Piano Concerto in G minor

Originally Posted by steventanoto

I also agree that some piano parts aren't possible to be played and the orchestration wasn't really careful. I should remind myself to take care of the orchestral parts better when I edit it.
Steven

When you say that some piano parts can't be played... does that mean that you never sat down at the piano and played out any of this? Did you just sit at a midi program punching in notes, or writing them down in a concerto book?

Even if a piece looks playable... that doesn't mean it was written pianistically. True... sometimes pieces like the Rach3 might seem insane and impossible to play, it is playable in the end, just with a lot of hard work. But when you get a piece that you might look at and say, "Yeah. That's possible!" you might find later on that it isn't playable due to akward movements, and jumps, etc.

It's generally a better idea to actually sit at the piano, play something, write it down, and go from there, making sure everything is within your own technical boundries. Otherwise, if you can't play it, why should anybody else?

In regards to the work itself, I must say that I suck at giving detailed analysis of major works. However, I did notice the "wandering" feeling that everybody is bringing up. Also, I enjoyed this piece in its outset, but about half-way through the piece I was no longer entraped.

With some reworking, this could be a great piece. Keep it up.
I hope I don't sound to harsh with my comments... that's just my style of criticism. Sorry in advance!

camaysar, thanks a lot for the advices.. With heaps of recommendation of other composers, especially those that I have only heard of the name. Your suggestions are really appreciated =)

demonic_advent, yeah, I should do that, but I haven't gotten around doing so yet, but some parts were played and written down though.

I have attached the slightly newer version and revised version of the concerto but I still feel there are a lot of improvement needed musically, technically and everythingcally =P

I'll keep revising this work now and then...

Thanks again for all the comments, guys!

ST

Good job on your piano concerto, you have obviously given much time and effort to this piece. Assuming that you are a beginniner composer by the issues already brought up here, the best suggestion I can give you is to work on SMALL pieces, notice that I capitlized small =), everyone has there moments of glory, I must admit I tried writing a piano concerto before I could even read alto clef.. which is ok I guess, but look what I'm saying here is that there is no shame in starting out small. My favorite composer of all J.S. Bach, was the master of writing on a small and large scale. ALthough his WTC for piano can be seen as a HUGE work if looked at entirely, the individual fugues and preludes are all relatively small pieces. I suggest you look at those, and try writing much shorter pieces before you delve into large orchestral writing. How about a nice solo piano prelude, or a piano trio, or a violin sonata, or anything chamber, just please, take it from me, I myself have been working on Small scale works and it has really helped to improve my writing, you don't have to do it of course, but I hope you do.
Good job nonetheless, although I must say I think you should put down this work for some time, try to compose a short piece with a simple form, like a set of variations for example, and then come back to it once you have more experience with writing music.
Good luck, and happy new year!

or almost new year ...

Yeah, I have written quite a few smaller scale works, when I was improvising one day, I was just getting this ideas, so I wrote them down like this. But of course I will work more on smaller scale works. Although I should say that my passion is in orchestral music (I dislike piano music).

About putting down this work for some time, I have been doing that for quite a while haha. I just realised I haven't posted the newer version that I wrote after I posted up the first version I did here.

Don't worry I have no intention to seriously concentrating on finishing this piece.

ah ok.. no worries! just tooting my horn, you dislike piano music! i beg to differ, piano concerto = piano music in my book heh

Well, technically it is piano music, but it is also orchestral music... So I like it. haha... I'm weird =P

Dear Mr steventanoto

I liked your concerto and you have talent.
Continue!

Steven,

I hope you won't be upset in saying that I found this piece a little...hm...empty. Mostly smoke and little fire. That said though, it was a lot of fun to listen to. Some really nice things I liked were around 1:49 how the triplet, motif, almost, was transfered from piano to strings, and then combined with the previous melody in the woodwinds. Smooth move . Your harmonic writing is very very good and your movement and modulation is also well written. However, most of your development is really just flashy chords and arpeggios and some romantic chromaticism, all very cliche and uninteresting writing. The pizzicato strings around 4 minutes was a nice change, but you fell right back into that previous writing style. I hoped that you would do something a little different with the beautiful melodies that were presented to us around the 4 minute mark, but instead you merely fancied it up instead of really taking off with it. Development of thematic material and musical phrases is some of the time effective with "fancying up" as you have done continually, but it really needs to change directions. A piece of music is really a trip: the development being the road and the thematic material a car. What you have done, at least in my opinion, is merely spent a lot of your time re-painting the car and spiffing it up instead of making it go anywhere. True, a lot of the piano effects were cool, and your orchestration wasn't bad at all, I happened to enjoy the dialogue and equality of the piano and orchestra (I try to do that in the piano concerti I write...or used to write rather). But the things like 8:40-9:00 are the rather pointless "smoke" that I'm talking about, along with most of your development. When you think you're changing direction, you're really doing nothing more than giving us a new theme, and then "re-painting" that one too and making it all flashy. You do return to your previous themes, but never in a truly different manner, simply a more severe one. I realize my commentary is rather one-tracked, but I feel like thats the most giant issue of your piece. The themes themselves I must say were quite nice. Very melodic, easy to walk away humming (thats really the idea). Catchy, but not obscene. Simple, but not boring or moronic. Again, the use of piano and orchestra together and separately was nice, I just think you could really "take off" with the music next time, instead of putting it in different pairs of clothing =].

Best of luck with future compositions, good job, and please keep writing!

Nicola

This reminds me of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto in B flat minor.....

Anyway I liked it a lot...keep up the good work