Petrouchka

[sw5595]

I’ve been thinking about a program for a recital of Russian music this spring that looks something like this: Trois mouvements de Petrouchka, Corelli variations (or something else by Rachmaninoff), Scriabin piece (undecided, perhaps Poème tragique), and some Medtner Skazki

My question is if youve played Petrouchka, how long does it generally take to learn (practicing ~4 hrs a day), and does this program look manageable to learn and prepare for recital in 7 months? Might have to cut out something else in the program or replace Petrouchka with a smaller/easier piece (Im additionally working on a mostly separate set of repertoire for juries)

[cimirro]

I’ve been thinking about a program for a recital of Russian music this spring that looks something like this: Trois mouvements de Petrouchka, Corelli variations (or something else by Rachmaninoff), Scriabin piece (undecided, perhaps Poème tragique), and some Medtner Skazki

My question is if youve played Petrouchka, how long does it generally take to learn (practicing ~4 hrs a day), and does this program look manageable to learn and prepare for recital in 7 months? Might have to cut out something else in the program or replace Petrouchka with a smaller/easier piece (Im additionally working on a mostly separate set of repertoire for juries)

Answering this is impossible since no one can be sure of what would be your difficulties learning this.
and practicing 4 hours a day means nothing if you do not use your study time correctly, so how can someone meassure the quality of your study?

I have played this piece since 2002, So this is easy to me to play such program at any time
it is among the most difficult pieces of piano repertoire and it is not a very "pianistic" transcription in several places; So it is full of "strange" techniques if you have not played any orchestral transcription of Stravinsky before.
Maybe you can learn in 7 months, maybe not. You will never know if you do not try, no one can answer this for you.

All the best
Artur Cimirro

[visitor]

unless you have a track record of being able to work up such a demanding program alongside other commitments, I would say it's a recipe for disaster. This would be quite the feat even for a pianist focusing only on this and with experience programming music of this nature in such a short amount of time.

at a 7 month timeline, you essentially saying that while you work on other lit, you will have the program ready in less than 6 months *since usually you want to be 'performance' ready about 6-8 weeks out so you can let the music settle into itself and the focus on practicing the performance and dong the entire recital since that last 1-2 months you really are not working on the pieces and doing all that much individual piece work, it becomes broader in scope and getting yourself accustomed to playing the entire program start to finish and you'll likely need to focus on scheduling mock or pre performances for other students, various small venues in  public etc. 

the above is independent of the remarks by previous reply that states it is some of the most demanding and notoriously difficult (to perform/play) work in the literature.

I would say if this is a 'side project' give yourself closer to 12 months and don't get married to that idea/be open to postponing as needed/your prep allows and dictates