Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra

For some time now I have had a piece stuck in mind and I just had to get out and this is the result of it. It is a rather uncomplicated piece that is based on a simple melody introduced by the Piano in the beginning of the song.

Throughout the entirety of piece I used the idea contrast to fuel the energy of the work. Example Fast sections sound better when next to slow sections and Loud things sound better when near soft things etc.

This composition was a real awakening to me in some of the skills of composing such as orchestration and learning to build up the orchestra for curtain melody's, even though I'm still not even close to be a master at these fields of composing I believe compared to my last piece for piano and orchestra it is a tremendous improvement.

I've been working on this piece for about 2 months and it is around 6 minutes long.

All criticism is welcomed. Hope you like it.

does anybody want to comment

A pity nobody commented on this piece still.

Well,
a) the notation was messy. My eyes ached after a while.
b) Especially in the beginning, there was too much going on.
c) You had some great moments (ms. 22-, the concertoid dialogue between the piano and the orchestra).
d) The motovic development was superb, as a matter of fact, after m. 22 I enjoyed the whole piece.

Cheers!

your right about that area of the peice I was trying to experiment with more conterpoint. And after leaving it there for a while I really didn't get up the nerve to change it sooo. But with the notation I haven't really gotton to mess with that to make it better.

Thankyou for the comment manossg
anyone else

Firstly I do like your piece but I have to repeat the previous statement about readability.

It has already been brought up but for future reference, try not to cluster the score - some of the piano bits are really hard to because they are to close together. Spread your score out more - it doesn't matter how many pages you use as long as you can clearly read it. Also avoid score details (such as dynamics) being on top of one and another. On my course, for example, you actually lose marks for it.

The other point I want to bring to you attention is your slurring, phrase markings. There is already a detailed post on this in the Masterclass section. In woodwind and brass, they mean whether the note is slurring or has a separate tonguing but in strings they mean the direction of the bow movement.

As a general rule of thumb, the way you should work out your bowings into have the strings finish each bar on an upbow. By doing this, they then play the first beat of the next bar on a down which is a stronger sound than an up. Again, in Orchestration class, not doing correct bowing loses marks.

If you using leading notes to go to a phrase though after a rest, you can make this an upbow by putting a V above the first note of the phrase. This is acceptable (though in professional circles unnecessary because they do it naturally) and useful to do.

Also generally having four quavers with a downbow on the first then an upbow, is slightly trickier to play. Most string players, me included, don't like it. At bar 7, for example in you 2nd violin, with the little four note phrase starting on F, have all four under the one slur. Not only is that easier to play but it means that the bowing of that will go, down, up, down, up - a whole lot better and your players will be grateful.

It's a good piece though, just needs some looking at with your presentation and bowing - someone may find though a point I haven't noticed.

As I said earlier I didn't really get to fix up my score that much but thanks for the ideas on how to do that.
And for the bow markings I really don't like to mess with those when writing the score I actually kind of just rely on the strings who are playing the peice to do that for them selves and I work out the peice to their liking. So thanks for the comment. Glad you liked my peice

Originally Posted by fegane

As I said earlier I didn't really get to fix up my score that much but thanks for the ideas on how to do that.
And for the bow markings I really don't like to mess with those when writing the score I actually kind of just rely on the strings who are playing the peice to do that for them selves and I work out the peice to their liking. So thanks for the comment. Glad you liked my peice

OK, this is a fair point but I will add that I recently attended a composition workshop where several students works were performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

One student, had written, a beautiful viola solo but without bowings, the viola player had to ask the composer how he was suppose to play it. This is a national professional orchestral player who was confused by his music because the lack of bow markings.

They aren't hard to learn how to do and anyone approaching your piece would be more grateful to you for them.

thanks for the comment point taken

It's funny how most composers on this site like to think that a few cool-sounding sections melded together make a good piece of music. Unfortunately, thats not the case. Not to say this piece isn't fun to listen to, and its a little more well put-together than a lot of others I've listened to, but it really is just that: a few cool-sounding sections melded together. You repeat your main introduction, some thematic material, but you really don't do anything with it. Also, most of the orchestra, or a big chunk of it is playing almost all the time...that gets annoying. While the piano is constantly playing, and it is normally with the orchestra, it seems rarely a part of it, it seems rather detached, I don't know if you were going for that. You have a lot of chords in the piano that I'm sure you liked to think were "grandiose" but really they just sounded cheap. The little piano cadenzas you have are a nice idea, but you just kind of repeat the same notes for a while (e.g. mm. 91 and 161). I do like your use of crescendo and decrescendo though. While it brought expressiveness to the piece, the vast majority of it was loud, which also got annoying. The actual harmony was cluttered and poorly orchestrated (try a little more modest approach to your scoring for winds, meaning use it a bit or scarcely and less "richly" and see what happens). String writing was good from what I could see for the most part though. Pardon my honesty, this really is better than I make it out to be, I tend to point out my criticisms rather harshly, but hopefully you can interpret this tactfully.

Best,
Nico

well who cares you learn more from critisims then you do from praise.Thanks for the honesty