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Topic: Liszt's Un Sospiro  (Read 7251 times)

Offline Bananasplizit

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Liszt's Un Sospiro
on: March 28, 2002, 12:17:28 AM
I've been working on Un Sospiro for the past few weeks and I was wondering if anyone has any tips on how to practice it.
I've got most of the notes figured out, but I still need to get everything to flow and not to be stopping all the time to figure out what fingers go where etc.

 Thanks!

         
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Offline Diabolos

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Re: Liszt's Un Sospiro
Reply #1 on: March 29, 2002, 01:11:58 PM
Something I found helpful when playing Liszt was splitting the piece in different parts; after that I practised every single measure, usually taking the first and adding more and more to it - if I made a mistake I started all over again. Then it was easy, I just had to put the parts together and accelerate the tempo.

I don't know if that works with Un sospiro (I don't have the score), but it did with 'Wilde Jagd', for example.

Offline ted

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Re: Liszt's Un Sospiro
Reply #2 on: April 06, 2002, 02:29:46 PM
I play Sospiro often. It is a beautiful piece, both musically and physically. I think it contains opportunities to use different techniques in different places to different effect. I rarely play it the same way twice in succession. I like to think of the melodies as highlights in a clear crystal. I like everything to be clear and bright. That's just my opinion; plenty of people play it in a wash of pedal and mistiness. The hardest part for me was working out how to sound those waves of arpeggios just before the descending scale in D flat. Whatever I tried sounded unmusical for ages. In the end I found I liked them best played quite regularly, almost light staccato, not too much pedal and considerably slower than most interpretations. The last page is a little miracle isn't it. It's just the same arpeggio figure on major chords Db,Bb,G and E - the notes of the symmetric diminished chord. Simple! - but how effective it is !  I did something embarrassing with this piece. I usually memorize things right away and don't bother to look at the score again. I played it for ages without realizing the pentatonic motif is stated within the final arpeggios !  
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery." - James Joyce
 

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