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Hi! As 2007 is closing out, my college auditions are coming up soon, and I'm stressing. Here's my program:

Bach: Prelude and Fugue in C min from WTC
Beethoven: Sonata "Pathetique"
Chopin: Heroic Polonaise ( Ab Maj op 53 )
Debussy: Reflets Dans L'Eau from Images Bk I

I'll be auditioning at SUNY Fredonia (1/19), Crane School of Music (2/2), and Ithaca (2/16).

So far, everything is memorized except the third movement of the Sonata. I can play all of them close to speed, but it is still a respectable performance speed that is suitable for capturing the character of each piece. Where do you think I should be at the moment?

If it gives you a better picture of where I am, I can put any part or all of my audition online.

Also, Fredonia and Crane only require 3 contrasting pieces ( The Music Education Program ). How do I decided which ones to choose?

Thanks for the help.

Which three pieces do you play best. Which one of those four pieces is your weakest link?

That is logical, however, if it's my weakest link, why should it get the least performance? I don't want to get to the Ithaca audition and have a piece that I haven't performed at a college audition yet.

In answer to your question, I'd say the Prelude and Fugue.

then you practice and perform it more, so that it gets better. But for auditions put your best foot forward. Does not mean you stop working on it. Perform it for your friends family anyone who will listen. Practice it and make it a strength.

hi,
perform for as many people as you can, that will help alot.

don't worry, everyone's stressing up, including me. I have 3 auditions next year, a harmony exam this sat, history exam next year, another competition and ARCT Performer's exam. gota finish all of this by June next year. lol...i'm pratically dead by now

Just got to keep chugging along... don't you agree?

Enjoy your auditions I say. There may never be many chances to get audience in he piano. I mean I got my diploma at some point, did some concerts around Greece, and in other countries, planned to take part in a few competitions, then I moved, dedicated to composition, stoped having piano, and that's it. That's where I am.

You never know what life will bring ahead. Any chance you have to play on any audience, even if it is a pannel, enjoy the heck out of it! Get out and live every moment. Be happy that you are giving THEM the chance to listen to you.

The above phychology helps a lot. (At least helped me a lot)

Things to do:

Continue practicing slowly
Continue practicing with the score
Continue practicing hands separately
Continue practicing with a metronome
Continue analyzing the score

Record yourself and listen to it
Run-though your entire program for family and friends

Things NOT to do:

Let run-throughs dominate your practice time
Practice/play exclusively from memory
Practice/play exclusively at tempo

May I ask why on this? Totally curious, as I used to learn everything by memory after the first few days, so I didn't need the scores anymore. Of course I would take a peak, but is there a reason why not from memory?

We agree on everything, inclduding the memory thing, just curious I guess.

Can you elaborate more? My teacher doesn't work on analysis at all with me. Is a simple chord analysis, along with highlighting the melody, enough? And, is this something I can do away from the piano?

Unless you have an incredible, remarkable memory, it is a fallacy to say that you "didn't need the scores anymore." One "needs" to constantly check that wrong notes (that simple four-note arpeggio accompaniment figure was in root position on the first beat but in first inversion on the second beat: did I do that?) don't creep into one's playing - wrong notes that "sound" right but that are not in the score.

Building on what Kreisler has said, play through the piece slowly and with score on a regular basis; don't rely on memory, it's remarkably fallible.

Regards,

yup

I think it's different for anyone. I don't need the score after a couple of days either. The metronome, however, I absolutely need to make use of as for some reason tempo fluctuation is my weakness. It's really bad.

On the other hand, I know some people at school that simply have an incredible sense of rythm and very rarely need to use the metronome, but may have trouble memorizing.

I will say though that I need to make 100% sure I learn every note correctly the first time or else it's much harder to fix it, especially because of the fact that if you learn it quickly it tends to get repeated more often.

Bruce: Hardly a fallacy. And I know plenty of people who have "the same" memory as me. It just works out. BTW, I'm not talking about contemporary works. I do recall a work from a greek composer named Anastassiou, which I learned from memory only 2 weeks before the diploma, and I have been studying it hard. It was simply too diverse and "complicated" for me at the time. But other things like more... classical or romantic pieces, it seems relatively safe to not need the score after a while.

I do think that good dicté abilities are also helpful to that.

Re Analysis: Depends on the work, there's not "much else" from harmony etc, but it might benefit to know the form, repeatitions and prolly a few more things. Especially the younger works you go, the more analysis you need to be able to do.

Also, another important thing I did when studying was to devide into small parts and study those parts (maybe 2-3 bars) that gave me a hard time. No need to play all 181 bars, only the bars between 60-73 for example.

And different ways of playing and studying (always slowly) ("modes" is the name in Greek). You accent every 3 notes, or you play 1 dotted, 1 16th, or reverse, or things like that. It's an automated pilot system which is not completely reliable, at least for me and how it worked, but it had miracle results for fast learning of difficult passages.

Nikolas, you mean playing in rythms? If so, I agree that it is an excellent practice method. I use it not only to learn technically difficult passages but to ensure control over 16th and 32nd notes as well.

What about the whole Chuang C. Chang approach that says you should memorize the score pretty much before you even learn it? Memorize it in snippets that is? I mean it seems logical...
I've always referred back to the score and mostly played from it while practicing, I don't know whether that was disadvantageous...
Definitely slow and hands-separate, but I would probably suggest looking at the score and playing it mentally as opposed to reading from the score while playing. I may have missed any threads that were in concord or opposed to Chang's method, so enlighten me!

Good luck! I studied at IC, although most of the piano faculty (including my teacher) have since moved on or retired so I have no special insight. If I recall correctly your "meat and potatoes" repertoire should appeal to Prof. Mehta (really it's what any audition jury will probably want to hear). I don't really remember much about his tastes though since it was so long ago and he wasn't on my recital juries.

Are you applying for Music Ed. at Ithaca also?

Re memorization: my trick, passed on to me by my teacher, was to play through the piece slowly and silently . . . until I could play the whole piece silently without the score. When I actually managed it things went pretty well under pressure. Unfortunately more often than not the performance arrived before I was done with this stage of memorization!

(Ha my first post takes me back to my college days, neat!)

Yes, I am applying for Music Ed at Ithaca. I'm actually applying for the double major Education/Performance. That's my first choice as far as schools go.

Good choice! No I'm not biased ;-)