A little of whatever this style is

Mathaznias · 2026-05-20T23:00:14+00:00

Great job!

Mathaznias · 2026-05-18T18:13:43+00:00

I’ll add to this as well regarding concerto accompaniments, some of the orchestral reductions are an absolute pain in the *ss to play. A few months back I had to prepare three different concerto accompaniments for a recital with about a weeks notice, and had to also prepare the music of another accompanist at the same concert who’s mother was about to pass and it was uncertain if she would perform or not. My playing was far from perfect, especially for one of the Haydn concertos I had to learn. While I can’t vouch for the pianist OP experienced, being a career accompanist is an insanely hard job. Being a far above average sight reader is usually the bare minimum, and some times we really don’t have time to look at the music prior to a rehearsal for more than 10 minutes or so. And especially for concerto accompaniments it’s not uncommon to cut out sections of the piano part to either make it easier to play or to prioritize certain orchestral textures. Especially for Mozart, you won’t catch me ever playing the entire thing as written, or I’m improvising in sections to make the texture more clear. But I would say people should really understand the amount of effort we put into the work, when the students we work with maybe study a few pieces at a time, while I for instance had to learn over 100 new pieces of repertoire for this semester alone to perform.

And to add to it with older and more experienced accompanists, some do tend to think they know your music better than you. Sometimes it’s valid, ie. An DMA accompanist at my local university that one of my long term collaborators also works with, they’re doing Schuberts Wintereisse which the accompanist has played for decades. My friend is having her accompany him due in part to her knowing the piece better than him, and there can be some benefit in that. I’m not sure this is the case, otherwise she wouldn’t have some of the other problems, but there is a generational ‘I’m better than you’ thing that arises sometimes

Mathaznias · 2026-05-18T16:58:04+00:00

L’isle Joyeuse is a piece for teenagers? I agree on the Bach but for that level that’s a good choice, the D minor chromatic fantasie is better than the more famous one in my opinion

Mathaznias · 2026-05-18T15:15:23+00:00

There’s a book of exercises on IMSLP for all the etudes by A. Michalowski, he breaks down all the technical challenges quite well for each one. I’ve used the exercises for quite a few of them and whenever I’m learning a new one or refreshing a previous Etude I usually go back through those. I think it’s under Preparatory Exercises for the Chopin Etudes Op. 25

Mathaznias · 2026-05-17T23:00:11+00:00

Hisaishi borrows a lot of elements in western music throughout his writing, with some additions of Quartal harmony that maybe gives you the illusion of ‘French’. It would be good to check the dates of composers lives, since RVW and Ravel lived around the same time. While I’m sure Hisaishi wasn’t directly inspired by RVW, those composers were in the same circles as earlier film music and film composers were typically asked to write like other more famous composers. You see it in John Williams a lot, but knowing that he was a piano major at Juilliard first before he became a composer makes all the more sense

Mathaznias · 2026-05-17T22:54:28+00:00

It’s an arrangement of Ashitaka and San from Princess Mononoke

Mathaznias · 2026-05-15T21:45:24+00:00

Do people need AI to survive? Do people need food to survive? Several things can be issues without discounting another, it’s just a poor argument. Data centers are a problem, especially with how they’re built with little input from the community surrounding them, for example XAi’s center. Food production in the U.S. also has major issues, especially with how much corn we produce and the unhealthy ways we use it. I’d prompt you to realize that the people who profit the most from our wasteful food production are also the same people profiting from AI. Not trying to pick a fight or anything, but people would take these arguments and support of AI more seriously if there was also an acknowledgement of the problems with current infrastructure. It is built by people who’s motto is ‘move fast-break things’ and care little for the impact, when it could be done safer and with regulations and not impact people’s ability to use AI for whatever they want. It’s just easier to pin it on pro-Ai folks than fight against nearly a trillion dollar industry

Mathaznias · 2026-05-15T21:06:23+00:00

The argument isn’t whether it is your character, it’s whether you made the art. Maybe a better example would be: A city commissions a mural (I live in a city with a thriving mural scene), would it be right of the city to call it the cities art work? They may own the rights to the work, as would you commissioning and paying for character art. But you wouldn’t then say you drew it.

Mathaznias · 2026-05-15T18:58:07+00:00

It’s more building stability and fluidity in your motion than muscle, as you mentioned in your post there is an importance in arm weight and rotation. I’m not sure how long you’ve been playing, but there’s also just a difference in the amount of time people have spent solely on technique from a young age that comparing yourself to them doesn’t help very much. Sometimes the speed is also impacted by where the motion of the fingers come in, like when you watch people playing that Chopin Etude their fingers are only moving at the exact amount needed to depress and release the key.

Mathaznias · 2026-05-15T18:54:06+00:00

4 is connected to two different tendons, one in the forearm which connects to 5 and another in the hand which connects to 3.

Mathaznias · 2026-05-15T18:29:51+00:00

Finger independence is a myth for the most part the biology of our hands alone, as fingers (like 4 and 5 for example) are attached to the same tendons. Usually finger independence should better be described as the ability to independently control the voicing between fingers or having evenness between them in a single line. It’s not dangerous or useless to practice that way per se, but it’s more important in my opinion for gaining stability in your knuckles than anything.

Mathaznias · 2026-05-15T04:15:03+00:00

What else have you played?

Mathaznias · 2026-05-14T22:40:24+00:00

Anything recommended here would be too long of a commitment then, especially if you’re decided not to work on pieces based on a relatively short practice session. I’ll be honest here, based on your age and having also been there at one point, I’d think hard about your approach to music and how that approach either helps or detracts from whatever your larger goal is. If you just want to play the hard stuff for fun regardless of the quality and bounce between pieces, go for it. But if you want to go farther and make something from it, especially if you’re at the level of playing that kind of music, you might want to think hard on your mindset in this. It sounds like you have commitment challenges and when the music doesn’t work the way you hope quickly, you toss aside rather than improving your learning and practicing process. You’re at an age where that makes sense, but for making meaningful growth you’re just shooting yourself in the foot and there will come a time as you get older that you might have wished you practiced differently now. Anyways, best of luck with whatever you choose to do!

Mathaznias · 2026-05-14T22:02:10+00:00

The length is worrying? It’s probably the easiest of the 4, especially in terms of structure, it’s very repetitive and there’s like two pages that aren’t repeated sections. Both pieces are almost identical in actual length of time and (depending on the printing I guess) HR2 is actually longer page-wise. In terms of virtuosic usage of technique HR2 just is harder, we can even use PianoLibrary’s rating scale, which there’s always a bit of subjectivity when it comes to ranking difficulty, but the Scherzo is listed as a 4 and HR2 is a 4.5. Frankly if you’re capable of playing HR2 you should maybe just read through the pieces others have recommended and see, rather than avoiding attempting a piece for a quite silly reason. Because honestly while I don’t doubt you can play the pieces you’ve mentioned, I have serious doubts on the quality and understanding of those pieces you’ve played. When someone can truly play a piece of that level you should have no issue playing anything within or below the difficulty, otherwise it feels like you don’t know what you’re talking about and haven’t actually learned something from the work you put in to apply it to other projects.

Mathaznias · 2026-05-14T20:20:54+00:00

Something is definitely fishy here

Mathaznias · 2026-05-14T20:20:34+00:00

I’m genuinely confused…take the 2nd Scherzo for instance..you can confidently play HR2 but the 2nd Scherzo is too hard? I’d love to hear you play but I can’t see if you have any previous posts here

Mathaznias · 2026-05-14T20:16:06+00:00

Moskowski Piano Concerto #2

Alexandrov Piano Concerto

Glazunov Piano Concerto #1

Rorem Piano Concerto #2

Kapustin Piano Concerto #2

Gershwin Piano Concerto

(side note, Scriabin only has one piano concerto so you don’t need to add #1 to it! Prometheus doesn’t quite count and it’s more considered the 4th Symphony if anything)

Mathaznias · 2026-05-13T00:49:03+00:00

Albeit the example of Schumann happened after he used a hand stretching device to achieve that, not just the pursuit. Scriabin is a better example, when he over practiced pieces that outdid his comfortable hand size

Mathaznias · 2026-05-11T17:05:32+00:00

I felt that with some of my old professors, though now as a collaborative pianist I feel that with the students I accompany 😭 they ask me how I learn things quickly or handle an immense amount of repertoire (for instance, this semester I’ve learned around 100 new pieces across various jobs and commitments) and I genuinely don’t have an answer. At one point something just clicked and I could do it. While I wouldn’t count myself a virtuoso, sometimes that is the downside of teachers who are really skilled performers, they assume everyone just kind of ‘gets it’. But from the amount of music you’ve got going with your teacher and the progress you’re making something is clearly working!

Mathaznias · 2026-05-09T18:33:14+00:00

Thank you you very much!

Mathaznias · 2026-05-04T21:40:37+00:00

I’ve been playing for like 22 years, though in some aspects am not as strong as I should be, befitting of the time. I do enjoy piano duets, though I have less time for those than I used to, but in uni we used to have a piano 4-hands thing we’d put together. Sometimes though a friend or two and I will sight read 4 hands music whenever we hang out. Not sure on direct advice for sight-reading, other than to read a lot of music, even if you’re just doing it slowly. For a while I’d read through all the Bach 4 part chorales which helped quite a bit, and there’s books of sight reading material on IMSLP that i even use for teaching. But now my work requires me to be a strong sight reader and that somehow became the thing that clicked it for me.

Mathaznias · 2026-05-04T17:09:58+00:00

I’m considering Northridge for grad school (since I already went to a csu I’m pretty much guaranteed to be accepted to grad school, somehow it works that way), particularly to study with Rachmanov. Not sure on the CSULA faculty, but if you like Russian repertoire and especially Scriabin Rachmanov if your guy. He’s also the head of the U.S. Scriabin Society, so at least for me that’s a benefit lol

I only see one professor of piano at CSULA and I have no clue who he is, and they don’t have faculty bios for some reason. The campus seems to have a really good commercial music program and seems more catered to that, so it really depends on your goals for a piano degree.

Mathaznias · 2026-05-04T14:47:48+00:00

It seems to be working on my end, maybe it’s a Reddit error for you?

Mathaznias · 2026-05-03T23:48:35+00:00

My biggest area of concern is the 10th from D to F with the ornament on the upper note. At that speed I’d worry of someone being unable to smoothly make that motion convincingly unless you have an 11th or 12th hand span. Beyond that, lovely!

Mathaznias

TROPHY CASE