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a chunk of Albéniz

Discussion in 'Works in Progress' started by neural, May 18, 2016.

  1. neural

    neural New Member Piano Society Artist Trusted Member

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    Hello all,

    This afternoon I happened to be home by myself with a free hour (that doesn't happen very often these days!) so I thought I would make a quick recording of the piece I'm working on at the moment, El Albaicín from Iberia by Albéniz. This is the first time I've tried to record myself at home so the quality isn't great, and I was in a bit of a rush; the recording represents a single 'take' with just a single cut across a page-turn. It's not the whole piece, as you'll hear -- as an experiment I've started with the most technically challenging part.

    I'd be grateful for any comments, especially suggestions for improvement!

    -- neural.

    Oh, PS: as this isn't a submission as such, I haven't respected the file-naming and metadata conventions -- if it's important I can re-upload.
     

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    neural, May 18, 2016
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  2. Francois de Larrard

    Francois de Larrard Administrator Staff Member Piano Society Artist Trusted Member

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    Beautiful ! You seem not to have any technical problem in this piece, in spite of its great difficulty ! In terms of character, it sounds spanish enough, I think, and I admire how your right hand is delicate and speaks as a background of the main song played by the LH in all the forte section. I wonder how you deliver the guitar-style beginning of the piece (but it is much easier, no reason to be wrong...). Please submit the whole piece in the Submission section !

    By the way, I practiced this piece years ago and also the following of Iberia's third book, but I was not very happy about the results so that I never recorded them. And for the third piece (Lavapies), I just had to give up after weeks of works: just a nightmare...
     
    Francois de Larrard, Jun 7, 2016
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  3. neural

    neural New Member Piano Society Artist Trusted Member

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    Hi François - too kind! It is not an easy piece, true, but not too awkward, and very rewarding.

    I also wonder how I deliver the opening! I was wondering about it as I came home from work today in fact. Iberia in many places is quite repetitive (the following piece, El Polo, is a good example) and it's challenging to find a way of getting the cumulative effect without becoming boring. I only noticed today that most of the opening of El Albaicín sounds as if it's in three-bar groups of 2/8 rather than two-bar groups of 3/8, all the way to the F major bit at bar forty-something -- I'll have to think about how to make that transition work.

    The quieter unison sections are another challenge; those really do have to sound idiomatically Spanish, and the notes don't do the work for you like they do in the 'difficult' part! It seems to help if I pretend I'm playing the cor anglais solo in the slow movement of the Concierto de Aranjuez...

    I will certainly post a recording of the whole piece at some point. I can also guarantee that I will not be attempting Lavapies :)
     
    neural, Jun 7, 2016
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