Piano concerto Nr.1, 2nd movement

2nd movement, sonata form

Piano concerto Nr.1, 2nd movement

2 question:

- why are you flooding?

- why is this 2nd movement not part of the other placeholder, containing the 1st and 3rd movement?

Yeah, you can (and should) upload multiple movements of a work together.

The number one thing you can do is clean up the score. There are numerous instances of note collisions, dynamics hidden behind notes, and others-- all of which make the score illegible in certain areas.

There's also a distinct lack of articulation-- very few instances of slurs, accents, or staccato markings. Your recording has a lot of these performed, and it would be nice to see them on paper.

Overall, I really like the thematic material and tone of the piece. I simply think the score needs to be cleaned up substantially, and that the overall structure tightened. This movement runs almost 10 minutes-- is there anything you can cut to get that down by a minute or two?

Great work overall-- just needs cleanup and, I think, some structural coherence.

I don't want to sound harsh, but please learn how to play the piano before writing a concerto for it. I saw maybe 10 measures of the whole piece that were playable, much less idiomatic.

2 question:

- why are you flooding?

- why is this 2nd movement not part of the other placeholder, containing the 1st and 3rd movement?

2 answers:

- I posted 4 works an that day: 2x solo piano section, 1x chamber music, 1x orchestral music, is that flooding? Please dont waste my time which such elementary questions.

- I forgot to upload 2nd movement, after posting just the 2, I couldnt add it. Today I tried to reupload all 3 movements in 1 thread, but there is a problem with the site, I could not do that.

Yeah, you can (and should) upload multiple movements of a work together.

see my previous reply

I don't want to sound harsh, but please learn how to play the piano before writing a concerto for it. I saw maybe 10 measures of the whole piece that were playable, much less idiomatic.

I also don't want to sound harsh, but if you can play just 10 measures of the piano part, you should take more piano lessons an you are surely not a concert pianist. <_< . There are some places I have to fix, its just a prefinal score, thats ok.

I showed it already to a concert pianist who wants to perform it and after fixing some places its ok for him (I must say he plays also Rachmaninoff piano concertos).

BTW I play also the piano of course.

The number one thing you can do is clean up the score. There are numerous instances of note collisions, dynamics hidden behind notes, and others-- all of which make the score illegible in certain areas.

There's also a distinct lack of articulation-- very few instances of slurs, accents, or staccato markings. Your recording has a lot of these performed, and it would be nice to see them on paper.

Overall, I really like the thematic material and tone of the piece. I simply think the score needs to be cleaned up substantially, and that the overall structure tightened. This movement runs almost 10 minutes-- is there anything you can cut to get that down by a minute or two?

Great work overall-- just needs cleanup and, I think, some structural coherence.

Thanks cschweitzer for constructive comment, I will clean up the score.

I also don't want to sound harsh, but if you can play just 10 measures of the piano part, you should take more piano lessons an you are surely not a concert pianist. <_< . There are some places I have to fix, its just a prefinal score, thats ok.

I showed it already to a concert pianist who wants to perform it and after fixing some places its ok for him (I must say he plays also Rachmaninoff piano concertos).

BTW I play also the piano of course.

Sorry I mistyped, I meant to say the reverse. There are about 10 measures that a pianist won't be able to play. And they're the places where it looks as if you randomly stuck octaves in places that would sound good, not in places where it would be idiomatic for a virtuosic pianist to play, and only in the left hand. A pianist just won't be able to play the octaves in m. 34, 35, 36, 37, 45, 48, 152, 154, 161, and 164. The octaves and huge chords a pianist would have to roll rather than play straight like that, with leaping arpeggios, are highly unnatural for a pianist. If you want to write something difficult for a pianist that are natural for him to play, I'd suggest taking a look at the scores of Liszt's Transcendent Etudes and Chopin's Etudes and looking at the score to Rachmaninoff's Piano Concertos rather than just writing it blindly.

nice piece

nice piece

Thanks!

Unfortunately the button "edit movements" still doesnt work, so I cannot upload the 1st and the 3rd movement to this.

I think your ideas here are nice. However, your orchestration needs a lot of work. You have passages in here where you have 1 lonely woodwind competing against a full section of strings. Another where you have a french horn drowning out the orchestra. These definitely need fixed. Structurally, this isn't that bad. A little repetitive at times - but I think your overall structure comes through. Other than that, I have no real complaints.

Wow !!!. What a beautiful inspiration !!!. Absolutely lovely for my taste. You've got beautiful variations on the string section. Though, there are sometimes that arpeggios in the piano turn rather annoying. I don't think that the orchestration need that much work, most issues here could be fixed only adjusting the dynamics of each part along to achieve a proper balance. Task for which a vst synth/sampler, might not be quite accurate or helpful. I think that David's got a point when speaks about the leaps in the arpeggios. Not pretty sure about the usefulness of looking at Liszt's or Chopin's Etudes, considering this one does not really demand the skills to play those etudes. In the case of looking at Rachmaninoff's concertos, I'd say it could enrich your ideas to use other resources than arpeggios, and perhaps develop a little bit more the interaction between the piano and the orchestra, issue for I should say - except for all the parts where piano's arpeggios become annoying - its quite plenty already. This is just is you ever think about rewriting it. Beyond that, Beautiful work. Considering it's been sometime since you posted this work, have you uploaded it completed and revised ? or the web issue does still bother?

Regards,

Hello,

First of all I have a question: Could it be that you have posted this piece before on this site or on another site such as sibelius, because it sounded as I had heard it before, not only the beautiful opening melodic line but also parts of the piano part sounded familiar.

As I may have marked out the last time, and as JAWOODRUF, already mentioned above, I like the melodic line. It is a very beautiful melody which enchants. Congrats for that.

On the other hand: as for the orchestration: it sounds very meager. You refer in your other postings to the concerto's of Rachmaninoff...Well, if you have looked at his scoring for the orchestra you will have noticed that he very seldomly only uses one single instrument. Instead the leading instrument is always accompanied by others who play chords or part of chords. Hence a much fuller sound is achieved. You have to make work of it, as it will improve your composition.

As for the piano part: studying piano myself, I have some questions regarding. Firstly, in a previous posting you mentioned that there were only about ten measures which a pianist would not be able to play. Could you please indicate the measures which you judge unplayable to me? (Mind you, I am not saying I disagree).

Secondly, very unprofessionally in a concerto for a solo instrument are bars 72-83 where you have only the right hand of the piano playing. When looking at it it sounded and looked strange to me, especially as also here, you have the right hand only playing one note at a time, furthermore, it are generally even quarter notes, even not loops. This gave me the impression of being a concerto "für Anfänger". In short: there was a lack of equilibration between the other parts of the movement and that part. Once again, if you look at Rachmaninoff, List, Chopin, and others, you will find that it is very seldom done. Even Shostakovitch in his second concerto, did not do it, although personally I judge it an easy one; he has the line played simultaneously in both hands.

Thirdly: ever so often you seem to close your phrases by chords in double notes. Good for once, but on a repetitive scale it begins to get a bit tedious. When we got to the third time I had something like: ok, here we go again. Sorry but it did not work for me.

To cut things short: you have a beautiful piece, but you need to work at it, both in orchestration as well as in your pianistic styling and development. The question which came into my mind when reading your postings was why you bothered to write bars when you knew they were going to be unplayable to begin with. IT is not much of a professional attitude, IMHO.

Furthermore, We are all here to learn from one another. I got the impression - but I have to admit that English is not my mother tongue which may be the cause of my wrong interpretation - that you were rather hostile to some remarks which were made. The remarks made, were valid. I cannot but repeat: It is a good piece but it needs work, lots of work. So when people make a remark, you do not have to come and swing around by stating that what you do is also done in concertos by Rachmaninof, List, and other great post-romantic composers. Mind you that you are not a Rachmaninoff, nor a List. I did not hear you play yet, so I have no idea on how you play the piano, but judging from your writing in which you use mainly single notes or octaves, I guess you are not yet up to the point of playing the people you mentioned in your postings.

You claim to have found a pianist who is willing to perform this, performing your piece publicaly? I have difficulties believing him to be a professional, as I have difficulties to believe that he would be prepared to have your composition played in the present condition. But then... perhaps things are going much easier and quicker in the States than they are in Europe.

Keep up the good work and rework your movement.

W.S.