Harlequin (a piano miniature)

My composition. I would appreciate any feedback.

Hi @Alexx !

I love the Prokofiev-like angularity of your melodies! The chromaticism is also a welcome feature and very entertaining! Very Russian of you! (You're Russian, right? Forgive me if I'm wrong.) As a critique, I think this sounds slightly artificial without any changes in tempo and at the tempo you have. I think a real pianist would usually play this slightly slower and it would be great if you tried to play and record this yourself. I think at a constant tempo it starts to sound somewhat resembling a Russian Tropak or the famous Russian music from the game "Tetris" (or a march). I think it would greatly enrich your music if you found ways to include tempo fluctuations. For me, I've occasionally written pieces where each measure there's a constant alteration between ritardandi and accelerandi. If you don't want to clutter up your score with those kind of indications you could just write "rubato" at the beginning with the tempo indication and hide the ritard's and accel's. That's of course for a very different kind of piece and doesn't really apply to this particular style you have here. Nonetheless, I think I'll leave my comments for any future piano pieces you may write. Thanks for sharing!

11 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Hi @Alexx !

I love the Prokofiev-like angularity of your melodies! The chromaticism is also a welcome feature and very entertaining! Very Russian of you! (You're Russian, right? Forgive me if I'm wrong.) As a critique, I think this sounds slightly artificial without any changes in tempo and at the tempo you have. I think a real pianist would usually play this slightly slower and it would be great if you tried to play and record this yourself. I think at a constant tempo it starts to sound somewhat resembling a Russian Tropak or the famous Russian music from the game "Tetris" (or a march). I think it would greatly enrich your music if you found ways to include tempo fluctuations. For me, I've occasionally written pieces where each measure there's a constant alteration between ritardandi and accelerandi. If you don't want to clutter up your score with those kind of indications you could just write "rubato" at the beginning with the tempo indication and hide the ritard's and accel's. That's of course for a very different kind of piece and doesn't really apply to this particular style you have here. Nonetheless, I think I'll leave my comments for any future piano pieces you may write. Thanks for sharing!

Thank you very much for the positive feedback. Yes, you’re right, the computer plays it too evenly and unexcitingly. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want too many agogic deviations here. It seems to me that much more attention should go to dynamic shading rather than agogics.

As for the Tropak, that’s an interesting association! I hadn’t noticed the influence of that dance, but perhaps it’s easier to see from the outside. And it’s interesting that the music sounds Russian to you. Yes, I’m Russian, but this piece seemed fairly neutral to me. Just as, by the way, Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony seems relatively neutral to us here, while in Europe, they say, it’s perceived as very Russian.