Romance for violin and piano

Hello,

This is a piece I composed last summer at composing master class held by Mineas Bourbadakis in Germany. It is for violin and piano. It is performed by my piano teacher and one violin teacher of our conservatory at my composition concert in May. This is also one of rare pieces I have score in my computer so I can also share it with you all. I hope you enjoy listening to theese cold athmospheres from snowy Finland.

YouTube - Zinovjev: Romance for violin and piano

Sincerly,

Sauli Zinovjev

romanssi.pdf

Nice work with some interesting tonal shades. The violin verges on the edge of dragging on too long, but you keep changing things quickly enough to maintain the listener's attention. The piano accompaniment is great. It'd be nice to have a recording with better sound quality, though. This recording is a little "muddy".

Very nice! I love the beginning, mysterious and evocative. In my opinion this could be a longer piece: after the beautiful exposition, you should introduce some new, contrasting ideas and give more space to the violin - I think there's a problem with balance in the middle of the piece. The return to the first idea at the end is well done but maybe too predictable - it would be nice to have some kind of variation process there. Anyway, good job and please post more! Ciao

Beautiful piece. When I heard the arpeggios at the beginning I was like ehh lol, I thought it was just going to be a normal tonal piece. The harmony makes it so that the listener keeps their attention on the piece, which is good. The piano accompaniment gets a little monotonous at the beginning, but the violin part is beautiful. Good work!!

I found this extremely beautiful. A great work in all aspects. I found myself captivated by the colors that you created.

But the score is in need of attention. And the performance, as MatthewSchwartz said, gets a bit "muddy".

Two thumbs up!!!

PS. Bourbadakis? Greek, I suppose?

It was delightful. I loved the not so fine line between major and minor. The parallel thirds in the begining and the end worked very well. The harmony drove the piece and it's always amazing when a composer is able to do that.

What a beautiful piece. Loved the the harmony and the journey. Reminded me a little of the violin solo in the beginning of Vaughn Williams: Serenade to Music.

Very nice.

nice work and it does remind me alot of the violin solo in serenade to music...you should listen to it and compare

Wow, this was sublime, delicate, passionate, very evocative and certainly very beautiful. I've listened to it four times now; your harmonies are so sensitive, the piece is definitely one of the most romantic 'Romances' I've heard. I love it, thank you.

I personally found it very delicate, the harmonies working well together. Your piano part was written well, but, your violin part borders on being too, erm, stretchy in a sense.

I love your harmonies, they really fitted the theme that you were trying to express.

It is certainly very romantic. But a subtle one, not passionate (not very) but definitely reminds me of sweet, lingering love. yeah.

By the way, Sorry to ask, I think it is a stupid question:

Although I could subtly determine a tonal ceter for this piece, it is certainly very much uhm, moving about? is what you wrote polytonality? or is it..?

Hope you can be patient with me on this one.:toothygrin:

Thank you all for your interest!

Firstly, manosgg, what do you mean the score is in need of attention? In my opinnion, there is enough information for good musicans to create a performance. Bourbadakis is Greek, you are right. But he lives in Germany now days. I'm going to his master class this year also. What comes to the performance, I agree it isn't perfect, but I'm satisfied. Few of my friends are playing this piece also so maybe we might get a better version some day :)

Lorenzio Salvagini, you are totally right that this could have been a longer piece. Actually, I had something around 10min in my head when starting to write this, but as usually, I became inpatience and squeezed to this 4 mins. Also some variation and development would make good for this work and give some more lenght. As we all know, development and variating is the hardest part of composing. Next piece I do, I will practise some more of it. Actually, I apreciate your comment and think of maybe trying to do some re-writing and add some contrasting ideas as you suggested.

David, it is natural I write better for piano as a pianist. :) Can you point out some specific places where the violin part reaches the borders so I can try to fix them? Or I'm not absolutely sure what you mean by stretchy. Do you mean there is too much or less? By the way, the moving tonality is called freetonal, for example prokofiev wrote in this way also.

Voce, "When I heard the arpeggios at the beginning I was like ehh lol, I thought it was just going to be a normal tonal piece." you got my point ;) Good thinking.

Overall, thank you all for listening and leaving some comments. I'm absolutely glad that you all enjoyed it!

'Enough information' is one thing, professional (or at least professionally-looking) notation is another. If you'd like me to point out some issues in your notation, I'll gladly do it. :)

well...what I would say has been said already. So...let me just say...it was beaut....oh wait, thats been said.

It was very delic...oh wait, thats been said too.

Screw it.

I like it.

'Enough information' is one thing, professional (or at least professionally-looking) notation is another. If you'd like me to point out some issues in your notation, I'll gladly do it. :)

I would be pleased. :)

Well, your piece certainly had some very beautiful moments. In terms of criticism: I think that maybe the piece was a little schmaltzy for me: the exposition section was quite good, but the more propulsive middle section with its bombastic triplets in the piano part and the conventional harmony starting around bar 44, to me doesn't sound quite as passionate, melancholic and frantic as you might have wanted. The repeated triplets, reminiscent of the energy in Scriabin, to me seems a little unimaginative. Yes, the triplets do give the propulsive power and energy, to an extent, but, coupled with the uninteresting base octaves your piano part generally is quite boring.

My other biggest complaint was the lack of development of your material. You start off with an interesting main theme and harmonization, but the themes in the middle section (at least as far as I have reviewed) have nothing to do with this opening idea so the piece doesn't have quite as much unity as hoped. The middle section just sort of seems stuck in there: it's not a natural, organic development of your opening material, it's just some other mood. This along with the less interesting middle harmony and piano part are probably what is contributing to my feeling of "schmaltz". And as someone mentioned earlier, a varied recapitulation of your opening material would make it seem fresher and different: remember your piece has gone through strife so the opening tranquil material would have to have been transformed somehow: this could mean changing harmonies, changing melodic lines, adding and transforming ideas from your middle section or ornamenting your melody.

That out of the way I do want to say that this piece had some very enjoyable moments. Your opening is very good and the harmony is really very well done. Just remember what I said and I think that if you incorporate just some of these ideas, your next piece will work even better and with less schmaltz.

Wow, there's alot of umm..chromaticism in this piece..chromatic scale fragments etc. I agree with J.Br actually..the exposition/main theme was very enjoyable ..the middle section was very "triplety" and even dissonant at times. To my utter surprise I actually liked this piece..usually I am not a fan of chromatics and dissonance but you seem to put in a balancing factor in this piece, it seems odd how at times the piece seems to have no direction..like it's ahrd to tell what's going on, I actually liked this aspect of the piece..this lost feeling you get while listening..especially in the middle. Those haunting low tones on the piano were an interesting addition as well. Very, very good job Zino...I absolutely love it, this inspires me.

I would be pleased. :)

No time now, but drop me a PM later and I will. :)

Hello,

This is a piece I composed last summer at composing master class held by Mineas Bourbadakis in Germany. It is for violin and piano. It is performed by my piano teacher and one violin teacher of our conservatory at my composition concert in May. This is also one of rare pieces I have score in my computer so I can also share it with you all. I hope you enjoy listening to theese cold athmospheres from snowy Finland.

YouTube - Zinovjev: Romance for violin and piano

Sincerly,

Sauli Zinovjev

Wow! A genuinely beautiful piece of music. The recording let's it down. Lot's of great new ideas interwoven beautifully with familiar ones. Easily one of the best works I've heard on this forum.