Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner ....folllowing up on codas: Great introductions

If you'd like I can keep bumping yours.

Shouldn't this thread really have been first?!
Additionally we'll need a thread on Developments

We could feature some
- Drastic Developments along with some
- Arrested Developments, followed by
- Recalcitrant Recapitulations or
- Recanted Recapitulations!

What about some Tremulous Trios? (I doubt that we'd find any Terrible Trios!)

Cheers!

Favorite introduction for me is the intro to the Griffes sonata. A sinister and menacing intro that perfectly sets the mood for a dark and scary piece. But it's an unusual and tricky pianistic figuration that has to be played just right...if it's rushed through too fast or if any part of it is not played in proper time and dynamic as written, it loses impact.

Schumann piano sonata 1, 1st mov
- I think this is a pretty classic introduction even though the material is heard again later.

Brahms piano trio 3 in C minor, 1st mov
- Might not qualify, just a great opening

Perhaps the shortest introduction in the literature of western music: the first bar of the Adagio of Beethoven's Op. 106 (Hammerklavier). In early manuscripts/sketches of the work, this movement launches (not quite the right word) straight into the opening theme. But the composer evidently felt that something was needed to prepare the listener for the sudden intrusion of F# minor tonality so he added an introductory bar. What's amazing is that it feels so "right". If you play the end of the 2nd movement then start the 3rd movement at bar two, the tonal shift is so stark that it takes away from the expressivity of the moment. But with the simple two-note intro, everything feels right. The distant tonality sounds almost preordained. Pure genius!

Talking about Luddy and brief intros, surely the start of the Eroica Symphony takes the biscuit - two loud E flat chords in the whole orchestra, which wakes the audience up and tells them what key the symphony is in. Luddy probably did that because of complaints that his intro to No.1 starts in the wrong key and meanders around with one perfect cadence after another in different keys, giving those sensitive souls vertigo........

However, for an extended E flat intro, this takes the biscuit - especially in this luscious recording by the master of legato (as his successor Sir Rattle puts it). Wallow! :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1C_e4MEtlo

But Mahler's 9th starts with a heart beating with an arrhythmia - what better premonition of death, knowing that your heart can't beat in time?......(N.B. for those who have it, these days AF is hardly anything to worry about).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwwhZGtcnSM

Even though I am in the camp that believes it is probably not Bach, I can't leave out the Toccata and Fugue in D minor.

You beat me to it - I prefer the into to the rest of it.

I love it all -- but, my favorite part is.....
(this might lead us to another one of these)

.....where the melody goes into the left hand and the right hand has the arpeggios.

Idea for thread: Pieces where the melody goes into the left hand for a while.....

Balakirev Bb minor sonata, 4th movement, second subject.

On the subject of Mahler, I can't think of an opening of an orchestral piece that moves me more than the Mahler Second. But then I'm a double bass player...

...... how about when the melody moves to an inner voice for while. For example, pretty much anything by Brahms.

Anybody mention that fanfare that opens "La Peri"...

I hate to add to the long list of Liszt, but the 2nd Polonaise popped into my head this evening. Liszt really seemed to know how to draw in a listener. Often I think the intros are more interesting than what comes after.

Beethoven's 9th symphony.
Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1.
Prokofiev Piano Concerto No.1.

Black Sabbath, Iron Man.

Thanks for introducing me to this. I listened and made it through the into. Definitely a classic but more my adult son's cup of tea. We heard a lot of heavy and death metal stuff in our house when he was in high school and college. By the time Iron Man was released in 1970 I was totally immersed in classical music. Call me old fashioned, but I've been happy. As for my son, he attends a weekly bible study with Alice Cooper. Go figure.