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Hi everyone,
I’m looking at repertoire possibilities to play in conjunction with the Chopin Ballade in G Minor when I begin work on it, and I’ve narrowed the selection down to a few choices.
Nadia Boulanger: 3 Garden Pieces. Has anyone ever played the set? The second one is my favorite.
Samuel Coleridge Taylor: Scenes from an Imaginary Ballet. Has anybody ever played these? I’m leaning toward the third piece but love the entire suite.
In other news, I was thrilled to get in touch with my friend, Laura Garritson. We went to school together and haven’t seen each other in over 20 years. She and her sister are both pianists. After an extensive performing and teaching career, Laura has decided to focus on other things, and plays for herself when she sits down at the piano. Lindsay Garritson still concertizes.
I like playing smaller, shorter pieces, with the exception of a major work here and there. I find marathon practice sessions exhausting. I get more fulfillment, enjoyment and satisfaction from playing short pieces that are manageable. I don’t know when music started to become analogous to food, but we musicians love food analogies. I agree with one of my piano teachers when she compares repertoire selection to appetizers or entrées. Like her and my friend Laura, when I pick pieces to play, I prefer bite-sized hors d’oeuvres. Stretching your technical limits is nice, but you don’t want to go biting off more than you can chew!
What is your favorite repertoire to play? Do you like small pieces, or do you go for the big stuff?

DebussyDiva:

I haven't played any of the particular repertoire that you mention in your post. I do find, well into my retirement years now, that I favour more and more the shorter and more lyrical works rather than the somewhat larger works I played earlier. Age is also slowing down my digital agility.

I have studied and played over the last several years:
- a Bach Partita, a French Suite (could one argue that each of these, as a whole are larger works?), some of the Goldberg Variations,
- six of the Schubert Impromptus,
- several Chopin Nocturnes,
- many of the Grieg Lyric Pieces,
- Brahms' Op. 117 and selections from his Op. 118, the G minor Rhapsody
- five of the six Liszt Consolations and several of the Schubert/Liszt transcriptions, the Mendelssohn/Liszt "Auf Flugeln des Gesanges and the Liszt Schumann "Widmung"
- some Debussy Preludes and the "Suite bergamasque"
- and four Rachmaninoff Preludes, the Elegie and one of thTe Moments Musicaux

This is just to name what immediately comes to mind of my studies over the last few years.

I no longer have an audience to play to, so I choose what the spur of the moment directs me to. I try to keep some Bach on the piano to encourage my arthritic thumb to keep playing.

In my early retirement years, when I took up the piano after a 40-year hiatus, there were a couple of Beethoven Sonatas, three Mozart Sonatas, a Haydn Sonata, a Schubert Sonata in the works that I studied. Perhaps, occasionally I will play through a movement from one of these now, but I no longer plan on reworking an entire Sonata. I get enough pleasure and satisfaction from the smaller, more intimate works in my "recent" repertoire list.

Regards,

You must be a phenomenal pianist if you took a 40-year hiatus and then played the pieces you mentioned. I’m currently working on the Bergamasque Suite, and I played the Brahms G minor Rhapsody in graduate school. I played the Brahms intermezzi Op. 118 in college. They are all lovely pieces, none of them easy, and I wouldn’t exactly describe the Rhapsody as lyrical!
I will give those Grieg lyric pieces a listen. I played a piano duet version of the peer Gynt suite, but never his lyric pieces. Got to check them out!

What I like (love?) about the Grieg Lyric Pieces is that - apart from a number of them based on and inspired by Norwegian Dances - they are always so "pianistic" in nature (they fit well in the hand), they are lyrical as their titles imply, there is considerable variety of mood among them, and the tonal landscape varies from classical harmony to twentieth-century-sounding harmony.

Well worth investigating, in my opinion.

I guess, in truth, it was more a 30-plus years hiatus rather than forty. Still, it was a long time without a piano and with very limited access to one.

Regards,

That's an impressively long list for such a short time!

I haven't heard those pieces of Nadia's, so I might look them up on IMSLP. I like her Fantaisie variée (piano concerto).

One thing that often struck me is that her sister Lili's music is so different: more complex, less conventional generally, and also impressionistic.


I was interested to discover recently that she commissioned Carl Vine's fourth piano sonata, which she then premiered in 2019.
I have a mixture, but the shorter single pieces (less than ten minutes) make up the bulk. Everything from Bach to Bartók plus a few beyond the latter. Everything I learn for my performing rep has to be enjoyable to play as well as to listen to, otherwise there's no point.

When I was a student, I learnt many big works, some by myself, some with my teacher - Schumann's Fantasie in C, Kreisleriana, Carnaval, and several Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert sonatas etc. I still play them but not seriously anymore.

At my advanced age, I don't particularly care to play the Hammerklavier, with its interminable slow movement, nor Opus Clavicembalisticum.......

It was twelve-plus years, give or take. I am not sure how many of them I could bring back to performance level now. But, I do continue to explore ones I like that I have not yet played. I may lower my sights slightly these days, but, as they say, "you are never too old ..."

Regards,

Just wanted to mention, I remember Lindsay from the 2013 Cliburn competition. It was discussed actively here, and she had many big fans on this site!

Bennevis: I misspoke and inadvertently mixed up the Boulanger sisters. The Garden Pieces are actually written by Lili. It’s a great set!

Mark: check out Lindsay‘s website and YouTube channel. They’re great!

In another thread the question arose about how a modern composer could preserve works after his/her demise, and I suggested that it often would be the case that if someone a) didn't know the composer, b) wasn't directed to the composer by someone else who knew the composer and the output, many of those works might go unnoticed and die in obscurity.

Of course I knew the Boulanger name but had never taken the time to look at any works. Your appreciation of the "3 Morceaux" prompted me to have a look at the score and I must say that I find the pieces fascinating on the page, although I have yet to try any of them at the piano.

So, thank you for sharing your appreciation of this set; it seems highly worth investigating further.

Regards,

That's a wonderful (and impressive) list of pieces Bruce! Wish I had as impressive a list, but i am working on it.

Let me suggest, as a logical extension of your Romantic and late Romantic repertoire, the Barber Nocturne...

And since you have no group to play for, why not come and join us in the ABF online recitals?

Sam

Sam:

I have played around with the Barber "Excursions" and I have looked at the "Nocturne," but at the time it didn't appeal to me. Maybe it's worth another look. Thanks for the suggestion.

Regards,