E-cital 52 11/14/2018

Recital 52

11/14/2018

Frederick
Chopin

Prelude
Op. 28, No. 4

…The Prelude Op. 28, No. 4 by
Frédéric Chopin is one of the 24 Chopin preludes.

By Chopin’s request, this piece was played at his own funeral,
along with Mozart’s Requiem.

Here is my rendition …thanks for the listen and reading
.

Although this may sound naive to the master of music and piano,
this beautiful piece is by far the hardest piece
I’ve attempted to play.
The reason I found this difficult was because of the necessary
pedaling [ soft and sustain] and the dynamics.
The soft pedal and sustain are essential to keep it from sounding
“muddy” and the dynamics are also hard to imitate from hearing.

The ebb and flow of the emotion it creates is dramatic and of a
grand , sad passage of life.

I did my best at this; and it took quite a while ,
maybe 30 recordings because of the subtle chord-note-
changes .
Still– the tempo was hard to maintain steadily, which
you’ll hear in this rendition.
I [in error] increased the tempo during the
piece.
But I am quite satisfied because this really was more of a
challenge than I imagined.
The satisfaction I’d assume comes from the fact that I tackled the difficulty that originally I’d thought would be an easy piece …the satisfaction is proportional.

The Video:

Ecital 51 -8.18.2018-

My youtube Channel

Same piece – recorded midi data thru pianoteq- Piano Only

 

Jules
Massenet-Elegy in E Minor

 

 

Young Massenet

Wiki

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Élégie by Jules Massenet (1842-1912) was perhaps one of the most popular melodies in Europe of the fin desiècle, the last decades of the nineteenth century, often referred to as the Belle Epoque. Massenet originally composed Élégie in 1866 for a piano cycle titled Pièces de Genre, Op. 10 Nº 5. In 1872, he incorporated the piece into Les Erinnyes (The Furies), a play by Leconte de Lisle. The sorrowful melody for muted cello became a solo piece entitled Mélodie-Elégie and was arranged numerous times for many instruments and instrumental ensembles. At some point it was adapted to the lyrics ‘O doux printemps d’autrefois’ by Louis Gallet (1698?-1757).

 

 

E-cital 50 5 14 2018 “Winter Light”

Ecital 50

“Winter Light” 

it was the first piece I learnt on my grand piano about 9
years ago.

I heard the piece when watching the movie “The Secret
Garden”,  and the sound of the solo piano struck me, and I felt and heard the beauty of music.

For me this piece has a
personal aspect that maybe someday I’ll write about.

I had  recorded this piece previously and posted it in the
‘piano bars”. It was quite awhile ago.

This is  today’s recording.  I thought about what I’ve
gained since I learned this piece 9 years ago:
Piano wise I’d say  a lot of theory ,
 my limits ….(which is  good to know ,but they might
be an illusion?)
No ..Nah, they’re real.
And the lyrics seem even more true with getting
“mature’?   🙂

AND …The technical stuff:  Recorded on a Privia PX
100  direct to a dell laptop with stings and through
Cakewalk  Edirol for the piano only solo.   

NOW_The Important Lyrics
and My videos.

for comparison….

Winter Light

Linda
Ronstadt

Hearts call
Hearts fall
Swallowed in the rain

Who knows
Life grows
Hollow and so vain

Wandering in the winter
light
The wicked and the sane
Bear witness to salvation
And life starts over again

Now the clear sky is
all around you
Aah aah
Love’s shadow will surround you
All through the night

Star glowing in the
twilight
Tell me true
Hope whispers and I will follow
Till you love me too

Ah ah ah

Now the clear sky is all around you
Aah aah
Love’s shadow will surround you
All through the night

Star glowing in
the twilight
Tell me true
Hope whispers and I will follow
Till you love me too

Ah ah ah

Alot has happened in 9 years. so anyway I hope you enjoy the
music.

(Ihope I play better than 9 years ago)

E-cital 49 Classical Music- J. Haydn- Little Serenade

(Franz)
Joseph Haydn

^[n1] (/ˈhaɪdən/;
German: [ˈjoːzɛf ˈhaɪdən] ( listen);
31 March^[n
2] 1732 – 31 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was
instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the piano trio^[2] and his contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets “Father of the Symphony” and “Father of the String Quartet“.^[3]

Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the
wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate.
Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other
composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it,
“forced to become original”.^[n
3] Yet his music circulated widely, and for much of
his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe.

He was a friend and mentor of Mozart, a teacher of Beethoven, and the older brother of composer Michael Haydn.

E-cital 48 11.15.2017

ecital 48 11 14 2017

1.Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 1 in B flat minor.Shortened Version

2. Bach Choral BWV 514

-I gained a deeper respect for a seasoned Pianist when I tried this difficult piece.
 I shortened the piece and slowed the tempo quite a bit,
hopefully keeping the “feel and spirit” .
Anyway I hope you like it, 
Thanks for Listening!

Video ..

Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 1   Pg 1	Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 1 Pg 2	Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 1 Pg 3

R-ecital 47 Arias by J. S. Bach. – BWV 508 and 515. 8.15.2017

2 Arias by JS Bach. – they are BWV 508 and 515.
I practiced both for 3 months, but not too regularly. Once recorded, I realized that I had made errors in the timing, so I re- recorded, which was frustrating because overall I made small timing errors throughout again. I also added an organ to the same midi data of BWV 515 and channeled it through TTS cakewalk.
Note that the organ sound is more authentic to the time period when BWV 515 was composed, but to me sounds “too” formal for the piece . The nuances of timing and dynamics will be improved in the future. Thanks for listening and…
Hope you like the music!

E-cital 46 hymnal Praise…

A small contribution …

E-cital 45 Inspiration composer Matt Dennis

A slow lazy jazz piano piece from the 60’s.
Love the feel. Of course maybe not played as well as it could-of been.
-Flu season……

Hope you like- and thanks for Listening !

E-cital 44 November 15 2016

I didn’t  play what I originally planned to play.
That piece was
Claire de Lune (Debussy) or
“The Minuet” by Paderweski. , A long, 7 page piece with cadenza’s
and somewhat  technically skilled, that I thought would’ve
taken longer to hone.

But I’ll have to plan that for the future. The reason for not
getting it in is poor time management, night shift work and a few
important
projects that need completed , one which was finishing a faux piano
(the least important) compared to getting central heating, etc.
A pic is here.

[url=http://postimg.org/image/bk9ezvze7/][img]http://s19.postimg.org/bk9ezvze7/Untitled_22.jpg[/img][/url]
This room is a make-shift living room ,I did some of the artwork ,
but still needs more finishing to the piano. so…that’s that?
IF   I get a chance to re-record I’ll do it with the
digital fitted in the faux piano shell. (Broke the faux harp I made
to fit.)
-If you have kids , it’s a great project to do together or if you
just want to do a faux piano yourself.

The pieces I choose to do instead are from USSM Piano study and are
composed what sounds as  choral harmony.
Both are very solid sounding and harmonically beautiful.
They are


And the MP3
http://yourlisten.com/Piano_Primo_1/e-cital-44-nov-15-2016

Share Music – Embed Audio Files – http://yourlisten.com/embed.js?17612003

1. Amazing Grace

2. A Closer Walk with Thee. (arr by John Murphy)

I added strings as a second layer because it really adds the
fullness of a “choir” sound to the pieces, (chorale).

Hope you like them .

E-cital 43 August 15th, 2016

E-cital 43

Solfeggetto–
C.P.E. Bach

C.P.E. Bach	Fredrick the Great playing flute with CPE Bach

A note about the study of the piece “Solfeggetto”.
This piece was quite a challenge for me because of
the super fast “Prestisssimo”
tempo, and the fingering positions ( though I played many of my own that felt natural when I began practicing,) that are necessarily made for the
piece to sound and play smooth.
After 3 mos, I had it to a point of tempo, but it sounded
like a  jumbled sequence of notes, even though note-wise, played
correctly.
 I kept at it, until I got a sense of internalizing
the piece’s tempo which to me has the sense of a gallop.
That sense helped me to play the piece to tempo, maybe more
“musically”,
and  the youtube videos that explained-demo’ed the
fingering positions.

The 2nd piece following Solfeggetto is from Alfred’s group
piano study, titled “Dream Echoes” .
A reflective, somber and easy  piece that is a
relaxing “round off “after the first.

** I didn’t use the score below-it is from IMSLP…
I used the marked up scores that made the note reading easy to
learn .
here:

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