Pianist

For over 20 years we have been bringing you fantastic scores to learn and giving you the chance to hear the music on our exclusive CD. Due to commercial realities in the UK and across the globe, the CD will no longer be attached to newsstand copies. Newsstand readers – don’t despair, though. There are still ways that you can access the tracks: 1 BECOME A SUBSCRIBER! The CD comes free with all subscriber copies – no matter where you are in the world. 2 Stream the album on Spotify. This issue’s album can be found at pianistm.ag/spotify. Alternatively, just search for ‘Pianist Magazine’ in the Spotify search bar. 3 Write to me at editor@pianistmagazine.com, with your full name and address, and we’ll post the CD out to you. NOTE:…

Congratulations to Steve Langford from Christchurch, UK, who has won a Kawai piano. Langford wowed the judges with his 56-bar composition, Fairytale. A long-term subscriber to Pianist, Langford is retired, having enjoyed a career in telecoms engineering. During his early years he received some help from his brother on the rudiments of notation, but he was mainly self-taught, learning by ear. ‘I was always attracted to the piano. I took some evening classes in piano and theory later on in my twenties, but work left little time to practise. Now that I’ve retired I spend pretty much all my time at the piano. I always thought I had some musical ability, and though I don’t consider myself much of a pianist, I do enjoy composing.’ Langford entered last year’s competition…

EMAIL: editor@pianistmagazine.com WRITE TO: The Editor, Pianist,Warners Group Publications, The Maltings, West St, Bourne, PE10 9PH. Letters may be edited. Trills for thrills I am learning Bach’s French Suite No 6, and am now on the third movement, the Sarabande. My question is how to play the trills in this rather dramatic little piece. As an organist, I was taught to play Bach and other Baroque trills by beginning on the note above the starting note given in the score with the trill being played fairly slowly. Do I adopt the same technique with the piano? If I start on the given note I have to finish with a triplet at the end of the trill. This is not needed when playing the starting note above the given note.…

Repertoire Let’s discuss the most fun part of the job first: deciding on the repertoire! There’s so much to choose from, and whether you’re entering the Modern or the Classical category, you’ll have to narrow it down to about two to three pieces. It goes without saying that if you want to play to your best ability, choose the piece(s) that you love! Are you better at Baroque rather than Classical? Do you feel more ‘at home’ with the gushier Romantic repertoire? What are your strong (and weak) points? You need to bear all of this in mind. Then, if you have a teacher, talk it over with them. When it comes to your playing, they’ll know you way better than you do. Whilst in the throes of choosing the…

TAP TO WATCH Rafał Blechacz plays Chopin mazurkas TAP TO WATCH Rafał Blechacz’s 2005 winning performance of Chopin Concerto No 1 TAP TO WATCH Rafał Blechacz plays Chopin Concerto No 2 Ariver runs through Rafal Blechacz’s hometown of Nakło nad Notecią – the river Noteć – and Chopin is the river running through the pianist’s career. He lives on the outskirts of that town, close to his family, in a house he recently bought with the profits of that career, which was launched at the age of 20 by winning the 2005 International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. Deutsche Grammophon snapped him up without delay, and Blechacz has gone on to record a clutch of albums for the label, including the music of Bach, Mozart, Debussy and Szymanowski, but…

As we flick through a piece we’re busily learning, we easily become distracted by the score’s trickier, more involved looking passages and perhaps less concerned with how the music starts and ends. But for the listener, how these bars are played can be so important, both emotionally and structurally. Composers give much thought to how their music majestically springs to life (for example, Grieg’s Piano Concerto) or else meanders more intriguingly into existence as if from a thought that was already planted in our minds (like Chopin’s Prélude in E minor). At least as much consideration is given to how best the music should wind up – whether enigmatically, such as Satie’s Gymnopédie No 1, or emphatically at the end of a sprawling, tumultuous journey, like Beethoven’s Sonata Op 110.…