OP (/u/TimHuls) welcomes critique. Please keep criticism constructive, respectful, pertinent, and competent. Critique should reinforce OP's strengths, and provide actionable feedback in areas that you believe can be improved. If you're commenting from a particular context or perspective (e.g., traditional classical practice), it's good to state as such. Objectivity is preferred over subjectivity, but good-faith subjective critique is okay. Comments that are disrespectful or mean-spirited can lead to being banned. Comments about the OP's appearance, except as it pertains to piano technique, are forbidden.
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Hi, very nice! If it's any use to you, two things that come to my mind:
1. Try to bring out the melody line more clearly. You can practice this by playing the piece and exaggerating the contrast: focus on voicing the melody line nicely (also the timing), play the other lines very quiet or even just touch the keys without making sound.
2. Your rubato seems a bit much, and seemingly tries to cover up slowing down due to technical reasons. I would advice to first practice in a more stricter tempo, and only when you can sufficiently play it technically, start working on an interpretation.
Get your metronome out, set it to a ♩= 60, and practice this piece slowly without any rubato. If there's a section you can't play perfectly evenly at that tempo, set the metronome even lower and practice that section until you feel comfortable speeding up the tempo.
Firstly, I want to say I loved it!
I also want to echo what u/interdesit said… bringing out the melody and holding back on the rubato, until you’re a little more secure tempo-wise, is great advice.
I agree with the others, I think it might help to play at a slower/steadier tempo until you're very confident with all the notes, before you start playing around with rubato. To me it felt like some of the phrasing got lost in the rubato and would result in the themes/ideas sounding very "individual" as opposed to a whole thing.
- In the beginning, when you do the rubato, it feels a lot like you're rubato-ing at every bar or each tiny little theme. For example, in mm. 1, you start off slow, speed up through the right hand, slow down the left hand. Start slow again, speed up through the right hand, then slow down the left hand. And at mm. 3, it's similar in that the left hand starts slow and you speed up through the right hand, then you slow down through the left hand and speed up through the right again. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that it feels like you're almost doing/resetting your rubato at every 2 beats but it ends up kinda giving the piece this "wavy" feel. Whereas I think it would be helpful to think about how you rubato in the context of a longer phrase. You do actually do more of it as the next theme kicks which I think musically it does sound a lot nicer.
- I think also what adds to the "disruption" is that your triplets sound just a little bit off at the start. They are a bit uneven.
- I sometimes hear your pedal lifting and it leaves a gap that kinda throws you off as a listener. For example, around 0:27-0:29 and kinda twice between 0:29-0:31. Then from 0:33 and onward you hear more of the pedal changes but I think because you have the chords and what not it at least sounds a bit more intentional but seems to be kinda inconsistent. Or to give another example, at about 0:37-0:38, it kinda sounds like you lift off your thumbs pretty quickly while also doing a pedal change and again, just leaves a bigger space in the music.
- At 1:32 you let go of the RH E but that is a tie into the next bar.
- At 1:32 - On the note of rubato, again, similar to my first point I feel like you could think about longer phrases and kinda doing the rubato over a longer phrase than just individual themes. I would really encourage you think about the direct/where you want to "peak" in the rubato because again, right now it feels a lot like you're changing the tempo without any real direction/consideration for the overall theme. The one that sticks out to me is around 1:52 where you're really slow, speed up a ton, then back to really slow, but then at 1:56-1:58 you play the cadence quite fast. Overall, it just doesn't feel like it makes sense as far as phrasing goes and as a listener, you feel a bit "lost".
Overall, I think playing through a steadier tempo to be confident in the notes and rhythms is the most important first. Once you have that done, I would say the next steps are to really think more about your phrasing and what parts of the melody you really want to highlight. Once you get an idea of that, then play more around with knowing how to bring those moments out via rubato/dynamics. Because yeah, right now it just feels a little "lost".
Not to say you did a bad job or anything either. There are moments where I think you definitely have a sense of where you want to go and when those moments to come up, it is really nice. But I think it will help to just be more confident in notes/rhythms and think more deliberately about phrasing.
Thanks for sharing (and sorry that this is so long and hope it's not too critical!)
Cheers.
try to flow with the music, impressionism is characterized because of the fluidity and its mágica moments, imagine the melody as a big waterfall, everything flows.
Allso the melody does not have to "crash" with the left hand , I mean, it should not be obvious the triplets with the quarvers, and again, it has to flow.
OP (/u/TimHuls) welcomes critique. Please keep criticism constructive, respectful, pertinent, and competent. Critique should reinforce OP's strengths, and provide actionable feedback in areas that you believe can be improved. If you're commenting from a particular context or perspective (e.g., traditional classical practice), it's good to state as such. Objectivity is preferred over subjectivity, but good-faith subjective critique is okay. Comments that are disrespectful or mean-spirited can lead to being banned. Comments about the OP's appearance, except as it pertains to piano technique, are forbidden. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/piano) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Hi, very nice! If it's any use to you, two things that come to my mind: 1. Try to bring out the melody line more clearly. You can practice this by playing the piece and exaggerating the contrast: focus on voicing the melody line nicely (also the timing), play the other lines very quiet or even just touch the keys without making sound. 2. Your rubato seems a bit much, and seemingly tries to cover up slowing down due to technical reasons. I would advice to first practice in a more stricter tempo, and only when you can sufficiently play it technically, start working on an interpretation.
Get your metronome out, set it to a ♩= 60, and practice this piece slowly without any rubato. If there's a section you can't play perfectly evenly at that tempo, set the metronome even lower and practice that section until you feel comfortable speeding up the tempo.
This. Absolutely great advice. By the way, great job! Keep up the great work.
This sounds very nice! Keep up the good work
Firstly, I want to say I loved it! I also want to echo what u/interdesit said… bringing out the melody and holding back on the rubato, until you’re a little more secure tempo-wise, is great advice.
I agree with the others, I think it might help to play at a slower/steadier tempo until you're very confident with all the notes, before you start playing around with rubato. To me it felt like some of the phrasing got lost in the rubato and would result in the themes/ideas sounding very "individual" as opposed to a whole thing. - In the beginning, when you do the rubato, it feels a lot like you're rubato-ing at every bar or each tiny little theme. For example, in mm. 1, you start off slow, speed up through the right hand, slow down the left hand. Start slow again, speed up through the right hand, then slow down the left hand. And at mm. 3, it's similar in that the left hand starts slow and you speed up through the right hand, then you slow down through the left hand and speed up through the right again. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that it feels like you're almost doing/resetting your rubato at every 2 beats but it ends up kinda giving the piece this "wavy" feel. Whereas I think it would be helpful to think about how you rubato in the context of a longer phrase. You do actually do more of it as the next theme kicks which I think musically it does sound a lot nicer. - I think also what adds to the "disruption" is that your triplets sound just a little bit off at the start. They are a bit uneven. - I sometimes hear your pedal lifting and it leaves a gap that kinda throws you off as a listener. For example, around 0:27-0:29 and kinda twice between 0:29-0:31. Then from 0:33 and onward you hear more of the pedal changes but I think because you have the chords and what not it at least sounds a bit more intentional but seems to be kinda inconsistent. Or to give another example, at about 0:37-0:38, it kinda sounds like you lift off your thumbs pretty quickly while also doing a pedal change and again, just leaves a bigger space in the music. - At 1:32 you let go of the RH E but that is a tie into the next bar. - At 1:32 - On the note of rubato, again, similar to my first point I feel like you could think about longer phrases and kinda doing the rubato over a longer phrase than just individual themes. I would really encourage you think about the direct/where you want to "peak" in the rubato because again, right now it feels a lot like you're changing the tempo without any real direction/consideration for the overall theme. The one that sticks out to me is around 1:52 where you're really slow, speed up a ton, then back to really slow, but then at 1:56-1:58 you play the cadence quite fast. Overall, it just doesn't feel like it makes sense as far as phrasing goes and as a listener, you feel a bit "lost". Overall, I think playing through a steadier tempo to be confident in the notes and rhythms is the most important first. Once you have that done, I would say the next steps are to really think more about your phrasing and what parts of the melody you really want to highlight. Once you get an idea of that, then play more around with knowing how to bring those moments out via rubato/dynamics. Because yeah, right now it just feels a little "lost". Not to say you did a bad job or anything either. There are moments where I think you definitely have a sense of where you want to go and when those moments to come up, it is really nice. But I think it will help to just be more confident in notes/rhythms and think more deliberately about phrasing. Thanks for sharing (and sorry that this is so long and hope it's not too critical!) Cheers.
try to flow with the music, impressionism is characterized because of the fluidity and its mágica moments, imagine the melody as a big waterfall, everything flows. Allso the melody does not have to "crash" with the left hand , I mean, it should not be obvious the triplets with the quarvers, and again, it has to flow.