♫ Ballade:
• OK, first of all the piano sound you have chosen is a bit weird to me, specially the for lowest notes —which sound almost like an electronic bass—. Concerning the playability of some parts and without and in-depth analysis, I would say that Henry's comment is accurate in the way some parts would definitely need pedalling but that may have unwanted consequences in the sound during a real performance. But well we have some "playable" parts too that seem to be intendedly hand-breaking, haha:
• The piece itself improves with time in my opinion, from a no-go to me in the beginning to very fascinating rhythmical motives at the end. So in my opinion, you have a potentially good piece there but it needs polishing and more directionality (in case you think this is what you seek for) in some parts. Engraving issues are also a thing to mention and we don't have to dive too much to see some stuff like this where stems direction to indicate voices isn't clear and some silences are either unneeded or can be better aligned (or even compressed). I do encourage you to use 8va bassa and alta —or even change the clef— whenever you see that most of the stuff you put on a section happens to be located off the staff.
• Another question regarding the engraving: what do these double bars mark? (e.g: end of M33).
• Since this is a personal choice I won't really criticize it but seeing that this piece has lots of beamed notes changing the time signature might be worth considering, but that's just a detail, it's not like there's lots of pieces with much, much more beam density out there!
♫ Syncopation:
• I would say that the beginning was a little weak to my taste but just as it happened with the Ballade, it does improve with time. Why are there notes in red BTW?
• I would say that I liked this piece more than the Ballade overall. It's more simple yet (or as a consequence of that) the melody flows easily. Again you don't lose opportunity to try some rhythmic variations on the theme —those tenths in the piano are killing though—, but these are the only noticeable variations. There's barely to no dynamics, and the more the piece advances, the less meaningful the initial motive is. I believe the climax and my favourite part was reached before starting these rhythmic variations that despite telling me there's ambition in this piece, it is just not well executed in my opinion. The ending didn't convince me either, it was too abrupt; the momentum you created with the ostinato went nowhere.
• All in all, I liked it more than the Ballade, specially the "build-up" part before the rhythmical variations came.
♫ Quartet:
• The title says "2 hour composition". What does it mean? That the full piece lasts 2 hours or that it took you 2 hours to compose it?
• Yet again, the very first bars were not so convincing, but after that there's a truly enjoyable section that lasts till 1:40 aprox, where (too) suddenly a more peculiar section, featuring a more rhythmical approach appears, and while it stands a bit better than the other two at the beginning, it ends into a mess where the piano squashes and gets rid of what was left of the very nice melody and balance that you made at the beginning of the piece. And yet again, the ending doesn't make justice to the momentum you questionably created out of the nothingness.
• Engraving "issues" like uncompressed silences are present, but much less than in the Ballade.
In summary, none of this three pieces you presented convinced me. In my honest and humble opinion, all of them followed the same pattern: A weak beginning, continued by a very promising section that at some point suddenly transitioned to a higher or lower degree of chaos, showing in not the most desirable way that the ambitions of these pieces.
Working on dynamics and phrasing, as well as being more careful on not hindering readability of the scores will probably be of great help towards unlocking the full potential of the pieces you brought here, and carefully choosing which ideas fit better (and where) is something that one should not forget, too. In my opinion, you create nice rhythms and other interesting combinations but there are better ways to introduce them without making your works extremely difficult or by doing so in a sudden, without preparation, etc.
Hope I've not been to dense and that something I have written is of use to you.
Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.