stated earlier, my guess would be he added the FF and used pedal then.

You still haven't established that Mozart ever used a pedal, which was my point The article you cites doesn't. Is that your best case?

I'll say again - in Mozart's era it was known as the loud pedal

An authority for that? It's been called that by the uneducated for quite some time, but I don't recall it's forebears (knee lever/switch) being referred to by that term, or it being called that in any literature from the classical period.

[hardy_practice]

You still haven't established that Mozart ever used a pedal,

Can't be done either way mate.  There's proof he did at Stein's, and loved it.

 from Badura-Skoda:

Thus it is not so easy to re-create on a modern piano the full differentiation
of tone of a Mozart piano, and perhaps this is the main reason why many
pianists recommend the avoidance of the pedal in playing his music. But all
eighteenth-century fortepianos had a knee-lever, which had exactly the same
function as the present-day sustaining pedal, and which Mozart very much
appreciated. We know of his letter from Augsburg to his father ( 1 7th October
1777), in which he praises the efficiency of this mechanism in Stein's pianos:

'The last [Sonata], in D, 12 sounds exquisite on Stein's pianoforte. The device
too which you work with your knee is better on his than on other instruments.
I have only to touch it and it works; and when you shift your knee the
slightest bit, you do not hear the least reverberation. '

The use of the knee-lever, i.e. the lifting of the dampers, gave a richer and
more satisfying tone even to the Mozart piano. When it is said that the pedal
should not be used in playing Mozart

because Mozart never reckoned on this pedal as a regular adjunct, and
regarded its use, at most, as a rare exception, a quite special effect this must be contradicted. It is very improbable that Mozart was sparing in
his use of the tonal possibilities of the right knee-lever. 14 There are passages
in his piano works which in fact rely on a pedal effect — for example, the
very beginning of the D minor Fantasia (K.397), or bar 46 of the Fantasia
from the G major Fantasia and Fugue (K.394) :

There are many cantabile passages which can be played much more expres-
sively and effectively with the aid of the pedal (Piano Sonata in A major
(K.331), first movement, variation IV, bar 3) : The piano solo at bar 40 of the Romanze from the D minor Piano Concerto, too, would sound very meagre if the pedal were completely avoided.

Why should Mozart, the unchallenged master at exploiting all the timbres
and tonal possibilities of his instruments (think of the wonderful soft trumpet
solo in the first Finale of Don Giovanni, the treatment of the clarinet in the
Trio K.498 or the Clarinet Concerto, or the Wind Serenade K.361) — why
should he not have used a mechanism about which he wrote so enthusiastic-
ally ? Unfortunately, this opinion is very widespread, though the only possible
argument in its favour is that — if we had to choose between two extremes —
a performance of Mozart's music would be more tolerable when played
without pedal than when overpedalled. Naturally, the use of the pedal must
in no way be allowed to mar the clarity of performance, and one should
expressly warn against excessive pedalling. Even with the dampers raised,
the pianos of Mozart's time sounded much more translucent than those of the
present day.

An authority for that? It's been called that by the uneducated for quite some time, but I don't recall it's forebears (knee lever/switch) being referred to by that term, or it being called that in any literature from the classical period.

LOUD pedal - kind of answers itself don't you think?  Cause that's indeed what it does and did in the 18th century.   And where do I say 'called'?  Speak the Queen's English, please!

edit: just found this interesting tidbit - from a review of David Rowland's book on the History of pedaling:
Having traced the development of early pedaling by schools, Rowland tries
to discover how individual "first-generation" pianist-composers, writing be-
fore the advent of indications, might have used tone-modifying devices. He
starts with a specific clue, Mozart's enthusiastic endorsement of the knee
lever on Stein's pianos, and goes through Mozart's music like a detective,
searching for unusual textures suggestive of raised dampers. In the end he
becomes convinced that Mozart's use of raised dampers was well ahead of
most of his contemporaries and that he might have "considered" using the
raised dampers to enrich the tone even where simple harmonic accompani-
ments lie within the grasp of the hand.

[cwjalex]

hey grape which trill are u using?  if you are doing the G-A-G-A-G-F#-G-C i've been doing a different fingering that has made it easier for me.  i use 1-2-1-4-3-2-3-5 it almost makes it not like a trill but for me this is easier. 

[j_menz]

LOUD pedal - kind of answers itself don't you think?  Cause that's indeed what it does and did in the 18th century.   And where do I say 'called'?  Speak the Queen's English, please!

How would it be known as a loud pedal if nobody called it that. If you're going to try pedantry, first make sure you are correct. "Calling" something something is perfectly good English.

And no, it really doesn't answer itself. Just because you have heard the term used today does not mean it was in use over 200 years ago for a different device.

And you still have said nothing about the existence of a pedal.

I made the point because the tone altering devices in use by Mozart and his intended market operated differently and on should consider both the tonal qualities they achieved but also by the ease/speed by which they could be engaged and disengaged.

This is relevant if one is aiming for something of an "authentic performance".  That is to say a performance consistent with the likely results of it being played when newly minted.

If you are less concerned about such things and happily play it as if written for and using all the tools available on a modern piano then those considerations disappear.

[cwjalex]

my piano teacher told me that mozart didn't use a pedal for this piece and that i don't need to use one for it.  there is one part of this piece that i do use the pedal and it's only for a second.  it's the part towards the end when you play the two A's with the left hand and play the C and A back and forth on the right hand.  i do this so the two A's on the left hand doesn't end abruptly.  my teacher was okay with this.  i can't really think of any other part of this first movement where i would even think about using the pedal. 

[j_menz]

my piano teacher told me that mozart didn't use a pedal for this piece and that i don't need to use one for it.  there is one part of this piece that i do use the pedal and it's only for a second.  it's the part towards the end when you play the two A's with the left hand and play the C and A back and forth on the right hand.  i do this so the two A's on the left hand doesn't end abruptly.  my teacher was okay with this.  i can't really think of any other part of this first movement where i would even think about using the pedal. 

He did almost certainly use a knee lever, though. Not quite as flexible as a piano (not as quich to lift on or off), and the pianos of the day did not have the sustain power of a modern piano. A more authentic effect would be to use a light half pedal, and you may find it can be used more extensively.

[hardy_practice]

'The last [Sonata], in D, 12 sounds exquisite on Stein's pianoforte. The device
too which you work with your knee is better on his than on other instruments.
I have only to touch it and it works; and when you shift your knee the
slightest bit, you do not hear the least reverberation. '

In that case cwjalexk, maybe you should get a teacher of the calibre of Badura-Skoda.