Thread: Piano Trio
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Old Feb 7 2008, 8:18 PM
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Thank you both very much for commenting!

By way of addressing specifics:

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Only two little things come to mind.. might you consider inverting the piano parts of the opening string entrances? By this I mean that the violin comes in on a very rich and full piano part, which suddenly becomes more sparse as the cello enters the fray... it seems almost anticlimactic to me. I think that the larger string density would require a slightly denser piano part, while the solo violin of the opening phrase would benefit from an ultra-delicate accompaniment.
You make a good point there. It could well be the bias that comes with hindsight, but I think I did have half an impression of the opening perhaps being a bit too "full on", just that I had no real ideas with the potential to remove that aspect.

Also, you mention an introduction later in your post: I actually had one there a while ago, but I couldn't get it to sound convincing enough. It was a bit too soppy. The whole aesthetic is rather "pretty", possibly bordering on saccharine, so I decided to quit while I was ahead and just jump straight in. But I'll definitely ponder this.

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Bar 36 - the f# in the violin would be better as a gb because you had used a gb previously, and it matches the harmony etc. in the piano. (Similarly, perhaps some of the sharps in the 'cello there should be flats?)
Ah, I had a mini debate with myself over that section.

The first two beats of bar 34 are essentially in Cb major, as defined by the piano LH (I realise it's difficult to pin down because of the chromaticism/polychordality), so I gave the violin a Gb because it sounded like the 5th degree of the scale. Then, in about 35-37, the tonality moves more towards D major. Gb makes little sense in this context - in fact, it sounds more like F#, which is the third degree of the scale in D, so I went with that.

In retrospect, I think you're right - the Gb excessively complicates matters, especially given that it's only a single note, so the player is hardly likely to misread it!

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Bar 39 - no need for that E# in the violin there, really.
I can only imagine I employed similar enharmonic logic as described above, but again I agree with you - it should probably be changed.

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From around bar 57 to 60, I felt you could have made more of that climax. At present, it is a beautiful swell in intensity, but I feel it may be the main climax of the movement, so maybe a little more would help. Just a thought.
Quite possibly. One thing I noted about Alfera's trio is that he engages in a few separate jaunts into the "dark side", so arguably the one isolated incidence in my piece is not good from a harmonic coherence perspective.

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Also, I'm envious of the damn fine GPO rendering! You did a good job there too!
Ha, it's very satisfying to read that because I did literally nothing to help GPO along aside from adding the pedalling. Rather more convenient than exporting MIDIs from Sibelius and spending 2 hours in a sequencer manually programming the held note crescendos...

Once again, thanks for the in-depth comments!
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