Problem with IMSLP

Allow me to share a scary story...
As some of you know, I'm working my way through Tchaikovsky's opus 72 ("18 pieces for piano"), although not in sequence.
After doing one or two, I downloaded the entire set in one PDF file from IMSLP, and just print out the one I want to work on. Seems easier that way, n'est-ce pas?
I've been working on #13, "Echo Rustique". One thing that bothered me was that the piece did not have a double-bar line at the end. But the music at the end seemed perfectly credible as an ending, since it repeated the first 5 bars - the first exposition of the theme - and ended on the tonic. So I had supposed that something went wrong in the scan that produced the PDF. Something did.
I do not always try to listen to an existing recording of a piece that I'm learning, but this time I wanted to see what tempo other pianists have used, since Tchaikovsky, as usual, put one that seemed way too fast. I got on YouTube and found a recording; was quite gratified that the artist took a tempo close to mine, and was horrified to hear him playing beyond the end of the piece as I knew it.
Back to IMSLP and found a PDF of just this piece; indeed there is a fifth page!!

I guess the lesson is not to assume that everything on IMSLP is accurate; or perhaps to always try to listen to recordings of others playing your repertoire.
:shock:

 

Yes it happens sometimes that scans are missing pages or pieces, or that pages are in a wrong order. There's nobody there checking the correctness of the tons of stuff uploaded by so many people, and I would not expect there to be. But really these are exceptions, I find most things to be accurate and complete. My hat is off to all the dedicated people who take the trouble to scan and upload their music. We'd be nowhere without them.

 

Monica,
That would be the logical explanation, except that in this case it was good luck that I found out in time.
Can you imagine how embarrassed I would have been if I recorded the piece without the last page...??

Do we have an area where we display the picture of the current "laughing stock" of the Society?

 

It IS always a good idea to check multiple editions and listen to recordings.
Teachers differ on what stage of the learning process to do these things
But it should certainly be done before the performing/recording stage.

 

It reminds me of a recording someone put on on this site some years ago (and is still up, for all I know), only this time it is the other way round: I listened to the recording and I liked it, so I searched for the work on the net. Having founded it, I discovered the original edition was not quite what the pianist was playing. All the notes were there, but the order of the sections (A and B) was different.

I notice at times people write on the files they upload that such and such a page is missing.

 

What recording is that ?

 

I named no names for a series of reasons:

There may be several editions of the same work, the way it happens with Chopin;
There may be a revised edition, by the author or sanctioned by him, which would mean the old one is no longer "official". Take, for example, Bartok's "For Children": one can find the old series, in four volumes, on the net, while the revised edition is in two.

Having said this and having just checked that I am not wrong, here it is, together with my score, which I cannot remember where I found:

http://server3.pianosociety.com/protect ... ichian.mp3

All the music is there in both sources, but arranged in a different way.

 

Thanks for bringing this piece to my attention, Richard. I hope your new piano likes it as much as mine does. Tricky rhythm in 3 bars of the B section! :twisted:

This does seem to be played in several ways. Looking at your score, if we call the first 3 lines section A, then the rest of the piece consists of two identical (but for dynamics) chunks, each of which we might call B.

So your score is ABB, and George V plays ABAB. I had a nose around YouTube and found some clips which only play AB, and one with ABBABB. What to do might depend on your assessment of your audience's attention span. I think ABB works quite well because there is so much duplication within the A section that once is enough.

 

Yes, these different editions! By the time I came across the piece, I had no idea under what name George hid under or even when it was submitted, so I could not pin down the post (and I am not sure I would have understood what he wrote anyway).

I have six sets of them (all part of one edition, that is why my Adios is on page 30 - set 4), but I really cannot remember where I found them. I also have some Danzones and two songs without words. Why I have them is anyone's guess, because I did not even realise it till I looked the other day.

 

i could try, but remember that first the piano has to settle down and be tuned, and I need to get a decent recorder!

If I may suggest something (and I did so once) it would be a good idea in the tags to include also the edition that is being used.

 

I guess that would not interest 99.9% of our listeners, and I'm not sure what we'd actually do with this information.
But if people want to include this in their mp3's in the Comment tag, fine with me.

 

It would avoid just the sort of question I placed concerning Cervantes.