Help! I need advice on what to play for an audition!!!

[chopinetta]

I'm going to college this June and there's going to be an audition for college scholarship (any performaing arts course) on Feb. 26, 2005. the requirements for audition (for piano) say that i need to play 1st and 3rd movt. of a mozart/beethoven sonata or chopin/schumann piece or any of bach's 2-part invention. i don't like to play bach...

i can play mozart's sonata in D major K576, chopin's waltz in E minor (op. posthumous), waltz no2 op64... and i think i can cram (hopefully, and i cry to all the existing gods) the revolutionary etude within the time frame... hehehehe..

which one should i play??

[chopinetta]

and also.. can you give me some tips on playing whatever you advice me to play??? 

thanks

[chopinetta]

uhm... can i put pedal on my mozart?

[SteinwayTony]

I'm going to college this June and there's going to be an audition for college scholarship (any performaing arts course) on Feb. 26, 2005. the requirements for audition (for piano) say that i need to play 1st and 3rd movt. of a mozart/beethoven sonata or chopin/schumann piece or any of bach's 2-part invention. i don't like to play bach...

i can play mozart's sonata in D major K576, chopin's waltz in E minor (op. posthumous), waltz no2 op64... and i think i can cram (hopefully, and i cry to all the existing gods) the revolutionary etude within the time frame... hehehehe..

which one should i play??

Others may disagree with me, but I think that at this point, with a little less than two months until your audition, you should be mainly polishing (and, if you haven't already, memorizing) by now.  Which rules out the Etude.  You may think it will be fast and virtuoso and impressive, but trust me, if your judges do their job, they will see right through it. 

I need some clarification on your audition.  It looks as if you can play the first and last movements of a Mozart or Beethoven sonata, OR a Chopin or Schumann piece, OR a Bach two-part Invention.  That's a pretty wide range of options if I understand it correctly.  The Bach Invention will last about 2 minutes, whereas the Sonata might take up to 15! 

If you really have a choice between these, I promise you will impress your judges with a solid interpretation and performance of Mozart.  And by solid interpretation I mean keep pedal to an absolute minimum, because the composer did not intend for pedaling in his piano music.

So, maybe you could clear up the competition requirements a little bit for me?

[Rach3]

Others may disagree with me, but I think that at this point, with a little less than two months until your audition, you should be mainly polishing (and, if you haven't already, memorizing) by now.  Which rules out the Etude.

Oh-oh!  I was doing the same thing with Liszt's Transcendental no. 8, started last month and preparing it for february editions... sort of a last-minute tack-on... this is a bad idea?

[Goldberg]

Depends on how quickly you can learn pieces. 2 months for anything would be an impossibility with me, being an extremely ineffecient student. But if you're like most people on the boards who seem to be able to "learn the notes" to just about anything within a day or two and play it up to speed in a week, then perfect it the week later--and you probably are--then it's no biggie.

[SteinwayTony]

Oh-oh!  I was doing the same thing with Liszt's Transcendental no. 8, started last month and preparing it for february editions... sort of a last-minute tack-on... this is a bad idea?

Well I hate to preach my method lest I steer someone down the wrong path.  I've experimented and discovered (the hard way) which method works best for me, and that is to learn the notes and memorize a new piece all in about two weeks (I'm fortunate to be a strong sight-reader), and to use the rest of my time, however much that might be, to make it "musical."  Of course that's just about the most subjective term in the world, but you know what I mean -- make the notes DO something, not just kind of float around as the pages turn. 

Now, if it takes you longer to learn notes, which is fine, you should ensure you still have enough time to memorize and polish.  But whatever your skill level, if you're preparing for a recital or competition or audition, practice PERFORMING the piece in front of an audience.  I just can't stress this enough.  Especially if you're "tacking" something on, play it for your friends, peers, parents, teachers, or random people standing around the practice rooms.  The more you perform a piece, the better it feels, and the last thing you want is to give an audition panel a first performance of a Liszt etude! 

Best of luck to you.

[Rach3]

Thanks SteinwayTony, actually your methodology sounds very similar to mine. The faster I memorize it, the sooner I can start working on it without a score, hence actually bringing it up to speed, getting the 'physical' feel of it around my fingers, etc., as well as actually 'hearing' it. As for 'performance conditions' beforehand, i'll probably be showing it off quite a bit, and with any luck I'll have a full recital sometime in February anyway...

-Rach3 ...8 weeks till auditons

[dinosaurtales]

uhm... can i put pedal on my mozart?

My teacher says (mostly) NO.  She says pedal is just used for ocassional effect.  Trouble is, if you decide toi use it at all, the odds are you'll use it too much.  So I am learning it without the pedal, and may add it after the fact.  (If I ever learn the darned thing that is!)

[Rach3]

Well with Mozart it always helps technique-wise to learn and practice without pedal... makes things cleaner and more thought-through.

I once head a lesson with a (quite famous) teacher who basically held the pedal over every single harmony in Mozart's K333... it was interesting...

[galonia]

i can play mozart's sonata in D major K576, chopin's waltz in E minor (op. posthumous), waltz no2 op64... and i think i can cram (hopefully, and i cry to all the existing gods) the revolutionary etude within the time frame... hehehehe..

which one should i play??

If you can truly play this Mozart, then that would be very impressive - it's a very difficult piece, and if you know it well and can pull it off, I can't see how anyone would not be impressed.

I played this sonata and it's a late one of Mozart's, and the evidence is that the early pianos did have the sustain pedal, and that Mozart did use it (although it was operated by the knee) - however, I've always been taught that it is best to pedal sparingly in Mozart.  I often use it to colour cadences, and definitely keep it as clear as possible.  I don't even put the pedal all the way down, just enough so that the dampers lift a little bit, to make sure the music never gets too thick.

[galonia]

Oh, I just read your post in the "Pieces that Scare You" topic, and if you aren't prepared to put in the work for the K576, then play something else, coz if this piece goes wrong, it goes really wrong... 

[chopinetta]

ugh... guilty of that crime! actually, i'm so stupid i chose K576 as my first sonata... but what can i do... i'll just have to clean this thing. and i don't think there are other people who are really great pianists in Cebu (except my bestfriend) who we'll have a hard itme contending with.

the scholarship is only offered to graduating highschool students of cebu. cebu is a very small place, thank God. i know the most renowned piano teacher here, and she doesn't have any other senior year student aside from my bestfriend. so i think i have some chances...

my friend is going to play fantasie-impromptu... i think i'll have the mozart. have you heard the K576 recording by Konstantin Lapshin in www.classicalarchives.com ? i think he put pedal on it...

i tried putting pedal but it sounded bad and seemed that i'm just hiding mistakes through the pedal.

what should i do?

[janice]

My advice is to do exactly what DinosaurTales does.  First, learn it without the pedal.  THEN add it sporadically, after having learned it without the pedal.  It doesn't matter how awful it sounds without pedal, do it anyway.  And do it for a VERY long time.  Personally, I would only begin to add the pedal when you are very close to performance day.

[galonia]

Yes, I can't offer much advice about pedalling apart from saying keep it all nice and clear in Mozart.

I seem to have the opposite problem to everyone else - I tend to pedal too little in everything I play.  So my teacher has no problem with me overdoing it occasionally (she finds it a nice change to say - "do less of this" - instead of her usual - "can you please do this")

[SteveK]

uhm... can i put pedal on my mozart?

Just a little. You may use the pedal only for color. Just be careful that you don't put too much weight on the pedal.

Take care!
Stephen.

[chopinetta]

thank y'all!!! i'll practice hard! --that i don't usually do. but i'll do it anyway!