Last year my brother asked me if I would like to play on his wedding. Without showing any hesitation I said: "Sure, I'd love to." Surely, like many amateurs would have been, I was in fact very hesitant and now very anxious for the big day to come...
As I dreamt for many years of becoming a great pianist, this was my opportunity! Well... not really. Although I did always aspire to become a professional, I know myself well enough to know this is never going to happen. Obviously this doesn't mean I cannot set (ridiculous) high goals for myself, after all I'm a perfectionist at heart.
Picking pieces to play for the wedding was rather tricky. I either could refine and improve what I had already learned to play or pick new, challenging pieces. I settled for the latter and looking back I'm glad I did! + Show Spoiler [Wedding] +
It was quite a search but I ended up picking, in the follow order: Frédéric Chopin - Nocturne in C sharp minor + Show Spoiler +
Edvard Grieg - Des Dichters Herz Gustave Lind - Spring's Awakening
Yes, I managed to give a pretty good performance leaving a few of my family to blink away a tear. + Show Spoiler [pictures] +
Now my teacher has asked me to play at an open house and this time I'd like to set my goals a little higher once more. Like for the wedding, I have about 3 months of time to prepare. I have no idea what piece(s) to play yet. This is where I'd like to ask you for suggestions; the quicker I decide the better I can prepare. I'm looking for something challenging, (read: a bit higher level than what I played at the wedding), and what majority of guests will likely enjoy listening to. Here were my own suggestions: + Show Spoiler +
1. Yes, indeed, you probably heard this piece the first time in Tom and Jerry - The Flying Cat 2.
My teacher said the first one will be technically too challenging and the second one would take more time to prepare playing it for an audience.
Please no Einaudi, Tiersen, Yiruma or Mozart suggestions. Crossing my fingers for some good responds!
Finally, I'd like to recommend any amateurs out there to play for an audience, It really taught me a lot.
TL;DR I'm looking for - to me challenging - piano pieces to prepare for an open house.
I generally play piano extemporaneously. I grew up with piano lessons, but I never enjoyed spending 20+ hours to learn a song, making all kinds of mistakes, and still never getting it to the quality I wanted. Solution? Don't read music. I learned the rules of music theory, how key signatures, chord progressions and such work, and then just played whatever I felt like. It really is a freeing experience. I'm pretty terrible at sight reading, but I'm good at making up tunes on the spot.
Obviously this isn't what you're looking for, but it makes it so that I actually enjoy and look forward to playing piano instead of dreading it. Also, it make performing completely pressureless, as it really doesn't really matter to me whether I'm just practicing or performing, it's all just playing. I've actually gotten pretty good, and almost everyone who hears me play likes it.
Gottta love some good Chopin - for something very challenging i'd recommend Grande Polonaise Brillante op22 or Ballade No.1.. Easier good ones are Waltz No.2 op64, and can't go wrong with nocturnes (op.9 my personal fav but not the most well known). Gl with it
Moonlight Sonata 3rd movement is a really amazing piece. It's so much fun to play it and somehow learning it has a very nice feel to it (unlike some of the more technical pieces), yet it thrives off precision. If played inaccurately it simply doesn't sound good at all imo. ~> Go practice Moonlight Sonata 3rd movement, it's amazing. But play it with the first (and maybe second) movement, somehow I find people to really enjoy the first movement, while the 3rd movement only impresses people that arent themselves playing the piano.
Recommending music is very difficult, since there are so many pieces that are suitable in this case. How about Intermezzo op. 76 no. 7 by Brahms, or Impromptu op. 142 no. 2 by Schubert, or Liebestraum no.3 by Liszt. I'm sure there are many other possible selections.
If you want to play Chopin you can try with one of his Nocturnes, this one is very famous and actually not that technically demanding, so that you can master it in 3 months:
Debussy is also a classic that is again not so technically demanding and very rewarding to play:
Finally for a hard challange, you can try the Fantasie Impromptu, which is technically demanding (but sounds harder than it actually is), and is one of the greatest pieces for piano:
ahahahahaahaahaha, brilliant! You should also look into Sonata II by Cage:
or The Well Tuned piano by Lamonte Young:
No... but seriously, have you thought about some Brahms intermezzi, Ravel, or Debussy works, or maybe even Schumann? There are also some nice Rachmaninov pieces that aren't too taxing technically.
DUDE! Are you kidding me? You played Chopin's Nocturne in C Sharp Minor (the one from the movie The Pianist, right?) for your brothers wedding? Amazing because when I saw this blog, I immediately thought of how I played the same piece for my nephews wedding! The coincidence is just blowing my mind!
Let me contemplate some good suggestions for you and I'm sure I'll have something you like. It seems to me we are operating at very similar levels. But seriously, your teacher thought the Chopin Grand Valse would be too challenging technically? Honestly my feeling is that the piece sounds quite a bit harder than it actually is...but I'm sure your teacher would know better than me!
I'll be back with some solid suggestions. They will probably be Chopin or Schubert, I'm quite the fan of these two!
On June 26 2013 12:47 Kaizen[7] wrote: DUDE! Are you kidding me? You played Chopin's Nocturne in C Sharp Minor (the one from the movie The Pianist, right?) for your brothers wedding? Amazing because when I saw this blog, I immediately thought of how I played the same piece for my nephews wedding! The coincidence is just blowing my mind!
Let me contemplate some good suggestions for you and I'm sure I'll have something you like. It seems to me we are operating at very similar levels. But seriously, your teacher thought the Chopin Grand Valse would be too challenging technically? Honestly my feeling is that the piece sounds quite a bit harder than it actually is...but I'm sure your teacher would know better than me!
I'll be back with some solid suggestions. They will probably be Chopin or Schubert, I'm quite the fan of these two!
I'm not kidding you; I asked them to let me play that piece being inspired by the movie and Władysław Szpilman's story, and I had the bridal couple pick the other 2 from a list of suggestions. In the OP I purposely linked to Wladyslaw Szpilman playing it, because I like to think it is 'his piece'.
Thanks for all serious suggestions so far, it is great help. Some are definitely too hard, I only have 9-10 weeks effectively to prepare for near-concert level. I'd love to play Chopin - Ballade no. 1 or Liszt - Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2, but I'm afraid it's not just very challenging, but simply waaaaaaaaaaaaaay above my skill-level. For now I'm thinking I'm going to settle with either Chopin - Waltz op. 64 no. 2 and/or Chopin - Nocturne op. 9 no.1
I'm studying to become piano technician and prepared piano's really disgust me as much as The Flea Waltz...
What are you into? From the looks of it, you like the Romantics. So a nice show-off-y piece to play at your skill level (perhaps a bit challenging, but not out of reach I think) would be the Rach prelude in G minor.
Mussorgsky's good as well, if you want to play something Russian. Something like the Gate of Kiev would be fun. Or even something from Tchaik's Four Seasons. I think June's the famous one.
For more modern and less well-known pieces, I've really taken a liking to some of the Shostakovich preludes (not from the preludes and fugue) .
Really concise and full of character. Failing that, look up random Skryabin pieces; they're really great once you learn to love his colours.
As for Beethoven, just pick a random piece from sonatas after no.8. It'll probably be good. Ended up doing
for a performance once, which I picked at random while I was procrastinating my Uni finals. Don't play the 3rd movement of the Moonlight; it's too obvious. Do do the second movement as an encore or something though, it's brilliant and charming and waaaay underrated.
EPT
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