Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Is it common for pianists to make difficult parts easier?

Unlikely anyone would. And I have seen it done in concert... I was sitting in the third row.

Well so much for adhering to the written note. But I won't do that... after all, then why not sneak in the left hand for the difficult right hand 16th notes in the development beginning at measure 97?

Actually that's not a bad idea, come to think of it...

Oh, I totally understand. I've been there. With due respect, the pianist I "collaborated" with made rather a mess of the solo piano part.

I kept thinking: (a) I could probably play it better (though I have never studied Beethoven 4), and (b) why am I devoting so much time to playing Kullak's awkward -and difficult- orchestral transcription?... then (c) I hope she doesn't ask me out for tea afterwards.

Crikey, why not spend the time on one of Liszt's brilliant Beethoven symphony transcriptions?

At there's some glory in the latter...

This reminds me of a concert I did a few weeks ago. It was several hours long, and I had to play for all of it. One piece on the program was Schubert's "Der Erlkönig" - that's the piece that has quickly repeated R.H. triplets in octaves, and they go on for pages and pages!

I had to have a little talk with myself about it. I thought 'no use killing myself over this thing, and putting my arm out of commission'!

I do many hours of rehearsing each week, and am constantly performing. Tendonitis (or at best, a sore arm) would shoot a big hole in my livelihood, so I made the decision to 'fake' the repeated notes.

Even if the piano's action could have kept up the pace, I am certain I would have drowned out the singing had I played every note! There have been discussions here about how pianos were much lighter in touch & tone in Schubert's day.

I was also betting the audience would be focused on the singer, not the accompanist.

I'm glad to say, no tomatoes were hurled in my direction.

What do you mean by faking the repeated notes? Do you mean omitting some every now and then, or playing every other note, etc? Sorry I'm not sure from your post.

I alternated the high and low notes in the octaves like so:
515 151 515 151

or like this:
515 515 515 515

(this represents the four triplets in each bar).

When the piano part was exposed, I would attempt to play as written:

555 555 555 555
111 111 111 111

It is a truly exhausting piece! Unless you are accustomed to practicing repeated octaves (which I simply don't have time to do)...

re Erlkönig:
There's the Gerald Moore fake, where he plays the octave triplets one note in each hand wherever it's possible, just to give the arm a rest. It works pretty well, but I like yours even more

And I too rearrange the piano reduction of the Strauss 4 Last Songs - to make it [i]actually sound like[i/] the orchestral version, instead of a whole lot of awkward notes.

A basic tremolo in triplets will work also... and do I care to admit that I've done that? Gerald Moore, in one of his excellent books, demonstrates how he divided those octaves between two hands... fair enough.

whippen boy, so you played it in F minor per your score? I suffered through it with a tenor in G minor, also the key in which Liszt transcribed it.

And whilst we're at it, I once had to fill in at a moment's notice for an informal recital. The soprano sang Rachmaninov's song How fair this spot (Op. 21 #7), and due to time constraints I grew weary of Rachmaninov's incessant 2 against 3 within the right hand.

Oh puh-leeze, I left out many inner notes and no one noticed. And my paycheck was the same. (Don't kill me, tomasino.)

Alas, on the same program was the Op. 34 #4 (Day to night comparing went the wind), and what with all the cruel 4 against 3, not to mention other difficulties, I lost almost a whole night's sleep working on it. :t:

And yet, that is one of Rachmaninov's most atmospheric songs. Utterly delectable. The piano postlude of 4 measures is pure magic. Those right hand chords... WOW! It doesn't get any better.

I yanked that image off of the 'net, and really don't recall the key that I played it in. Nor do I want to remember.

Hmm, I do recall some other tough slogs on that concert: the practially atonal O soft embalmer of the still midnight by Britten, and and the wild orchestral reduction leading up to O Black Swan from Menotti's "The Medium". I should have charged by the note (or for each accidental)!

Yes, it was a Halloween concert.

Well I understand. However, Menotti arranged The Medium for two pianos, and I played it once (secondo) for an amateur production back in my late teens.

What a fabulous opera. At least until I discovered The Saint of Bleecker Street which played almost too perfectly to my (then) high Anglican beliefs.

But as an accompanist, nothing matches "To this we've come" from The Consul. One of the great soprano scenas, the piano reduction by Thomas Schippers is not easy (particularly the "papers!" moment), but it never fails to make an impact if the soprano has enough voice. It requires a Turandot.

A friend of mine went to an Ashkenazy recital in the 90-ies. He completely omitted the 19th of the 24 preludes by Chopin (of course not stated in the program). Nr 19 is (coincidentally?)technically at least in the top quarter of the 24 preludes.

Naughty!

AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!

Simplifying it like that destroys it! I agree that it can be exhausting to play if the wrists have ANY tension. Try "Hanon: The Virtuoso Pianist" Part Two Lesson 58. It's called "Sustained Octaves with Detached Notes". Play it to speed and then transpose it. Erlkonig will become much easier and crisper AND it doesn't take much time to do this exercise once daily.

[/QUOTE]AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!

Simplifying it like that destroys it! I agree that it can be exhausting to play if the wrists have ANY tension. [/QB][/QUOTE]

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But it might have drowned out the singer if he played it as written anyways; and that wouldn't be a good thing either. The piano's in Schubert's day probably didn't have the same fullness in sound as modern pianos. I think he was just stuck between a rock and a hard place and had to make a difficult decision, which he did, and it was the right one for him.

It is a lot easier if you use Liszt's fingering for repeated octaves:

545 454 545 454
111 111 111 111

At least I find this fingering a lot better for long octave passages, allows my hand to stay much more relaxed. I was never able to play the last pages of Liszt's Hungarian no.6 until I discovered this fingering.

I'll ditto Brendan also on this. I've reduced orchestral transcriptions to a more playable score. Why do the editors try to cram every voice in the music then expect the pianist to play the multitude of repeated chords at an amazingly fast tempo? I've turned many a repeated notes and chords into either long chords, or tremolo with little if anything lost in the music just to make the music playable.

However as Brendan says, when it's solo music I play true to the written page.

In regards to the Erlkönig. The music is dastardly difficult on a modern piano, but quite easy on an early Viennese fortepiano. I heard this performed on a Conrad Graf 1828 grand, and the performer flew through the repeated notes like butter. The action is very light and shallow so there's less effort for the hands and wrists to contend with. The overall lightness of the piano made keeping the tone soft as well so there's no added tension of trying to play the repeated notes quietly.

I also heard some of the Czerny studies played on an early Bösendorfer (1820's) at the metronome markings he indicated. They are a far cry from what we labor at, and are far more musical than we could ever make them on our pianos today.

Our modern pianos have actions that have become heavier over the past century to a point where it can become difficult to play many things at the tempos indictated in the score.

John

People consider not to play them as octaves?!?!?!

I tried once and it didn't sound right. This is one of those places where the octaves have to be played.

John

It all depends!

I based my choice on the following:

1. The tempo. The singer wanted it around MM160 for breath control issues. No, it wasn't an option to ask the singer to NOT do this piece! In a different situation I might have refused.

2. The acoustic, which was very reverberant. It was hard to hear exactly what I was playing.

3. The piano: a century old and seriously out of regulation - it played like a truck! Also very loud. It is extremely poor musicianship to drown out a singer just because you are being a stickler!

By the way, arrogant accompanists do not get jobs.

4. The audience, who for this event were most likely there to enjoy a "show". At least, I didn't see any concert-goers arrive with a Schubert score tucked under their arm.

I got the music about a week before the concert - not much time to rehearse it. Besides, when I'm rehearsing/accompanying eight hours a day the LAST thing I want to do is come home and practice octave repetitions!

As I mentioned, I make all of my income from playing and performing, so it is just not worth stressing my arm or risking injury for one piece!

All pianists have limitations. Few professional accompanists are in a situation to choose their repertoire. A good accompanist does the best they can with the time and technique they have: the show must go on!

In the end, it has everything to do with making music and nothing to do with playing 'every bloody note'.

Sounds like you did a good job of getting on with it.
Thanks for the dose of reality.

Couldn't agree more.
And I wish that any singer who has to sing Erlkönig at MM160 for breath control issues would leave it alone!

How would "changes" be treated at competitions, entry tests to universities, exams?