Licentiate: London Trinity - too narrow?

[leon1685]

Hi, everyone - After a decade since my last exam, and purely for the challenge at 40 years old, I've been thinking of taking the London Trinity Licentiate exam. From what I'm reading, people try to present a varied programme of composers and, often, eras; but I'm also minded of playing what I want to play to convey what the music means to me. Can I, then, stick to one, or two, composers or would that be too narrow? I'm particularly keen on counterpoint. I'd like to play Bach and Shostokovich, or just Bach alone.

Proposed 1:

Bach/D'Albert, Prelude and Fugue in F minor, BWV 534
Bach/D'Albert, Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582
Shostakovich, Aphorisms, op 13: 10: Lullaby
Shostakovich, Prelude and Fugue in D minor, op 87: 24

Proposed 2: As before, but replacing Shostakovich with:
Bach, Toccata in D minor, BWV 913
Bach, Contrapunctus XII, BWV 1080.

Could I get away with this, or would an examiner be crying out for a Chopin nocturne or Rachmaninov etude-tableux, etc?

Many thanks 

[thorn]

A 'balanced/varied' programme is most often interpreted as one piece from each era, but I know a few people who have interpreted it in other ways. That being said you'd probably have trouble convincing an examiner that a programme dominated by minor key counterpoint is balanced...

I have a friend who is most at home with Baroque music and her program was a) a Bach P+F paired with a Shostakovich P+F, and b) 2 Scarlatti Sonatas paired with Ravel's Sonatine. She made it clear in her program that she wanted to contrast the treatment of each form by Baroque and 20th c. composers. This could be a good way of addressing the imbalance in your above proposals whilst sticking to the stuff you enjoy playing.

[leon1685]

Thanks for the advice, Thorn. That makes sense.