Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner What NOT to accompany!

As an addendum to the "What to expect in college" thread, I propose we begin a list of pieces that you should say "NO!" to if asked to accompany.

For starters:

1. As rvaga mentioned, classical alto saxophone literature. Denisov, Dahl, Creston, Ibert, etc... The Muczynski isn't bad, though, and it's fun.

2. The Creston trombone fantasy.

3. Selected Hindemith Sonatas (they're not so hard to play, but they can be a REAL pain in the rear to learn...)

4. The Strauss violin sonata

5. Any piece that a vocalist says "is so easy, even I can sight-read it!" Especially if it's Faure.

Others?

1. Creston, Concerto for Marimba and piano

2. Riisager, Concerto for trumpuet and piano

3. Chopin, Cello Sonata

4. Anything by Rebecca Clarke

5. Josef Suk, Four pieces for violin and piano

6. Schubert, Erlking (great piece, but it depresses me that I can't do it)

- Tamás, Violin Sonata, especially the 3rd movement. It's good music but a pain in the ar..., uh, arm.

- Basically any piano reduction of any concerto. They're usually trying to squeeze the entire orchestral score into two staves which makes the thing horribly unpianistic and uncomfortable to play.

- Also, any piece, even the easy ones, when they're given to you two (or three) days before the recital. There's (almost) nothing worse than having to be able to play a piece perfectly in two days. Because if you don't play it perfectly, the other one's sure to miss quite some entries. And that's bad.

'Grand Duo Concertante' by Weber for Clarinet and Piano)

I had to turn pages as my piano teacher accompanied the 3rd movement of this last night, and what a nightmare it is!!! So many scales - it's like a piano concerto with clarinet accompaniment, he said later on. Some people just can't turn down accompaniements...

Peter

Mum said never to accompany strangers .



David

Anything that has whole-note chords tied for four measures WITH CRESCENDO INDICATED for the pianist.

Anything Faure wrote that has been transposed from the original key (hard enough in the original key, usually impossible in the new one, even when it's an "easier" key).